JJ out; Rubén in break; Samu ahead

Today's seventh stage of the Tour got off to the worst possible start when Juanjo decided to abandon the race alltogether. His left knee has been swollen and bruised since his stage 2 crash, and it hasn't got any better since. It's a shame he had to pull out; he was a valuable member of the team. Go to JJ's Twitter page to see pics of his double-size left knee! On the bright side Ruben once again got into the break of the day. But due to having been in yesterday's break and the hilly parcours of today's, it never looked promising. But thumbs up nonetheless for being aggressive and getting Euskaltel's logo out there! A group containing all the pre-race favourites arrived at the top of the last cat.2 climb 1:47 down on the impressive Chavanel. Samu was of course in there, looking good, but he was left awfully isolated by his team-mates. Gorka and Iván came in 4 minutes back, while Egoi was very disappointing with his 67th place a massive 10:02 down. Rubén and Iñaki came in 19:14 down, while Alan ended up 22:17 in arrears. Not really a good team performance to be honest. This doesn't bode well for the remainder of the race.