Can the break have better luck today? David Millar sure hopes so!
But alas, no. The domestiques of Gerolsteiner and T-Mobile are not yet exhausted enough and are able to chase the break down
Once again Ballan leads Bennati at the sprint, but what is it with Colombians currently? The pesky Forero is inbetween Bennati and Hagen.
No signs of anyone catching out Lampre today, the pack is stretched as Bennati hits the front
Its looking good for Bennati, but what can Hagen do?
Sadly it seems not much - but Cavendish is looking very strong!
Resigning himself to a best of 3rd, Hagen angles himself towards the left - pushing Cavendish towards the barriers and slowing the Briton down
Bennati takes the stage ahead of Forero and Ventoso is able to take 3rd.
Hagen is 4th, Cavendish is a pissed off 6th.
A second consecutive 4th for Hagen it may be - but he continues to gain points on Hushovd. Alzate meanwhile goes back into sprinting obscurity with 14th place.
No attacks before the intermediate sprint, and Hagen takes it comfortably
Uran then gets away with Fritsch, Pauriol and Zampieri
He takes 97 out of a possible 100 points on the first 4 climbs. Shown here on the slight uphill/flat section just after the short descent of the 4th climb. With 85km to go, they hold 7 minutes on a peleton visible in the background
But by the foot of the penultimate climb, that lead is down to 2 minutes as Kohl kicks off the attacks
Kohl is able to clear the breakaway group
But the rest do not, and Uran puts himself at the front for one last big effort. In this group now are Dekker, Rogers, Evans, Schleck, Zubeldia and Brajkovic.
Kohl is maintaining a minute and a half advantage over the group as Uran drops back
But wait a minute - Brajkovic isnt moving past him! Jani is being dropped!! Fellow top tenner Van den Broeck is also there along with Uran's breakaway companion Zampieri
Pereiro, Menchov and Popovych have joined this group before Uran is unable to keep slowing them down. They are now 2 and a half minutes behind Evans! More great news is that Kreuziger does not seem to have attacked from the peleton, despite attacking near the top of almost every KoM so far today.
Kohl crosses the top, his gap down to 1'10 on Evans' group
And onto the long climb to Chamrousse, Andy Schleck starts pulling away. This is good news for Evans as Schleck would have kept a high pace, and the Aussie had used up 2 red bars with 12km of climbing still to go.
Menchov is working his way up to Evans' group solo, while behind him Pereiro and Van den Broeck are working together. Also together are Brajkovic and Kreuziger - they are 2 big rivals for Evans in the GC, and they are struggling!
Andy Schleck is closing in on Kohl with 8.5km to go as the top 11 are all visible from this helicopter shot, despite being separated by a few minutes.
With 5.5km to go, Evans 3rd red bar is almost complete, but at least his group are going at a steady pace. This has however allowed Menchov to catch up.
Andy Schleck and Bernhard Kohl have powered away up front, trying to outlast each other. They are now 3 minutes up on the 5 man Evans group
Pereiro and van den Broeck are 1 minute behind Evans
With Brajkvoic and Zubeldia a further 2 and a half minutes down the road!!
Up front, the final kilometre is drawing near - and Schleck is pulling away!
Pereiro meanwhile catches the Evans group. He had been working with Van den Breock but the Belgian cracked and is now 2 minutes behind
Schleck celebrates another impressive performance
As switching back to the Evans group, Zubeldia has cracked and oh no! 600m to go and Evans is in deep trouble!!
Rogers takes 3rd place
But that last 600m costs his fellow Australian Evans a whole minute. He just couldnt quite hang on all the way to the line
Crucially, he will still gain over 3 minutes on Kreuziger and Brajkovic
The next group to finish contains Maxim Iglinskiy - the Kazakh is certainly proving his worth to the team here in France
Hagen was the 3rd best DFL finisher. He had rode his own tempo up the final 2 climbs and passed Contador in the final few hundred meters despite at one stage being 3 minutes behind him. Another disappointing day for the Spaniard whose morale has bombed down, he had tried to stick with Iglinskiy's group once the favourite went away, but he could not handle it, cracking, before running out of gas.
