In a bit of gamesmanship, Astana team director Johann Bruyneel picked Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer to start early, due to worries about rain that was expected later in the day and could slow their times.

Lance did not disappoint, setting the fastest time of the day up until that point. That time did not last, however, as Tony Martin of Team Columbia bested him by a mere 7 seconds.

The day kept speeding up, as the top time got bested again and again. Top GC contenders Levi Leipheimer, Cadel Evans and Andreas Kloden all finished within half a minute of the final winner.

The big drama of the day was how 2007 Tour winner Alberto Contador would finish. Stories have been flying for months about whether Contador or Armstrong would lead the Astana team, but as Armstrong said recently, "the race will sort it out." And it did--Contador set the fastest time at that point, 22 seconds faster than Armstrong.

But in the end, it was time trial specialist and former world time trial champion Fabian Cancellara of team Saxo Bank earning the win, 18 seconds ahead of Contador.

Other GC contenders did not fare as well. This year's Giro d'Italia winner Denis Menchov finished 1:31 back, and last year's temporary yellow jersey holder Frank Schleck has a very bad day, 1:36 back and 1:18 behind Contador. 2008 Tour winner Carlos Sastre, not a time trial specialist, finished 1:06 back.

Beginning again in Monaco and continuing into France and finally finishing 187 km later in Brignoles. The course was fairly flat, with some rolling 3rd and 4th category climbs and some intermediate sprints throughout. An early breakaway extended about 5 minutes out, until Saxo Bank held the leash and stopped the breakaway from gaining any more time.

A small bit of trivia: Jussi Veikkanen of the Francais de Jeux team summitted all three mountains first, becoming the first rider from Finland to earn the King of the Mountains jersey.

Saxo Bank's Frank Schleck suffered a minor crash not far into the stage, but was able to bring himself back to the peloton without too much work.

With about 20 km to go, the breakaway was caught, leaving the sprinters' teams to do the work. Columbia-HTC took control with about 15k remaining to try to lead their sprinter Mark Cavendish to victory.

After a crash disrupted some of the action with only 1 or 2k remaining, Columbia and Cavendish stayed on the front, and though Garmin-Slipstream's Tyler Farrar got on Cav's wheel, he was not able to catch the Columbia sprinter, as Cav took his first Tour victory of the year.

Armstrong and the other GC contenders, as well as Cancellara finished in a large group. They all kept their same time, with Cancellara keeping his yellow jersey.

The only possible kink in those plans is a strong crosswind in the roads down near La Grande Motte. In a crosswind, all bets are off and major time gaps can open.

The race started with an attack right when the flag dropped. The breakaway of four riders made it to a 12:30 gap before the peloton began reeling them in.

Over the final (category 4) mountain, the time gap had dropped quite a bit, down to 7 minutes.

With the breakaway only a minute or so ahead, all of a sudden, the exact thing that team directors warned about happened: the crosswind!

There was a slight crosswind at just over 20 km left, and Team Columbia-HTC drilled it. It was pedal to the metal and the race completely split into two groups. Columbia-HTC had all 8 riders in the front, and other teams just had one or two riders. In yellow, Fabian Cancellara was there, and Lance Armstrong was there, but none of the other major GC contenders were. Alberto Contador was left behind. So was Sastre, Evans, Menchov, Leipheimer, Vande Velde, and others.

At 5km left, the time gap had gone up to 35 seconds, putting Lance Armstrong into third in the virtual standings. And it was becoming clear that the leading group wasn't going to be pulled back.

With 1km left, sprint attacks started, and it looked like Mark Cavendish was in trouble. But he was patient, and found his leadout man, Mark Renshaw. Renshaw brought Cav to 250m to the line, and Cav catapulted himself to the finish for the victory.

Right near the beginning of the stage, Lance turned out to be correct. The third team to start was Rabobank with leader Denis Menchov. In one of the first turns on the course, Menchov had a nasty crash which slowed the team down for the rest of the TTT, with Rabobank already losing 57 seconds to Katusha, with 17 teams yet to finish.

The team with perhaps the most disastrous ride was BBox. After one rider suffered a rear flat, and later another rider suffering a crash, half of the team went down in a crash off the road.

Katusha set the early fastest time. That time held for the next 12 teams, until Liquigas blew up the course and finished 25 seconds ahead. But the top 4 leading teams had yet to put in their time—Columbia HTC, Garmin-Slipstream, Saxobank, and obviously Astana are the big guns.

