This is the final chance to make any changes to the GC. Evans had had the GC wrapped up for days now, but Gadret really needs to dig deep and come up with the time trial performance of his career if he wants to stay in 2nd place with Fothen just trailing by 14 seconds. There are a lot of other strong time trialists looking to overtake Gadret aswell, but the closest is Popovych in 4th place who is 3’18 after Gadret, so it might be too little too late to catch Gadret.
Michael Ford of La Gazetta was one of the early starters and he posted a good time as he pushed down Renäng and Stannard who had finished before him. He finished in a time of 1h02’37, which was more than one minute faster than Renäng.
The next rider to break into the Top 3 is Kovalev of Virgin Media as he goes 2nd, but he is 40 seconds slower than Ford. Marcel Barth of Accumulax then gives it a solid effort as he goes 2nd, just 1 second off the time of Ford.
The next interesting rider to take the course was Sony Ericsson’s Sebastian Lang, and surely the German was determined to do well in front of his home crowd. He trailed on all the intermediate time checks, but at the finish he grabs the lead, going 7 seconds faster than Ford.
Former race leader William Bonnet then goes close as he is just 4 seconds slower than Lang.
A big surprise imminent as Danish Time Trial Specialist Brian Vandborg has taken the lead on the 2nd and 3rd intermediate time checks. Can he keep it up?
No! He goes 2 seconds slower than Lang, who is still leading. Mikhail Ignatiev of Erste does the same trick as Vandborg as he trails at the first check but takes the lead on the seconds and the third. But will he also fall short?
He will not, as he takes a convincing lead beating 29 seconds off the best time. Dissapointing for Lang. Stefan Schumacher tried to challenge Ignatiev but he falls 10 seconds short as he goes provisional 2nd.
We’re almost down to the Top 10 now as 11th placed Michael Rogers, takes the lead as he goes a massive 40 seconds faster than Ignatiev and is the first rider to break the 1-hour-and-2-minutes mark. His effort will get him into the Top 10.
The next rider is Vladimir Karpets who goes 2nd, 11 seconds after Rogers. Karpets were also too far down on classement before this stage to challenge for the podium. Three riders later and it is Nibali who with an absolutely blistering effort takes the lead going one minute and 6 seconds faster than Rogers in a phantom time of 1h00’15. Unfortuneately he is also too far back to break into the Top 3.
Nibali pulled off the time trial of his life.
Next rider is Dekker who with a deficit of 3’33 on Gadret hasn’t given up on a podium place. He goes 4th in a time of 1h01’37. So if he wants to get on the podium Gadret has to finish in a time of 1h05’10. And he has to gain 15 seconds on Popovych and 10 on Brajkovic.
So now it’s Brajkovic’s turn to cross the line. What does the clock say? 1h01’41! So Dekker only gain 4 seconds on Brajkovic meaning he can finish 4th at best.
Popovych is now nearing the finish line. He has Dekker breathing down his neck, it’s going to be tough to hold him off. He goes 1h01’52! That’s exactly 15 seconds slower than Dekker, meaning they are at the same time in the GC. It will be interesting to see who is awarded the top spot of these two.
Popovych provided a bit of excitement as he went dead-even with Dekker.
We’re down to the Top 3 as Markus Fothen is now closing in on the finish. He only needed 14 seconds on Gadret today and they were taken already at the first time check, so just a decent time will secure Fothen another 2nd place after he also finished Runner-Up in Tour of Austria last month. The German comes in in a time of 1h01’52 as he beats Popovych by a fraction. He’s going to get 2nd place.
Now the rider we have all been waiting for, John Gadret. Brajkovic is his closes competitor for the 3rd spot, so the question now is can Gadret beat a time of 1h05’04?
He goes 59th on the stage and the clocks says 1h03’59, he has succesfully defended his podium place and it the end there were no question about it really.
Now we’re just waiting for Cadel Evans. His intermediate checks hasn’t been very good as he is just outside the Top 10. He will finish 11th on the stage 2 minutes and 2 seconds slower than today’s winner, Vincenzo Nibali. What a performance by the Italian!
So with just 152 kilometres of flat terrain remaining only a crash can prevent Evans from comfortably sewing up the GC in this year’s Deutschland Tour. Let’s hope it won’t come down to that though.
The game crashed before I could export, but fortuneately I took a lot of screenshots of the standing throughout the time trial, so I can give you the top 14.
1. Vincenzo Nibali 1h00’15
2. Michael Rogers + 1’06
3. Vladimir Karpets + 1’17
4. Thomas Dekker + 1’22
5. Janez Brajkovic + 1’26
6. Markus Fothen + 1’37
7. Jaroslav Popovych s.t.
8. Mikhail Ignatiev + 1’46
9. Rigoberto Uran + 1’51
10. Stefan Schumacher + 1’56
11. Cadel Evans + 2’02
12. Sebastian Lang + 2’15
13. Brian Vandborg + 2’17
14. William Bonnet + 2’19
