You can't call these stages thrilling, explosive, or even remotely a battle for the GC, but they do provide their own fireworks.

In Stage 14, it was provided by Aitor Gonzalez with two vicious accelerations in the last five kilometers of the race to steal the march away from the nine other riders in his breakaway. It was obvious that Aitor Gonzalez was the strongest rider in the breakaway. The tactics didn't really matter, as no one could respond to his second acceleration, and he stayed away to the finish line for an emphatic win for the Fassa Bortolo team. It was their third of this year's tour -- all of them with Alessandro Petacchi, their big star and hope for the team coming into the Tour. Other riders on Fassa Bortolo have taken up the slack, with Filippo Pozzato, Fabian Cancellara, and now, Aitor Gonzalze all winning stages. It has been a successful Tour for Fassa Bortolo, even without their big star, Alessandro Petacchi.

For Gonzalez, it's a little bit of redemption for two years of disappointment on the Alessandro Petacchi team. He only won one stage of the Giro d'Italia last year. No wins this year, before today. He has put to rest some of the disappointment and the meager trimmings on the Gonzalez table up until now. It was a great win for him on the stage into Nîmes.

For Lance Armstrong, Thomas Voeckler, Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, etc., it was a pretty routine day at the office, although the first few hours of the stage were incredibly fast and aggressive. USPS had to control a lot of the big breakaways, as the wrong riders were in them. USPS, Brioches La Boulangère and Quick Step did a tremendous amount of work. The payoff is that Lance Armstrong comes into the rest day with huge margins over his pre-race favorites and 1:39 over Ivan Basso. All in all, it was a good stage for USPS even though they didn't get the win.