Giving up the yellow jersey

"We don't need the yellow jersey," Armstrong said. "We don't need to keep it through the Alps. We need to have it at the end. I felt like today might be the day when the jersey was given away, and that's how it turned out."

I agree that this is a good strategy--defending the jersey at this point would have been a distraction. I expect Lance to retake it in the later mountain stages, when it counts more than now.