Stage 8 Review
By Paul Sherwen

On the face of it today was an atypical mountain stage in the Pyrenees with a long breakaway of guys that had already lost time getting clear and surviving to the finish.

However it was not quite as simple as that as the main field charged out of Andorra onto the Col de d'Envalira at full tilt. Cadel Evans "put the cat amongst the pigeons" by attacking and putting the whole field under pressure. After a sixty kilometre chase after Evans he was reeled in and then the race winning break established itself for good.

On the climb of the Col d'Agnes Andy Schleck showed us that he is going to be a threat in this race in the mountains when he accelerated literally dynamiting the pack and initially shedding the yellow jersey, Rinoldo Nocentini.

The Italian rode very sensibly without panic and recovered and in fact caught back up to the leaders before the summit of the race saving his yellow jersey. It seems that Saxo Bank wanted to move the yellow onto the shoulders of Astana in an attempt to put pressure on that team with a view to cracking them in the last week of the race.

That bodes well for tomorrow as we hit two very tough climbs in succession, the Col d'Aspin and the Col de Tourmalet which may well spell the end of Nocentini's reign. Andy Schleck says he's not over impressed by Alberto Contador so far and that he can't wait for the Alps to try and crush this race. In order to do that he (and everyone else) needs to try and weaken Astana before that if they want to sink the Kazakh flagship.

Great pick by Bob in the Cadillac Performance Predictions, as soon as he announced Luis Leon Sanchez I knew it was a good pick. He is such a class act (Sanchez not Bob!!) and I was shocked when I remembered that he is still only 24 years old- mark that name down for the future.