Alp d’Huez is a climb synonymous with the Tour and is always a very entertaining stage. The riders finally made their way to this epic climb this afternoon under sunny skies.
Although everyone was thinking about the famous climb at the end of the stage today, the peleton had to worry about a few other obstacles first. The Col du Galibier and the Col de la Croix de Fer stood in front of the riders when the day began. The aggression started very early with Ruben Perez (Euskaltel), Remy Di Gregorio (FdJeux), Peter Velits (Team Milram), and Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner) getting a gap to tackle the climbs on their own. Schumacher has been in the spotlight quite a bit throughout this year’s Tour.
The breakaway never was given a huge leash, especially with CSC-Saxobank lining up their boys and just drilling it for much of the stage. On the Col de la Croix, Velits was the only member of the breakaway to go over the top still in front of the hard-charging field. CSC had the group moving at a furious pace, but they couldn’t quite crack any of the yellow jersey contenders. Jerome Pineau (Bouygues Telecom) left the lead group to join Velits after descending, only to be eaten up before the base of the dreaded final climb.
All of the GC contenders were there when Alp d’Huez was right before their eyes. Carlos Sastre (CSC-Saxobank) was really the first to attack and took Denis Menchov (Rabobank) with him. The gap was closed fairly quickly, but soon enough, Sastre was on the attack again. This time the group had no answer. He had both Schleck brothers back in the group and making sure to cover anyone that would try to bridge up to him. Once Sastre got a gap, he was gone for good. All of the GC guys gathered around Frank Schleck (CSC-Saxobank) to climb around the yellow jersey. Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) was forced to do most of the pace-making and he continued to look like he was about to collapse (like he always does when he climbs). Sastre would roll over the line by himself, taking the glory of an Alp d’Huez stage win along with the yellow jersey.
The GC guys continued to fight it out to gain some time on each other. Samuel Sanchez (Euskatel) put in an attack that was covered by Andy Schleck (CSC-Saxobank) and those two would come in 2nd and 3rd respectively. The rest of the GC guys came in at about the same time.
So here goes the new GC…
1. Carlos Sastre
2. Frank Schleck 1.24
3. Bernhard Kohl 1.33
4. Cadel Evans 1.34
5. Denis Menchov 2.39
6. Christian Vande Velde 4.41
With Sastre’s extremely questionable TT ability, I can’t see him running into Paris in yellow. As much as I hate to say it, I think Evans will wrap this thing up in the TT and win over Frank Schleck and Menchov by less than a minute. Hopefully I’m wrong…
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