All of these are things that make us want to follow this great sport.
Frank Schleck finished 13th in the final stage, but TT'd well enough to put the yellow jersey on the defensive. Stage racing is that way - you can't get tired. If you do, #4 at 38 seconds back will become #1 by over a minute. Frank did just that.
Lance was #7 coming out of stage 8, down by 55 seconds, but slid comfortably into 2nd place at the end of the big day.
The strong man on day 9 was Tony Martin, of HTC Colombia. Though his performance over the last 2 weeks made winner overall unattainable, he marched around Liestal, Switzerland to the trill of a home town crowd finishing comfortably ahead of the others. No, he's not Swiss, he's German, but the course brought him within 10 kilometers of the Rhine River and the boundary between his home country, Germany, and Switzerland. The colors at the finish line proved his countrymen had shown up too.What's next?
Well the Tour de France of course. July 3 finds the best of the best in Rotterdam (No not France - but the Netherlands) for the prologue. The first 2 stages stay in the Netherlands before heading south for the next 3 weeks.
Is 2nd in the Tour de Suisse a good sign for Lance or a bad one? I'll let you know in a few weeks.
