Popo takes a flyer and wins Stage 5 of Paris-Nice. He was being followed in one of the team cars by my Iron Man, Eki, so what else could Popo do but ride like a man of steel. He was suffering by the time he got to the Finish, but he did it... Two stages in a row for the Discovery Pro Cycling team. Rebellin remains on top of the GC, with Contador on his heels at second.

Allen Davis made a pretty good showing for Discovery in the first couple of stages of the Tirreno-Adriatic. Ivan Basso is just coming back from his knee injury at Tour of California, where both he and George Hincapie fell. The knee was banged up far worse than first thought, so Ivan hasn’t been doing much training before the Tirreno. He’s using the race to get back into form, so don’t expect fireworks from him....

BTW - I have another blog going on The Inner Tube at the new cycling.tv site. www.theinnertube.tv/velogal. I’m going to write a bit now and then, and post a pic. Mainly just to support the guys at cycling.tv. I put up a pic yesterday of Simon, working the giant cue card for Anthony, who was interviewing the guys from Cervelo at Interbike last Fall... Simon keeps them all on track and on time while the cameras are rolling.

Cycling.tv will have a huge presence at the Sea Otter Classic next month. They’ll be set up in a big area in the Village, and will broadcast from there. I am looking forward to seeing all my CTV friends again. The CTV guys used one of my Interbike images of them working in their studio area for some kind of corporate brochure or promotion, although I haven’t seen it...