Stage 13 - Vino Victorious

You can't keep a good rider down. You may be able to keep him down for two years due to blood doping, but sooner or later he'll be back in the peloton and winning races. Alexander Vinokourov is a good rider. And such is the state of my doping double standards, I actually quite like Vino. We all knew he was dirty, but he's a gutsy rider who's always on the attack. And he has massive calves. He might even have cleaned-up his act, you never know. He came close to winning on stage 11, only to be caught by his own team-mate Contador. Today he sneaked away from the bunch on the run-in to the finish and held on to win by 13 seconds ahead of the sprinters behind.

In the points competition the game of pass-the-jersey between Hushovd and Petacchi continued, with it being Petacchi's turn to win it today. All the sprinters have a tough few days ahead as the race heads for the Pyrenees. Will Thor try and go up the road again for a few points? Or will he try and save himself for the sprints still to come.

Socres for stages 11 and 12 are now up.

Looks like The Gherkins are still surging ahead - especially if you look at the chart on the spreadsheet.

So The Gherkins line surges up like one of the steep Pyrenean climbs to come, while everyone else's line resembles the gentler gradient of an Alpine climb. Except for the Kadence Kings of course, who's line resembles the sort of climb you might encounter on a Sustrans bike path that used to be a railway line.

Tomorrow should make for a nice day in front of the TV, (or computer, or whatever your chosen method of Tour tracking is). The peloton will be hitting the big climbs of the Pyrenees and there's sure to be plenty of action among the GC contenders, especially Contador and Schelck.