The toughest uphill of La Grande Odyssée Savoie Mont Blanc history has kept all its promises. It has unveil the true quality of two teams that many had removed too fast from the hunt for the podium. If Radek Havrda confirms that he is the main favorite of this 8th edition, his two challengers have lost ground on their followers Jean-Philippe Pontier from France and Salva Luque from Spain.

The mushers on the ascent of the cascades trail (Photo Clotilde Richalet)

When we took his choice to take only 8 dogs yesterday for a strategic moove, Salva admitted at the end of the second stage that it was a mistake. Nevertheless did he start with 6 fresh dogs on the 10 he chose today. He added that to check the real level of his team we had to watch today's stage and not yesterday's one. With that in mind, he stands now as a potential candidate for a place on the final podium even if he states that his goal is to keep this th place; which would be way better than his 10th place in  2009 and 12th in 2010. When asked what he changed, Luque explains that he runs the same dogs except for a yearling, but he trains now more often and on longer distances. It looks like it works pretty well. And if he would stay on that performance level, be sure that he will look for something else than this fifth place.

Another great performance of the day is to the credit of Jean-Philippe Pontier who has shown today that on the longer and demanding stages, he can hold the pace of Milos Gonda and Jiri Vondrak and even pass them. He took back 3 minutes on the 6 he lost yesterday on Vondrak. After 72 kilometers of a tough stage, there's less than 4 minutes between the second and the fifth. It is to say that the race is tight. That's perfect for the suspense.

Miquel-Angel Martinez at the arrival in Morillon (photo Thibaut Branquart)

The mushers were afraid of the toughness of that stage and all of them have reached the finish line safely and no doubt about it with a real pride. On La Grande Odyssée Savoie Mont Blanc, great feats are accomplished everyday by the leaders but also by all the others and all of them deserve the support of the crowd. There were a lot of people waiting for Miquel-Angel Martinez and cheering him when he crossed the finish line with a wide smile on his face a long time after the others. But don't worry, Miquel is only travelling on his Finnmarkslopet pace, keeping an eye with his goal: the Arctic Alps Cup.

Hat off to Thomas Hoffmann who hurt his leg yesterday in a fall and who run the whole stage with a great pain but finally made it. He will be at the start of the 3rd stage tomorrow. Another day on La Grande Odyssee Savoie Mont Blanc, another day of heroes.