Garmin set a solid time at the first checkpoint—only 7 seconds behind the leaders. But the team disintegrated, quickly losing four riders, and they were only down to five: Vande Velde, Zabriskie, Wiggins, Millar, and Hesjedal. And at the second time check, they were able to set the fastest time with only those five people!

Sparks were flying, as Garmin kept heating up and finally set the fastest time on the course, still with only five riders. Saxobank had a disappointing run, although Cancellara dragged his team across the finish line 22 seconds behind Garmin.

The last team to finish would be Astana. At the second time check, Lance Armstrong was only one second out of yellow. At the third check, he was one second AHEAD of the yellow jersey. It was clear it would all come down to the finish.

With 1k to go, Astana was drilling it, with 1:15 remaining before Lance would be out of yellow again. They finished the last kilometer in…1:15! He started the race 40 seconds behind Cancellara, and finished 40 seconds ahead of Cancellara.

After calculating the time down to the hundredths of a second, Cancellara came out ahead, only a few hundredths of a second ahead of Armstrong.

When the stage began, a quick attack made its way out of the field, with six riders leading the race. Nobody in the group was a GC contender, but it was notable because Thomas Voeckler of Bbox Bouygues Telecom was in the breakaway. Many Tour de France fans will remember Voeckler’s name from his herculean efforts during the 2004 tour, when he obtained the maillot jaune in a breakaway, and did not surrender the jersey until 10 days later, when Lance Armstrong won stage 15 in the Alps. Because of this history, the peloton was not willing to let the breakaway lead by much time.

And all of a sudden, we started to see a repeat of stage 3. A strong wind picked up, and teams at the front of the peloton put the hammer down and started pounding the pedals. This effort quickly splintered the field, and the peloton opened up a gap of a minute over the chasing groups. Eventually some of the chasers made it back, but not all.

With 10k to go, the wily breakaway, led by Tour veteran Voeckler was still over a minute ahead of the chasing peloton. Team Columbia-HTC was keeping the pressure on at the front of the peloton, but it was going to be a difficult task to drag the group up in only 10k.

With 5k to go, it started to become clear that the breakaway was going to succeed, and the attacks in the breakaway started. At 4k, Voeckler attacked, and created a gap of 10 seconds ahead of the breakaway. At 3k, Albert Timmer of the wild card Skil-Shimano team started chasing him. With 1k to go, Voeckler had a 10 second gap over Timmer. At 500 meters, Voeckler was looking over his shoulder again and again, until he realized that he was going to win. The peloton chased hard, but couldn’t catch. Voeckler ended up winning the stage by a few seconds, with Mark Cavendish beating the rest of the sprinters to come in at third place to add to his green jersey lead. All of the main GC contenders ended up with the same time, with no change in the standings.

The ride started with a few attacks, which were unsuccessful. But a four person breakaway occurred, with some strong riders. The highest positioned rider in the break was David Millar of Garmin-Slipstream. Millar began the stage only 1’07” behind the yellow jersey.

There was no solid organization behind the chase. Astana, Columbia, Rabobank, and other teams were taking turns at the front of the peloton. This allowed the gap to the leaders to seesaw between one and three minutes.

With about 20k to go, Millar attacked his companions to try to win the stage. He managed to stretch the gap out to 1’10”. Once it hit that time though, the peloton turned on the gas. They did not want Millar to get the yellow jersey, and the sprinters’ teams also wanted to give their men a chance to win the stage.

As an extremely strong time trialist, Miller was able to hold off the peloton until just over 1k to go, when the sprinters’ teams were just too strong. The peloton passed him and brought the sprinters to the front. With a few hundred meters to go, Oscar Freire of Rabobank attacked, but Cervelo Test Team’s Thor Hushovd was able to pass him with just a few meters left to take the stage win.

The stage began with two attacks with a total of nine riders. Eventually the breakaways came together. Over the first half of the course and up the first category climb, the breakaway was able to pick up over 12 minutes on the course. Even though the closest man on the GC standings in the breakaway was down over three minutes, the break wasn’t expected to make it to the finish ahead of the peloton.

As the stage went on, however, the breakaway was managing to hold a lead of over eight minutes. Speculation started swirling about whether they might be able to hold their lead. But in the last 20 km when the road started going uphill, the gap was dropping. And nobody knew who was going to win the race.

