Loooooong and pretty flat stage today. Lance really only has one stage of racing left later in the week in the last time trial. Between now and then, it will be a case of slapping a "Handle with Care" label on Lance and just get him from place to place without breakage.
As far as today's stage goes, I think Lance and the Discovery Channel team is kinda ticked off at all the reporting about mediocre performance of the team as a whole. I think the complaining about Hincapie parking at the back of the breakaway Sunday didn't help. Look for a Discovery Channel domestique or two to try to get involved in any breakaways today to shut up the critics.
(more below fold)
"Stage 17 - Pau to Revel >239.5km
Course: At 239.5km, this is the longest stage of the 2005 Tour. There's rolling terrain throughout, but the key to victory could be the closing 12km loop at Revel, which includes the Cat. 3 St-Ferréol climb 7km from the finish line.
History: The last two times that a stage has finished in Revel, two-man breakaways have arrived to contest the finishing sprint. In 1995, it was Sergej Uchakov who outthought a youthful Lance Armstrong, while in 2000, on an almost identical course as this year's, Erik Dekker got the better of Santiago Botero.
Favorites: Long-distance specialists like Rabobank's Dekker, Cofidis's O'Grady, CSC's Jakob Piil and Voigt, Liquigas-Bianchi's Magnus Bäckstedt or Bouygues Télécom's Voeckler are the riders most likely to shine on this transitional stage."
http://www.velonews.com/tour2005/news/articles/8301.0.html
Links for following the race...
http://www.letour.com/
http://www.velonews.com/tour2005/
http://www.tdfblog.com/
http://www.olntv.com/