Dear lord! work sucks and im missing my tour. I have to try to watch it tonight and listen to Bubba's show tonight. Here's another cut and pasted update
With the retirement yesterday of super sprinter Alessandro Petacchi, one could have made the reasonable assumption that Fassa Bortolo was resigned to a quiet Tour de France following Fabian Cancellara's fantastic prologue win and Juan Antonio Flecha's near-miss yesterday. The team had, after all, been selected chiefly with the aim of providing Petacchi with leadouts in the sprints.
But a look at the team roster revealed a successor waiting in the wings: young Filippo Pozzato, a 23-year-old Classics-style rider of no mean sprinting talents, which he affirmed last year in winning the prestigious Tirreno-Adriatico stage race over a field of top World Cup riders.
With fellow countryman Mario Cipollini (Domina Vacanze) at the end of his career and Petacchi no spring chicken at age 30, Pozzato wasted little time in showing the tifosi, Italy's rabid cycling fans, that Italian cycling's future is well off with his win today in Stage 7, a 204.5km run from Chateaubriant to Saint Brieuc on the coast of Brittany. It is his 20th career professional victory--an astounding number for a rider of his age.
On a finish that recalled the spring Classics like Liege-Bastogne-Liege, it was expected that World Cup specialists would come to the fore, and they did, with Quick Step-Davitamon's Paolo Bettini, a former World Cup champion, launching an attack on the final climb, the category 4 Cote de Langeuex, just over 5km from the finish. The move drew Pozzato and five others, including former World Champion Laurent Brochard (Ag2r Prevoyance) and outside GC hope Francisco Mancebo (Illes
Baleares-Banesto) and another promising young Italian, Michele Scarponi (Domina Vacanze).
As the septet got a tenuous lead on the peloton the attacks continued to come: first from Brochard and then Spaniard Iker Flores of Iban Mayo's Euskaltel team, who countered Brochard--only Mancebo and Pozzato could follow and the three quickly put in a few crucial seconds advantage over the chasers.
In the finale, "Pippo" as he's known, looked quite comfortable going against two lightly built Spanish climbers and appeared almost lazy as he led out with 200 meters to go, confidently holding his advantage to the line.
"I didn't think it would be my day, but I was hoping to win the stage," said Pozzato at the finish. "After Alessandro left the race yesterday it kind of gave us the freedom to go out there and do our own thing." Do that he did, becoming his team's second stage winner.
Behind, a hard-charging field caught the leaders right at the line, with Credit Agricole's Thor Hushovd leading the way in 8th place behind the break, 10 seconds behind Pozzato, Flores and Mancebo. Stuart O'Grady (Cofidis) got the better of Lotto-Domo's Robbie McEwen on the finish and keeps his green jersey by a scant one-point margin.
The day very nearly came to a different end, however, more reminiscent of stage 3, when Mayo and about 60 other riders lost almost four minutes. With 45km to go, the race reached Cap Frehel on the Brittany coast and turned to the west, with a strong shifting crosswind blowing off the English Channel.
CSC went immediately to the front and, in a pre-planned tactic, began driving hard. Sure enough, within two kilometers the hard pace and wind split the field almost in two and the lead group gained almost a minute on the chasers. Out front, Erik Dekker (Rabobank) and Lotto-Domo's Thierry Marichal plowed a lonely furrow into the wind, but their advantage was quickly coming down with the sudden acceleration.
CSC played this tactic to its superb advantage at Paris-Nice this spring, splitting the field on the race's second day, driving a wedge into the field and surprising many of its competitors, including the race's defending champion, Alexander Vinokourov of T-Mobile. CSC's Jorg Jaksche went on to win the race with three of his teammates in the top five overall, and it was plain that the team meant again to try to catch out some of the favorites.
But the Tour de France is a different sort of race, and other than Credit Agricole's dark horse leader, Christophe Moreau, all the main contenders made the front group.