With about 5km left, Cancellara cracked! Astana, who was leading the tempo up the climb, set such a punishing tempo that Cancellara, not a world class climber, couldn’t hold the pace and got popped off the back. If Astana was able to catch the breakaway, Armstrong would be in the yellow jersey again, 4 years later.

With 2km left, Cadel Evans attacked! His pace exploded the remaining peloton, and only a few leaders remained. Armstrong, Contador, Kloden, Vande Velde, Leipheimer, Andy Schleck and a few others were all that was left. If these attacks kept coming, the gap to the leaders was going to shrink significantly.

All of a sudden Contador attacked. He accelerated fast enough that nobody was able to keep his wheel. He quickly gapped the other GC leaders. Although the GC leaders weren’t able to catch all of the breakaway riders, Contador did put some space between himself and Lance Armstrong.

At the end of the stage, breakaway rider Rinaldo Nocentini of the Ag2r squad found himself in the yellow jersey, only six seconds ahead of Contador, who finished a few seconds ahead of Armstrong, who sits in third place at 8 seconds behind the yellow jersey. Quite a stage to watch.

On the first climb, there were a flurry of attacks by the main GC contenders. Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans, Andreas Kloden and others tried to break out of the peloton.They were somewhat disorganized, but some of the escapees were able to get together ahead of the peloton. The combined breakaway included Evans, whom the peloton would not let get much of a gap. At the wishes of the others in the breakaway, Evans dropped back to the peloton.

The breakaway eventually included nine riders. The closest of them in terms of GC was Luis Leon Sanchez, at 4:10 behind the yellow jersey. 4:10 is not much of a deficit on a mountain stage, where a rider can easily pick up minutes on a hard climb, and so the leaders of the race would not let Sanchez get much of a gap. The Sanchez group were only able to get away about 3 minutes at any point on the stage.

Thor Hushovd was one of the riders in the breakaway, and picked up enough sprint points at the intermediate sprints to take the green jersey. On the final climb though, Hushovd faded back into the peleton and eventually behind it.

On the last climb, Andy Schleck threw down an attack. His attack blew up the peloton, and dropped a huge number of riders. Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador, and other Astana riders were able to mark his wheel, as did most of the GC contenders. However, Rinaldo Nocentini, the current yellow jersey holder, was dropped. But as the race continued, many people (including Nocentini) were able to climb back onto the back of the Schleck group.

The tempo was not set very high in the breakaway or the peloton. Because of that, it appeared that the breakaway was going to succeed. Although the peloton was not going to let Sanchez take much time from them, with 10k to go the leaders were over 2 minutes ahead.

Once it hit 2km to go, the attacks in the breakaway started. The teamwork disappeared and it was every man for himself. In the end, Luis Leon Sanchez of Caisse d'Epargne won the sprint out of the breakaway. None of the top GC contenders picked up or lost any time.

The stage began with a long false flat (with a slight uphill tilt) on the way towards the col d'Aspin. There were a flurry of attacks, eventually leaving only four riders, with the best placed rider being Franco Pellizotti, at over 15 minutes back. That meant that the teams with the GC leaders were not going to work very hard to pull him back.

As the riders went up the col d'Aspin, Andreas Kloden, one of Astana's top GC contenders came off the back of the peloton. It wasn't immediately clear if the climb was too difficult for him or if it was a strategic move to save strength, knowing he would latch back onto the peloton on the descent (which he did).

In the final 10km, the two breakaway riders still had 1:30 on the peloton. It looked as if the escapees were going to finish ahead of the peleton. After most of the sprinters were dropped from the peloton, most teams were not going to help with the chase.

At 1km to go, the escapees still had 30 seconds, and they knew one of them would pull out the victory. After some back and forth, Pierrik Fedrigo pulled out the stage victory for Bbox. None of the top GC men had any change in their standings.

Today is a test stage in the Tour, however. Today (as well as on stage 13), race organizers have banned the use of race radios. So instead of a team director sitting in a car giving orders and talking tactics over the radios, the teams will have to send riders back to the team cars to get the orders. It was possible that the lack of radios would make it easier for a breakaway to succeed.

In the first few kilometers, an attack got away, but nobody in the break was anywhere close to the top of the GC standings. 4 riders, all about an hour back, were in the break.

The peloton let the breakaway get away, but in the last 100 km, the gap never got more than about 90 seconds, but didn’t get lower than 60 seconds until 30 km remaining. With 20km the gap was 30 seconds and dropping. With only 5 km left, the gap was just over 20 seconds, and the breakaway was going strong. But with only 2 km, the gap closed and team Liquigas took over the peloton.

