One of the most difficult days in the Tour and yet again the chance for Team CSC to blow their rivals away passed them by. The solid tempo riding by Andy Schleck and Jens Voigt only really put paid to Christian Vandevelde with Evans, Menchov, Valverde and Kohl all sticking fast up the Restefond. It’s fine to have a strong team – geez, all I’ve been hearing for the last week is Frank Schleck telling anyone who will listen what a strong team CSC is – but if you can’t use that strength to blow away your opposition when it counts then it’s a pointless exercise.

Of course, that could all change up l’Alpe d’Huez. Maybe Team CSC will do what they should have done up the Restefond and orchestrate a series of explosive attacks to put Evans and Menchov into serious difficulty. History shows that Evans can’t handle the kinds of attacks that Contador and Rasmussen hit him with last year. Surely Schleck and Sastre will just have to roll the dice and put it all on the line.

It all went a little pear-shaped for Menchov on the way down to the finish line when he found the descent more difficult than his fellow GC contenders. Losing half a minute on the descent certainly didn’t help his cause. As for Frank Schleck, Bernhard Kohl and Cadel Evans, the status quo remained unchanged with 8 seconds separating them.

As for the criticism that keeps getting piled onto Cadel Evans, his demeanour, his bodyguard, his tactics, it would be nice to see him answer all the done-nothing blowhards the best way possible by walking away with the prize in 5 days time.