gg all of saunier-duval out, probably all of them on the juice anyway
sad to see a young rider like ricco doing them though D:
with regards to the peleton and timing:
the reason they do it is to avoid insane crashes
so most of the riders can just hang back and let the sprinters fight it out for the stage honors, while still getting the same time
i think it's a difference of one second or more, eg. the stage to super-besse; ricco won with valverde and evans 1 sec behind and some other dudes 4 sec behind
they all have transponders on their bikes, so i guess the race officials work it out that way
if schleck has no chance in the time trial, so evans' big challengers would most likely be menchov vandevelde and possibly sastre
if he can keep up with them in the alps and minimise his losses then he should do fine
silence-lotto seems a bit crap though
and csc is freaking scary (voight-train zomgwtfbbq)