Update: Tour of California Stages 6 & 7

I hadn't been paying that much attention to the Tour of California this year--up until yesterday.  The first four stages were--amazingly--won by the same man, Peter Sagan.  And, yeah, that's amazing and all, but the ToC is the biggest cycling race of the year in America, and Sagan is not an American, so bottom line, I just wasn't as interested as I could have been.

But then Sagan booted the Stage 5 individual time trial, allowing Americans Dave Zabriskie of Garmin-Barracuda and Teejay van Gardaren of BMC to get into first and second place overall, and suddenly the race got a lot more interesting.  Zabriskie is a talented all-arounder who's twice finished second in the ToC while van Gardaren, a climber, is probably the best young American cyclist of his generation.  Moreover, with significant climbing in both stages 6 and 7, yesterday's stage 6 promised to fireworks.

Here, see for yourself:

So yesterday the break almost got away, and Frenchman Sylvain Georges did manage to stay away, winning the stage with a huge solo effort.  More importantly, Zabriskie and van Gardaren are still less than a minute apart with several others also in that range, and today's high-mountains stage at Mt Baldy setting up as the final Battle Royal of the tour.

Honestly, as a cycling fan what more can you ask?

Looks pretty exciting, no?