12th Man Injures Tour de France Leader

Fans are a bitch sometimes. If you ever watch any of the Tour stages, you'll likely marvel at a) how close they let the fans get to riders, even in the final kilometers (where at least they're behind barricades) and b) how insane Tour fans are in Europe. On the mountain climbing sections, you'll inevitably see these crazy guys running next to and even in front of the riders. And yesterday, the yellow-jersey wearing Norwegian leader Thor Hushovd, was struck by a promotional "hand" being waved by a fan (either plastic or cardboard, we're still not sure) and severely cut. We don't think we've ever seen this much blood on the tour before. Ew.

Husovd lost the overall lead in that stage yesterday to Team Discovery's George Hincapie (whom Seattlest is rooting for, along with Landis and Zabriskie), only to regain it again today after some madcap sprinting, with the stage win by McEwen. We actually watched in real-time this morning, because we woke up at 5:15 and couldn't get back to sleep--we eventually dozed off as we heard Phil Liggett comparing McEwen's sprinting style to a possesed fish swimming upstream