Michael Rasmussen isnt having a good tour either. A crash in one of the early descents meant that when he got back up, he was in the Grupetto. He piloted them for most of the day, with Wiggins and Swift also in there. Impressively, Swift only used 1 of his 4 drinks all day. 8 riders couldnt keep with the Grupetto and were outside the time limit.
KoM 1 Rigoberto Urán DFL - CYCLINGNEWS - LITESPEED 294
2 Andy Schleck TEAM CSC 148
3 Bernhard Kohl TEAM ASTANA 139
4 Roman Kreuziger LIQUIGAS 119
5 Denis Menchov LAMPRE - FONDITAL 112
Edited by SportingNonsense on 13-01-2009 18:34
The Galibier, Telegraphe, Croix de Fer and the Madeleine.
Wanting to make something of the race, Contador made a couple of attempts early on to get away. He was chase down on all occasions though
Agritubel's Mercado instead was able to go on a solo breakaway
Uran went for some KoM at the points with a potential 2nd up for grabs - he could only take 16 poitns for 7th though, behind the stronger climbers Kreuziger, Fothen, Efimkin, Augustyn and Gerdemann
Efimkin used his attack to stay away and by the early part of the Col de la Croix de Fer he had caught up with Mercado
Trailing him by 2 minute is Sella, who attacked at the foot of the Croix de Fer along with Cavendish and Bazayev. Cavendish actually kept with Sella for a couple of kilometres before the Italian went solo.
Perhaps it was the fact that 20th and 32nd overall, or maybe Dekker is feeling good today - but on the Col de Croix de Fer Robert Gesink took to the front and started to destroy the whole field
His efforts continued to whittle down the group of GC contenders, as well as closing the gap on Efimkin and Sella. With a kilometre and a half to the top, the 13 men with Gesink are Pereiro, Augustyn, Kohl, Schleck, Dekker, Gomez Marchante, Evans, Popovych, Brajkovic, Kreuziger, Menchov and Rogers, as well as Bazayev who had been caught following his earlier attack
By the descent, Gesink's work had reduced the group to 7: Himself, Schleck, Dekker, Evans, Kohl, Augustyn and Pereiro.
Behind them, riders were scattered - but Iglisnkiy and Contador were now pushing hard to possibly regain contact with Evans
However, Contador then punctured
While having caught 3 of Evans' big GC rivals - Rogers, Menchov and Kreuziger - Iglinskiy chose to stop pushing
By the foot of the Madeleine, Gesink had pulled over while Augustyn was also gapped
Dekker made the first move
But Schleck inevitably went past him
Kohl and Evans both now hard to work to chase Dekker, a rival in the GC for both of them (Dekker is 2 minutes behind Kohl and 2 minutes ahead of Evans). Pereiro is with them and Augustyn has rejoined the group
A culmination of big efforts from Kohl and Evans - plus Sella slowing Dekker down, allowed the Dutchman to be caught
But Sella continued to slow the group in order for Brajkovic's group to catch up. Lead domestiques for their respective leaders are also with Brajkovic: Popovych, Gomez Marchante and Gesink. Evans tried to move round Sella but Sella responded by moving back ahead of him.
As Brajkovic made contact, Dekker attacked once again!
He shouldnt have any blue bar at all yet pulls out a minutes gap! So, can he be caught again? Popovych and Augustyn duly bury themselves, with Gomez Marchante keeping a watchful eye as Kohl, Evans, Pereiro and Brajkovic are pressured to keep up
In front and almost forgotten amongst the action, Schleck has caught and then dropped the lone attacker Efimkin
Andy Schleck's climbing is really a step above the rest this year
With a few kilometres to the top, Dekker is keeping at a minutes gap over Evans' group. A chance of a podium is slipping away so Evans decides to act. Having just taken his penultimate drink giving him a full Green bar, he also takes his last drink for some blue bar. On a +5 day with the final 35km after the climb largely a descent, he hopes it could go well
But it doesnt at all, unable to get clear - his red bars rapidly rise from 1 to 3, and what could have been a great move could no turn out badly
The positive though is that Brajkovic is substantially gapped and so can he sit in with Augustyn, Kohl, Pereiro and Popovych.