In the last kilometer, Columbia HTC took over, with George Hincapie ahead of Mark Renshaw and Mark Cavendish right on Renshaw’s wheel. This is exactly where Cavendish and Columbia want to be. Renshaw started leading after a couple hundred meters, and with 300 meters left Renshaw swung off and Cavendish bolted away. Thor Hushovd and Tyler Farrar stayed on Cav’s wheel, but could not match the acceleration. Cavendish won yet another stage, with Hushovd and Farrar right behind.

The top of the GC standings did not change, with Alberto Contador still in second and Lance Armstrong in third.

There were a few attacks that didn’t get away in the early part of the stage. But then two riders, one from Lampre and one from Silence Lotto got away and managed to get a 4 minute gap. But Columbia-HTC and Ag2r kept the breakaway from getting any more time than that. Columbia wanted to maintain the gap because they want to set up Cavendish for another win, and Ag2r was managing the race to keep their yellow jersey.

On the long flat stages, small breakaways have a terrible success rate, and today was no different. The peloton and stage directors have “the catch” down to a science. The goal is to catch the break before the finish line, but not so far away that another breakaway can get out. The goal is to catch them in the 2-4km mark from the finish. Between the 20km and 15 km mark, the gap dropped significantly, as the peloton ramped up the pace, but then the peloton slowed down so they wouldn’t catch the break too early. At 10km, the gap was 17 seconds. At the 5km mark, the breakaway was caught.

Three teams were organizing their sprinters for the victory: Columbia-HTC, Milram and Garmin-Slipstream, for Mark Cavendish, Gerard Ciolek, and Tyler Farrar, respectively. It was a very disorganized leadout as all the main sprinters’ teams were fighting for position. Columbia stayed in the drivers’ seat for the most part, and they delivered Cavendish exactly where he needed to be. Thor Hushovd and Farrar both attacked toward the finish, but in the end, it was Cavendish again, for his fourth victory of the year. GC standings didn’t change at all.

Soon after the stage started, we saw an attack. And contrary to most other attacks where you don’t see anybody close to the top in GC, on today there are 4 people within 20 minutes. In addition, Egoi Martinez, the current polka dot jersey holder was in the break as well. So if the breakaway does succeed, it will be up to the Ag2r team to make sure the break doesn’t take much time away from the GC leaders.

With 25 km to go, after all the rolling hills, it looked like that was exactly what was going on. The breakaway still had 4 minutes advantage over the peloton, with none of the sprinters’ teams chasing. And with 22 km left, two riders escaped out of the breakaway. They clearly believed that the breakaway was going to succeed, and they didn’t want to have to race against all seven riders in the original break.

With 10 km to the finish, the two leaders had actually increased their lead to six minutes, with no reaction from the peloton. The other five riders in the original break were still trying to claw back to meet the two escapees. But with only a 7 second gap, one of the escapees attacked again, with a huge acceleration. So with 4 km left, Niki Sorenson got a 24 second gap on the original breakaway. And with 1 km left, he still had 30 seconds, and a clear path to victory. This was his first ever stage victory.

This is the first mountain stage since the Tour left the Pyrenees. And more importantly, it’s the first stage that the top GC men will be able to attack the top men of Astana. So far, Armstrong and Contador have shown no weakness in their rides. But if anybody else is to come to the top of the GC standings, they have to attack. Commentators were discussing that Saxo Bank has studied this stage, and the thought was that they would try to put in an attack today, with the hope of moving Andy Schleck or his brother Frank Schleck up the GC standings. The stage might also tell us whether Armstrong or Contador is going to be the leader for the rest of the Tour.

Before the first climb, we saw an attack. Three riders escaped, and were able to get a maximum of 9 minutes away from the peloton. But once the high mountains began, the gap started dropping.

On the third climb of the day, a category 1 climb, Astana and Saxo Bank put the hammer down and accelerated hard. That acceleration disintegrated the peloton, and left only a select group of climbers in the group. All the GC men were in that group, but just about everybody else got dropped.

However, on the descent everybody was able to come back together. With only a small third category and a second category hill to go, it’s possible the breakaway was going to succeed if the GC leaders didn’t put in any more attacks.

With 25 km left, there was a one man breakaway. Heinrich Haussler, typically a sprinter from the Cervelo Test Team, had a 7:30 gap in front of the peloton, and it looked more and more like he was going to win the stage. On the descent from the last mountain, Haussler was still 7 minutes ahead of the peloton, and was going to win the stage. All the GC contenders were together as well.

