stage 16

tornado tom won ahead of italian pozzato and german/australian heinrich haussler in stage 16 to zamora, a stage marked by low speeds as the riders took a rolling rest day. contador, easily kept the leader's maillot oro. he leads the race by 1:17 over team astana teammate leipheimer with five days remaining.

on the tipping front, no big changes but team escalon moved within 10 sec of overhauling gc leader damnchickens. those two teams are clearly ahead but the next four teams are close enough to fight it out for that final podium spot. however, it only takes one bad tip and it is all down the drain. a stage win by team fuerte y suerte vaulted them up the sprint point standings.

stage 16

cyril dessel, was not tipped by anyone. i have no idea why not. did you see the young south african guy go over the edge??? good way for him to get some sponsors airtime. oh, and if anyone wants a barloworld sponsored bike, it is about halfway down a mountain side.

so, like i said, the kiss of death. one of the main players to lose time was the guy i tipped, denis menchov. and he lost time on the descent. how bad is that. i definitely cannot tip cadel now. tomorrow i may tip sastre just to try to win cadel a bit more time.

on the tipping front, not a great change except yellwfever tipped poorly last night and lost 20min to fall way down the standings. minor changes in the sprinters points and surprisingly enough, no-one received any mountain points.