After a tres difficile Stage 15, Vinokourov blew past the peleton to win his second stage in the 2007 Tour. "Rose from the dead," is how Velonews describes it. ("The man who refuses to die" is how Phil Liggett describes him!) Which just goes to show that you should never ever give up on a project, if you really want to complete it! It's never too late to achieve victory! Meanwhile, our white jersey standout Alberto Contador is still wrestling with Michael Rasmussen for the maillot jaune. Despite repeated attacks by Contador, Rasmussen managed to hold on to his lead by 2:23 minutes. Will the rest day be rest enough for Rasmussen to recover and hold on to his lead?
The jersey standings have not changed. Here are the top five in the general classification:
1 Michael RASMUSSEN - total time = 69:52:14.000
2 Alberto CONTADOR - 2 minutes 23 seconds behind
3 Cadel EVANS - 4:00 behind
4 Levi LEIPHEIMER - 5:25 behind
5 Andréas KLÖDEN - 5:34 behind
And here's the latest in the knitting classification:
Donna Lee has finished her husband's hiking socks and they are much appreciated by the recipient!
Elaine is getting ready to debut a photo of her jacket. And in the spirit of Vino's great comeback, Heather posted a photo of her Canal du Midi socks, frogged and reknit in Louet:
She is so pleased with the result that she's offering a contest -- tell her why your life is charmed and you could win some great yarn!
Greeley, not just knitting along, rode her own Tour de Cure and experienced firsthand the challenges (la pluie -- rain -- and le maladie) of riding 100+ miles. Suffering indeed! Phil and Paul would be proud, and so are we. Here is a photo of our champion rider and knitter from her blog:
Check out the other photos on her blog, and the description of her epic ride!
In the sprinters' race to the finish line, there is good news from Ann - her Mermaid is exactly halfway finished!
Dotty is just a few inches away from turning the heel of her sock, while Jen is counting the number of days left and feverishly (and with a blocked-up nose) working on her 2nd Anniversaire Sock.
Unfortunately, Susan has experienced what some might call a Tour-ending injury to a knitting finger! But she got the body of her Kauni cardigan completely finished and one sleeve most of the way done before being struck down by injury, so that's pretty good!
Nikki couldn't face re-knitting the back of her cardigan for the third time, so she's switched TdF focus to the Mystery Stole 3 and has already finished Clue 2 for a remarkable come-from-behind attack on the MS3 peloton!
Noblog Norma emailed to say that her Angel Top just needs the sleeves, and she thinks she is on track for a pre-Paris finish! Blogless Heidi has reported that her project is completely Off The Needles - can we get a woo hoo?! - now we're awaiting ends being woven in, seaming, and the dreaded trying-on!
The polkadot group are clearly in their element during the stages in the Pyrenees - Christina has cast on for her second TdF project, the Ribena cycling top from Knitty.com - she's as unstoppable as Alberto Contador!
Unfortunately for Cindy, Fawne is completely stalled until she works out some pesky row gauge issues. Also grappling with gauge is Cecile, who is nearly done with the 2nd sleeve of her lovely jumper.
Gretchen is relishing the mountains and will be putting in an extra level of effort during Stage 16, the last day in the mountains, on her project, Wisp. Mary Heather's jumbo cable needle has arrived and now there's no holding her back on her cabled scarf! Mrs Pao has finished 8 of a recommended 12 repeats on her Kiri shawl - here 'tis:
After two weeks of packing, moving, and unpacking, I (Debby) am finally online again and ready to rejoin the knitting world. I apologize if you have written to me for the KAL and I have not responded yet...I'm still catching up on the emails. I also want to thank my incredible co-hostess Meg for keeping watch on all of your projects and posting great reports of the stages while I was away. Merci beaucoup!!!
11 comments:
Glad you move went well, Debby!
I'm glad you got moved and are back! Go, Vino! (But I worry that his "rise from the dead" will trigger a backlash like Floyd's did last year...)
Hi Debby! Great to hear from you. Meg has been taking good care of all 100+ of us and I bet she is relieved that her co-hostess is back online!
Tonight's the night I'm posting my photos of the TdF in London. Although we've been back 5 days, life and work have intervened and so I never got to it. But tonight we will post a couple of the time trials and the take off in London. Then I'll move onto a photo of my jacket. First things first!
Yay for the moving being done. What a lot of work that is.Meg has done an exceptional job and deserves a huge pat on the back (pat,pat)
I was cheering Vino on like everyone else, which makes me very sad to see that he had a blood transfusion before the time trial. Astana has dropped out of the tour now. Very sad that every year seems to have some doping scandal ruin the fun of it all. Here is the article I read:
http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news;_ylt=AiUdK6i_K.nh5G3fsDpLs9N7grcF?slug=reu-tourdopingvinokourov&prov=reuters&type=lgns
Welcome back to cyber-space! Hope you're settling in nicely IRL.
I'm glad to see that everyone's progress is moving forward so well. I am also very sad to see that Vinnie (that's how I like to refer to him) has dissappointed us so much. I was really excited to see that he was coming back a bit yesterday. It's always sad to see that someone you once thought of as a role model is instead simply a sad, scared person. That's always hard to take. However, we still have many other amazing people to draw inspiration from. For example, Levi refuses to completely give up, even though he's not at the head of the pack. Go Levi! :)
Good to see you back Debby!
Gotta love those Discovery boys! Today will be interesting to see if Alberto can break Rasmussen.
Love all the progress everyone has made in this KAL!
Nice to have you back online, Debby! All the projects are looking great!
Post a Comment