Today was a rest day in the Tour de France. Tomorrow's Stage 10 is the first big mountain day -- the Alps begin. The mountains are where things really get exciting for the overall classification and this year should be a great battle. Armstrong is strong as usual, but his Discovery team showed signs of weakness in lesser mountains on Saturday (though they won the team time-trial days earlier). Armstrong has won his six Tours through teamwork. Yes, he's great in the individual time-trial and very strong in the mountains, but he has always had other great riders on his team to help him through the mountains. This year could be tougher given Saturday's performance where Armstrong was left without teammates to fend off attacks from the mighty T-Mobile riders (Ullrich, Vinokourov, and Klöden), and the terrific riders on CSC. In pre-stage interviews, T-Mobile and CSC are making lots of noise about attacking Armstrong. With the T-Mobile lads, the powerful CSC riders (Basso, Julich, and Sastre), Floyd Landis and Santiago Botero on Phonak, Roberto Heras and Joseba Beloki of Liberty Seguros, the entire Basque team of Euskaltel, and a host of other darkhorses as challengers, this could be one of the best series of mountain stages in years. It's an incredibly difficult pick this year, but Vinokourov ("Vino") looks very very good. Ivan Basso could be correct in his assessment that the Pyrenees will actually decide things this year, but I say look for the attacks to come fast and furious tomorrow on the unforgiving Courchevel. Yummy.
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