Stage 8 - Schleck Smokes Samuel Sanchez

I'm thinking we've probably all been keeping an eye on the Tour today. The first mountain stage is always a good 'un, and they usually have it at the weekend so folks can waste a good part of the day watching it on TV or the internet or whatever.

So we saw the big boys going at it up the hills.

We saw the rare sight of Andy Schelck winning a sprint ahead of Sammy Sanchez to win the stage . He also put a bit of time into Contador, though he'll need more time over Alberto heading into the time trial.

And we saw Cadel Evans take the race lead.

Good news for the Lance haters. He crashed just before the first big climb, got dropped and ended up losing a shed-load of time. His hopes of another Tour win are over. But maybe he can salvage some dignity by going for a stage win later in the race.

There seem to be some goings-on with the scores. I though I was doing better than I deserved after the last round of scores went up, which looked like this.

Then they changed and looked like this, with the main casualties, as far as I can see, being the Bile Beans.

Anyway, now we've had scores up to stage 8 and they look like this.

So now just like in a big mac, it's the Gherkins on top. Previous leaders down & out are in third spot and the mysterious team BBC are second. The Bile Beans are now sitting comfortably near the front of the main field in fourth, just ahead of Maillot Jenn, who had a good day in the mountains with 1st, 2nd and 4th. At the other end of the race, Charlton and the Wheelies have moved off the bottom at the expense of KN Kadence kings.

It's a rest-day tomorrow, so no maps and profiles to look at. Stage 9 is another toughie in the mountains and the favourites will need to recover well if they want to be up there again on Tuesday.