"With around 50km to go when we approached the coast it started to get a lot harder," said yellow jersey wearer Thomas Voeckler of the Brioches la Boulangere team. "We knew already that CSC might try the same stunt they had tried on the Paris-Nice." The gig was up, and when they realized it, CSC called off the chase, but not before it had done in the hopes of Dekker and Marichal.
Into the final 25 kilometers, the second group, which also contained green jersey wearer O'Grady, regained the main field and the attacks began to come, peppering the front of the group with accelerations until the Pozzato group formed on the climb and the sprinters again came up short.
Unlike yesterday, today's stage saw relatively few crashes, and all the main contenders finished safely in the field. Voeckler gets another day in the yellow jersey and is looking more and more like he might wear it all the way to the Pyrenees, or at least the 10th stage across the Massif Central.
Overall Leader
Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere
Team Classification
1. Team CSC @ 85:22:06
2. Alessio-Bianchi @ 02:04
3. Brioches La Boulangere @ 03:16
Points Classification
1. Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis 131 pts
2. Robbie McEwen (Aus) Lotto-Domo 130 pts
3. Danilo Hondo (Ger) Gerolsteiner 123 pts
Mountain Classification
1. Paolo Bettini (Ita) Quickstep 20 pts
2. Janek Tombak (Est) Cofidis 14 pts
3. Jens Voigt (Ger) Team CSC 9 pts
Young Rider Classification
1. Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere @ 29:09:14
2. Sandy Casar (Fra) Fdjeux.com @ 4:06
3. Matthias Kessler (Ger) T-Mobile @ 10:49
Stage 7 Results
1 Filippo Pozzato (Ita) Fassa Bortolo @ 4:31:34 (45.18 km/h)
2 Iker Flores (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi
3 Francisco Mancebo Perez (Spa) Illes Balears-Banesto
4 Laurent Brochard (Fra) AG2R 0:10
5 Sebastien Hinault (Fra) Credit Agricole
6 Michele Scarponi (Ita) Domina Vacanze
7 Paolo Bettini (Ita) Quickstep
8 Thor Hushovd (Nor) Credit Agricole
9 Scott Sunderland (Aus) Alessio-Bianchi
10 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis
Overall Results (after stage 7)
1 Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 29:09:14
2 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis 3:01
3 Sandy Casar (Fra) Fdjeux.com 4:06
4 Magnus Backstedt (Swe) Alessio-Bianchi 6:06
5 Jakob Piil (Den) Team CSC 6:58
6 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal 9:35
7 George Hincapie (USA) US Postal 9:45
8 Floyd Landis (USA) US Postal 9:51
9 Jose Azevedo (Por) US Postal 9:57
10 Jose Luis Rubiera (Spa) US Postal 9:59
Lamballe-Quimper
Date: July 11
Distance: 106.8mi/172km
Type of stage: Road, flat
What to Watch For: A big, big tussle between breaks and the sprinters' teams. For teams hoping for a breakaway effort, this is a great opportunity - a short day, just before the rest day and the first of the mountains. Look for a largish group to succeed if anything does - heading west in Brittany, ocean-driven headwinds will work against solo or small-group breaks, but a larger one - 10 or more riders - could easily succeed.
Principal Protagonists: The French teams will want to get into the act, particularly those like Brioches la Boulangere and Ag2r Prevoyance, who lack true sprinters or GC contenders (while Brioches signed perennial podium finisher Joseba Beloki, he left the team earlier this summer amid frustrations over poor form, recurrent injury and philosophical differences with management).
How this Stage Affects the Race: Probably not at all. The sprinters teams will keep an eye on the front of the peloton and will likely not let any leads grow to the outsize levels we saw in the 2001 Tour, when a small group finished nearly 20 minutes ahead of the peloton and changed the face of the race.
Local Flavor: Another first-time stage town, Lamballe evokes the Princesse de Lamballe, a friend of Marie-Antoinette who was killed in the French Revolution.
especially land shark 
hehe....
