Wired Cola

Today's stage was a mostly flat nothing, and a breakaway of GC no-hopers got away early. That's the kind of thing the GC leaders (Armstrong, Basso, Kloden, Ullrich) want to see, as it makes the stage safe for them (why? The short answer is that the escape can't do any harm because they can't gain enough time to affect the top riders, and additional escapes by anyone else are discouraged, because they would have to do the hard work of getting all the way to the lead group just to have a chance at anything useful like a stage win or a time gain).