Stage 8 - Nothing Suss

Throughout the recent history of cycling, when one team has completely dominated and obliterated the peleton in a race, it has usually been the result of having a team-wide, fully planned doping program. So when Team Sky's Chris Froome and Richie Porte powered away from the field as if they were standing still on the road to Ax-3-Domaines forgive me for thinking the whole thing is a complete and utter joke. Mapei in Paris-Roubiax, and US Postal/Discovery and Saunier-Duval in Le Tour all flogged their rivals, only to be found to be benefiting from the use of performance enhancing drugs. And I can't see why it is any difference here.

After completely dominating last years race Sky's laughable dominance went a step further in Stage 8 as Chris Froome powered away up the final climb to win by over 50 seconds from teammate Richie Porte. Ex-doper Alejandro Valverde was third a further 20 seconds back. Froome didn't even wait until the final few km's to make his move - exploding with well over 5km to go in a move eerily similar to that of Lance Armstrong in his prime. Sadly this means, pretty much like last year, the race has been killed as a contest with Froome now leading the overall standings and taken the yellow jersey. Froome leads by 58 seconds from Porte, with Valverde in third. Contador is 7th having lost over 2 minutes, while Andy Schleck and Cadel Evans are gone after completely blowing up and losing 3 and 4 minutes respectively. Porte and Froome can both time trial so it seems we will be faced with a Sky 1-2 for the second straight season. I'm not sure if Sky will ever be caught for whatever program they are implementing, but despite the sycophantic British press lapping, they deserved to be punished for virtually killing off the greatest cycling tour on earth for the last two years.

Seroiously, I am still fuming at the serious joke that this race has become, and as anyone that has read Tyler Hamilton's book would attest to - when something is to good to be true something is probably up. I think it's time to drag out David Millar's quote from the year that Riccardo Ricco was thrown out of the race for doping after slaughtering the field in a manner similar to what Chris Froome did today:

"When something is to good to be true, something is probably up....and he was pretty f**king good"

And with Peter Sagan having pretty much wrapped up the points competition, it seems the only classification to provide any excitement from here will be the battle for the Polka Dot Jersey. Froome has taken the lead on 31 points after winning the mountain finish, tied with Pierre Rolland who led the peleton over the days other major HC climb. Porte is third, while the most likely winner now looks to be 4th paced Nairo Quintana, a Colombian who glided up the HC Col de Pailheres in a style more attractive than anything then Tour has seen for some time (and even he was no match for Froome's 'kick'). Quintana however did take the lead in the youth classification, a competition he now leads by just under a minute.

Yellow Jersey - Chris Froome
Green Jersey - Peter Sagan
Polka Dot Jersey - Chris Froome
White Jersey - Nairo Quintana