By John Trevorrow in Limone Piemonte
Michael Barry (Discovery Channel): "Yeah, a couple more tough ones to go and this is one of them. There'll be a group going up the road today, but it'll be a different group of riders. It's more of a climbing day. We're going to try to keep the race under control, obviously. We can let groups go, we just have to pay attention to who's in them and make sure they've got the right combinations up ahead."
Christian Vandevelde (CSC): "It's going to be a hard one. I'll try to keep out of trouble. Depending on Basso, we'll decide our tactics towards the end of the race."
Matt White (Cofidis): "It was a good day yesterday, but Credit chased us down. I reckon it'll be really aggressive at the start today. It's going to be bloody hot and it's real humid out there because it's so green.
"A lot of the teams have been getting crook with bronchitis and head colds. After Stuey left they put me with some guy who was crook! Bugger that, you can't put sick riders together, that's ridiculous."
Brad Wiggins (Credit Agricole): "It's not really a day for me today, but another day closer to Milan. Personally for me, it's the time trial tomorrow. It's got a bit of a hill in it, but I think I'll go okay. The morale in the team is pretty good at the moment. We're up there in the GC, which we're pretty happy about, and of course the stage win yesterday. It's been a good tour all round for us really. I've just been playing the domestique's role in these races. I just stay with Caucchioli for as long as I can."
Brett Lancaster (Panaria): Lancaster was not really looking forward to today's stage. "I'm just a little bit tired, but I'll be right. I'll see what I can do in Milan."
Brett is liking his new bike though. "It's great. It's the new model Colnago that's coming out in September. It's lighter and it's a little bit more rigid than the old one."
Rory Sutherland (Rabobank): "Yeah, it's going to be tough and the temperature's high, so it's going to be a real hot one. It's up and down all day. I'll try and get up the road in a break today, but with that ,finish it's going to be hard to stay there. I probably won't be riding for the win, probably riding just to get my name up there and do something but I'll have a go. If they rode it easy and just went up the climb, it wouldn't be so bad. But that's not going to happen.
"We've only got five riders left. We're all going out with bronchitis troubles, which are effecting everybody."
Mark Renshaw (Francaise des Jeux): "It's going to be a bloody hard stage today. And I've just heard a terrible rumour that it's not classified as a "hard" mountain stage so there's only an eight percent time cut. There's a feeling that it could go early but anything could happen, it could come back together. Eight percent will be on our minds all day. If we get into a gruppetto too early, we're going to be in trouble."
Matt Wilson (Francaise des Jeux): "Another break will go away for sure. It'll be like yesterday, get up the road into a break, and until they get sorted out, it'll be bang, bang, bang.
"It's up and down all day. It's going to be a hard day, five and half hours on the bike."
