The winner takes it all....

For you all following the Tour, you know it's a sazzling year. All the doping accusations, and all the ups and downs. And all the crashes. When you think you've figured out who's doing a good Tour, any day will prove you wrong. For you not following the Tour, I'll tell you the stories of Vino and Moreau.

Vino and Moreau both started out as favorites to the over all win. They are both going on the later parts of their careers as pro cyclists and many have said this was their final chance. Then, in one of the first stages, Vino crashed. And more over, many more of his team members crashed as well. He had 31 stiches. His body was all bandaged. And due to doping rules, he was not able to take more that household pain killers. During the coming days, he lost some time. Not much, but he dropped from the top 10 list. But he kept going, and his team members kept with him. Then, a couple of days ago. Vino reappeared. He tried to attack. It didn't work, but the coming day Vino and his team took advantage of the windy stage and created gaps in the peleton. Moreau hadn't payed attention to the risks of the windy stage and found himself in the wrong group. He lost three minutes. About the same as Vino lost due to his crashing. But what happened next is what differs the winner from the looser. During the first time trial, the still badly bandaged Vino won the stage, a head of the world champ in the discipline. A head of all the favorites. Moreau lost ten minutes. You could see on his face that he had given up. That doesn't mean that Vino wasn't still injured: on the day after the time trial the first pyrenee stage was due. An exhausted Vino lost 30 minutes. But here comes the really amazing thing: he won the second pyrenee stage. Vino will not win the overall classification of the 2007 Tour de France. But he's still the winner. He realized he wouldn't be the overall winner and decided to win anyway. The way he could: individual stages. The team had given him everything, he wanted to give back. To change objective in the moment of pain and failure is what constitute the real winner. And the becoming a martyr in that moment constitutes the looser.