Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

Stage 8 serves up a preview of the mountain stages that are to come. While there is no mountaintop finish, there is a Cat 2 climb that ends 15 km before the finish. While this would not be a super challenging stage, look for a group of the top contenders to form, while many of the tired domestiques get dropped. The first climbs after a week of TTs and flat roads tends to make these climbs seem much tougher than they usually would be for these guys.

As posted before, I fully expect some sort of attack from Vinokourov to at least try to put Team Discovery into difficulty.