Surprisingly Evans is not the only one in a bit of trouble - Kohl is struggling too, as Augustyn and Pereiro pull away inside the final 7km.
Battling to avoid running out of energy, Evans can be grateful that he is not forced to go solo. Thats not something Andy Schleck will be feeling right now though, he revels in being on his own, dominating the race in style. The back of him is all his rivals see once he gets going, and he takes another stage win
2 and a half minute later, Dekker comes across to take 2nd, a minute ahead of Pereiro who outsprints Augustyn for 3rd
6th for Evans, on the same time as Kohl. He lost a minute on Pereiro/Augustyn but at least was able to gain a minute on Brajkovic. He now leads Pereiro and Brajkovic by 3 and a half minutes in the GC
After Brajkovic came in in 9th, it was over 5 minutes until Gesink took 10th, in a group with Rogers, Van den Broeck and Efimkin. Rogers - plus the likes of Kreuziger and Menchov - may well have seen their Top 5 hopes end today.
Ignatiev is part of a 7 man breakaway with he and Kol0bnev being the strongest - Giovanni Chacon and Halgand are also with them, although get dropped in the tougher gradients, only to catch up a bit later on.
Theres 5 placings for the peleton to battle for at the first KoM, and Uran takes the 4th and 2 points
But more importantly as far as the stage is concerned, He, Di Gregorio and Pereiro look to stay ahead
Pereiro is 5th overall and so of course will be chased. Its started by a Rabobank rider, just like yesterday, but this time it is Karpets.
Other teams join in as Pereiro drops Uran and Di Gregorio. He seems determined to hang on to the small advantage that he holds
Its not great news for Ignatiev and his companions though, with the fast pace bringing the peleton quickly towards them
So with 2 out of 5 climbs and half of the race done in terms of distance - the peleton is down to just 22 riders! Iglinskiy, Contador, and Uran are there protecting Evans
Pereiro catches the break, but the chasing group catches them both. He still feels the need to relay though, and must be wearing himself out
By the 4th climb, even Andy Schleck is relaying
23 riders are left, including 5 DFL but Ignatiev is unable to keep up after a hard days work.
The group thins down to 11 riders (Just Evans for DFL) when Dekker attacks.
Schleck of course follows - but so does Brajkovic
They build a minutes lead over the top of the climb, with Popovych, Kohl, Evans and Rogers forming the next group on the road
The Evans group closes the gap in the little in the descent as we reach the final 20km climb. Schleck wastes no time in pressing on
And Dekker scrambles across to him, they leave Brajkovic behind
Working well together, the Evans groups is looking to close the gap on Brajkovic
With 7km to go, Dekker feels the pain of actually following Schleck. He has cracked big time
Schleck is free and on his own once again. No surprise that he takes the stage
Brajkovic came past Dekker and took 2nd place, a minute behind Schleck
Dekker was fading but clingong on to 3rd on the road, while Evans group had been joined by Gesink, Gomez Marchante and Augustyn. Dekker takes 3rd place
Evans is 8th - ending the stage almost out of energy.
The time gaps are pretty impressive today with many riders finding it tough - the Evans group was the only group of riders to finish together in the Top 28! Finishing 43rd, Hagen was probably the least tired of the first 50 finishers. He has been taking it easy as he aims to save energy for the final trio of flat sprinters stages.
KoM 1 Rigoberto Urán DFL - CYCLINGNEWS - LITESPEED 312
2 Andy Schleck TEAM CSC 284
3 Bernhard Kohl TEAM ASTANA 201
4 Thomas Dekker RABOBANK 178
5 Janez Brajkovic DISCOVERY CHANNEL 172
olabj wrote:
The podium place is slipping away from you.
Dont underestimate the challenges of playing on Extreme. Its all very well taking plenty of wins on an easier difficulty, but its much tougher on Extreme. But with a choice of Contador dominating last years Tour, or Evans battling hard for the podium in this years Tour, this years one is far more interesting to play.
