Max lost his GC lead to Rik Verbrugghe in today’s stage at Benelux. Another rainy day, but that’s par for the course in Belgium - makes for some tough, exciting racing. Belgium is the heart of cycling, and a little rain never stops the race or the spectators. The first year that I went to the Tour, I was with Steve Bauer’s tour group for nearly two weeks, and I loved riding in Belgium. I had sorta herniated a vertebrae in my neck/shoulder area a couple of weeks before I left, so the cobblestones were pretty painful riding. I had to abandon the riding part pretty damn quick and just leave my bike on the van... But I really love Belgium....

Guess that Ivan Basso is thinking about doing the SF Grand Prix - that would be so cool to see him here. If so, you gotta be there, ‘cause you’ll see a future TdF maillot jaune... Ivan and Lance are really good friends, and remember that Lance helped a lot when Ivan’s mother needed treatment for her cancer.

The DC guys are gonna be racing in August - I see that Volodymyr, Tony and Patrick are on the roster for three races in a row: Tour de L’Ain from the 7th to the 10th, Teag Hainleite on the 13th, and the Deutschland Tour from the 15th to 23rd. They’ll see a lot of France and Germany in August...

Janez Brajkovic will be riding with the DC guy in the Duetschland Tour - we haven’t seen too much of him this year. When I was at the training camp with the guys, I sure saw him working hard - I didn’t see him ever get dropped. He won the 2004 U23 ITT World Championships in Italy, and Johan had his eye on Janez. Johan called the team director and Janez was in, but still had some other commitments to keep. But I remember seeing an interview he did last Spring after training camp, where he said how amazing Lance was: that Lance worked 24/7, trained harder than anyone else and still found time to be supportive with the team.

I took this shot of Janez at training camp last January - he was giving the camera a pretty hard stare, or maybe he was practicing “The Look” for future use....