A day of bad assery

Five of us were up early this morning to watch the legendary L'Alpe stage. We were all sleepy but entranced. Okay, except for Migo.

These epic stages are just epic viewing. As much as I love watching the sprint finishes, it just doesn't compare to the 11 layers of drama that occur on the queen stages.

Schleck won, so thats cool (I am stoked that he beat the little prince). But today, I was struck by all the work being done by the domestiques.

The badass domestiques all stepped up today. Each trying to outbadass the other.

First Zabriskie and Jens were just slaying it in the break for Schleck. Jens crashes, chases back on, and goes straight to the front to pull. Then later, as Sastre's group catches Jens, he picks up his tempo, latches on, takes a few breaths, and goes straight to the front to pull once more. Two words: Hard Ass. And Jens is surprised that there are so many Voight fans in the states?

And Kessler was hauling it up the last ascent for Kloden. Kessler has been all over this tour, getting in breaks, almost winning, and then winning. And here he his, the big guy, busting it up the climb. When I saw him today, it reminded me of how surprising it was when Hincapie would do that for Lance. Kessler is the new Hincapie. Except tougher. Dude went flying ass over Adidas, over a guardrail and down the ditch. He gets up, dusts himself off, and gets back to work. The giant rocks still lodged in his helmet. Thats just nails.

And just when I couldn't watch Menchov's suffering gasping silent roar of agony face a moment longer, Rasmussen, who under most circumstances I do not consider a badass, ups his Voight-o-meter and crawls back up to Menchov. He gives him a wheel, escorting him all the way to the finish and limiting his losses.

Not to be outVoighted by someone as gangly as Rasmussen, even the little Spanish climbers step up. David Arroyo digs deep to try and keep Pereiro in the jersey.

But my favorite Voightlike moment was the one with Axel and Landis. Landis looked like he was attacking Kloden. But he stopped when he got to Axel, who was up in a break. It was almost as if he was excited to see Axel and rushed up to say hello. Axel was all calm like. He gave Floyd a nod and a "he-ey, whats up man? This climb is almost as tough as Palomar aint it?" and then handed him his water bottle. After Floyd took a few swigs, Axel did his own turn and went to the front and pulled them up the hill as long as he could.

All this teamwork stuff makes you feel bad for Levi and Cadel, who were very much without teammies. Bummer for them.

And the UnVoightlike of the day award goes to Garzelli. After getting dropped from the break, he latches on to Kloden/Landis. Kloden, Landis and Mazzolini (another domestique I should have mentioned above) do all the work to drive it up the mountain. When they come to the line, the others who had latched on move back to let Kloden and Landis fight it out. But not Garzelli. After Landis pulls the entire last 200 meters, he just slips around to nip him at the line and take the last bonus seconds. What do those seconds do for someone in 43rd place? I hope Landis throws his green stretchypants at him.

I can't wait to watch all this badassery over again tonight.