Hello again everyone. Well, the Tour de San Luis has been a huge success for us so far. Francesco Chicchi won the first two stages finishing just ahead of "Tommeke" on the 2nd stage. We planned to help Tom win the 2nd stage with it's slight uphill sprint but both he and Chicchi started celebrating before the finish line as it was clear they would be first and second so it actually required a photo finish to determine who was first. Whatever, we're all good with that! Today was the first battle for the overall classification as we finished up a 5km climb. The team supported me perfectly as Sylvain went with the early breakaway to make sure we had somebody up there while Tom, Bert, Frankie and Chicchi took care of me in the peloton behind. With about 40km to go everyone was back together apart from one of the home town San Luis riders and we took control in the wind to pare the group down to around 35 riders before the last climb. At one point Tom accelerated on a false flat tailwind downhill to 85kph and we were completely spun out, it was a blast!
I felt great on the last climb and traded attacks with Alberto but I made an error by letting him leadout the sprint. None the less I'm happy with the result and really looking forward to tomorrow's 19.5km time trial. Thanks again to the guys for their awesome work today. I'll check back soon.
-Levi Leipheimer