I think today we saw the major difference between LA and floyd, the team. Whenever Lance was in trouble, at least 95% of the time he had a teamate there to help him through it. Phonak, however, has been invisible. For most of the mountain stages, Floyd has been riding on the wheels of the T-Mobile team.
You can't help but feel bad for Floyd today. So far he has given us Americans hope that we could have another countryman dominate the tour. Unfortunately, that hope was lost within the blink of a mountain today.:(

LOL, this is the best tour I've ever seen!

Floyd bonked! And now he wil pay for letting Oscar take 30min on stage 14!!!

Do we know if it officially was a "bonk" that did it? I was home @ lunch and his coach was saying it could have been a bonk, dehydration, or perhaps injury/reinjury.

Ya very crazy day. And while I though this tour would suck because the main contenders got booted, I think has become one of the best because you just never know what's going to happen. In most of the 7 Lance wins he had it pretty well sown up by now.

Having the main contenders gone certainly put more focus on teams and the stronger teams are the ones winning stages and now have people in top five (aside from the Piero blunder). But T-Mobile and CSC have been on fire after the first week and now Sastre and Kloden could win. Rabobank has been strong though looks like they probably won't get a podium spot now, and AG2R has been hanging tough and their guy Dessel keeps fighting through it and still has a podium spot, crazy.

As for the American contender Hincapie, Landis, Levi. Were are there teams? Levi always rides alone, DSC didn't show this year and half are gone, and Phonak never wanted to defend the jersey because they were scared of the Alps and now they screwed up the Alps.

This year definitely makes you more aware of the power of a good team and good/bad strategies. An excellent chess match :)

ya, stupid. I think no team wanted to work, they wanted Phonak to work and it might bite them all in the arse. I think he may crack tomorrow though, he didn't sound very confident post race interview.

I was just thinking on Floyd's bonk. If he did bonk and having no team around him how was he going to get any food or liquids. He can't drop back himself and the cars can't get up there too easily on these hill stages. He probably desparately needed someone to give him some replenishments and no one was there to help. rough.

Also thinking on my ride today how cool it might be to have an Ironman race that was draft legal and teams. Were they could use tactics for a race, but go long. maybe even a couple days of racing. Anyway, a thought, there was a 6 say stage race in town last week and it was fun to watch and I really enjoy the tactical aspects of road cycling.

I don't know but today he was riding strong again! Beautiful win!

IMO-
He doesn't. Yes, he took a chance, but he was more or less given that 30 minute time bonus by Phonak. That tactic was not so much about how smart Pereiro was, but how underestimated he was by the top teams of the tour.

Phonak wanted to give the maillot juene away in order to save energy as a team. But they needed to pick someone "safe" who once he had the yellow jersey, would be easy to catch up to and take it away from. With Pereiro 30-some minutes behind in the GC, and not seemingly riding strong in the Pyrenees, yet strong enough to pull-off a breakway, he was 'picked' as the guy to don the yellow jersey. What Phonak didn't account for was Pereiro rising to challenge in the Alps and essentially 'refusing' to give it back to Floyd & Team Phonak.

For one day it was considered a brillant strategy. Than Floyd bonked and its wasn't so smart....

One thing is for sure, its been quite an exciting tour! I watched the footage of Floyd's historic ride in Stage 17 about 4-5x yesterday!!