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July 21, 2004

Stage 16: Le Bourg-d'Oisan - Alp d'Huez (Time Trial)

Got up early and walked the 1 1/2 miles into Le Bourg-d'Oisan. Decided that I would not walk up Alp d'Huez with all of my equipment and computer. After walking back to my car and leaving behind my computer and other non essential items, I walked the mile back to the base of Alp d'Huez and then hiked about 5 Km up the hill. I was able to get pictures of almost all of the riders. I missed a couple when a couple of guys decided to run along side and blocked my view. For a lot of the pictures I was sitting on the side of the road leaning back. This became interesting when the riders decided they wanted to ride as close to the side as possible. I thought I had missed Sevilla completely because through the view finder it looked like he was about to ride over me and I leaned away. Some of the top riders like Ullrich, Basso, and Klöden looked pretty good as they passed my position. When Armstrong came by there were a lot more people in my way and I was not able to pick him up until fairly late. When he finally came into view I was shocked at how fast he was moving. It was pretty obvious even at that point that he would win the stage. He ended up catching Ivan Basso, who had started 2 minutes in front of Armstrong, and ended up gaining 2:23 on Basso.

Results:
Stage
1 Lance Armstrong (US Postal)
2 Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile) -1:01
3 Andreas Klöden (T-Mobile) -1:41
4 Jose Azevedo (US Postal) -1:45
5 Santos Gonzalez (Phonak Hearing Systems) -2:11
6 Giuseppe Guerini (T-Mobile)
7 Vladimir Karpets (Illes Balears - Banesto) -2:15
8 Ivan Basso (Team CSC) -2:23
9 David Moncoutié (Cofidis)
10 Carlos Sastre (Team CSC) -2:27

General Classification
1 Lance Armstrong (US Postal)
2 Ivan Basso (Team CSC) -3:48
3 Andreas Klöden (T-Mobile) -5:03
4 Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile) -7:55
5 Jose Azevedo (US Postal) -9:19
6 Francisco Mancebo Pérez (Illes Balears - Banesto) -9:20
7 Georg Totschnig (Gerolsteiner) -11:34
8 Carlos Sastre (Team CSC) -13:52
9 Pietro Caucchioli (Alessio-Bianchi) -14:08
10 Levi Leipheimer (Rabobank) -15:04

My little blue car on the right.