At the end of the stage, an emotional Haussler crossed the line far ahead of his closest competitors. None of the top GC standings changed.

The only hills on this stage are two category 3 climbs, and the rest is basically flat. There are a few intermediate sprints, and with Thor Hushovd only five points ahead of Mark Cavendish in the green jersey classification, who knows what could happen?

At the start of the race, after some sorting out of the escapees, a breakaway of 12 riders started growing a gap. The highest placed rider in the break was George Hincapie, at 5:25 back from the yellow jersey. With so many riders in a breakaway, the strategy of the peloton changes. If a team has a rider in the breakaway, they will be reluctant to chase down the break, because they want to give their rider a chance to win the stage. So if the breakaway gets a big enough gap over the peloton, not enough riders will be chasing and the breakaway has a chance of winning.

With 62 km left, the breakaway had 8:40 over the peloton, putting Hincapie in the virtual lead by over 3 minutes. It remained to be seen if Ag2r (who has the yellow jersey) or Astana (who has three riders in the top 5) would chase down the breakaway. 12 km later, at the 50 km mark, the gap was down, but only slightly, to 8:15. At the 44 km mark, the Ag2r squad finally came to the front to help Astana pull the breakaway back to keep the yellow jersey on Rinaldo Nocentini's shoulders. Once they came on the front, they put the pressure on, and the gap started dropping.

At 35 km, the gap had gone down to 7:00. Hincapie, a 14 time Tour de France rider, knew that if the gap kept coming down, he would not end up in yellow. So he attacked out of the breakaway to try to speed up the tempo. With 25 km left, the gap was still dropping--only 6:40 now, with Hincapie in the virtual yellow by only 1:15 and falling. WIth 12km, the gap was 6:20 and the attacks in the breakaway started.

With only 2 km left, Sergei Ivanov's attack had taken 30 seconds out of the breakaway and looked like it would succeed. Hincapie still had just about 6 minutes ahead of the peloton, giving him the yellow.

At the end, Ivanov took the victory by 15 seconds over the rest of the breakaway. Hincapie crossed the line, and we had to wait for another 5:25 to see if he'd be in yellow. And unfortunately for him, he missed out on the jersey by only five seconds. That moved him into second place, pushing all the rest of the GC contenders down one place.

There were five smaller hills in this stage: four category 3 climbs and a category 2. The stage began as anticipated, with a large breakaway of 11 riders escaping, and with most teams in GC contention sending a man into the breakaway, with the exception of Astana. None of the men in the breakaway were serious GC contenders, with the possible exception of Miguel Astarloza, only three minutes out of the yellow jersey. But even he was not expected to be able to carry the jersey through the rest of the Alps.

There was no serious action through the first five hills. Astana was setting the tempo at the front of the peloton, with the gap to the leaders yo-yoing between 3 and 5 minutes for most of the day. All the commentators expected the fireworks to start at the bottom of the final hill. And they were right. At the bottom of the climb, team Saxo Bank set a punishing pace up the road. This is a classic tactic--set a tough pace to drop all the non-GC men and discourage attacks. And it worked. The peloton, once about 150 riders, was whittled down to about 10, with only the top men remaining. The speed even splintered the group further, with only six riders able to keep up at the front. This group included Alberto Contador, Lance Armstrong, Andy Schleck, Frank Schleck, Andreas Kloden, and Bradley Wiggins.

Seeing that his rivals were struggling, Contador unleashed a vicious attack, accelerating out of the group so fast that nobody could get onto his wheel. He quickly established a gap over the other riders. Andy Schleck tried to follow, but couldn't catch him. As he previously said, Armstrong was not going to chase if Contador attacked. True to his word, he didn't.

Contador won the stage, finishing 43 seconds over second place Andy Schleck, and 1:35 over Lance Armstrong, who conceded that Contador is the strongest man in the Tour, and said he would work for him for the rest of the race.http://www.velonews.com/article/954571

Contador took home the yellow jersey, 1:37 over Lance and 1:46 over the surprising Bradley Wiggins.

When the stage began, a flurry of attacks came off the main field, and when everything settled down, there was a breakaway of 21 riders. The best placed rider in the group was Vladimir Karpets of the Katusha team, at 5’56” behind yellow jersey Alberto Contador. But the polka dot jersey holder, Franco Pellizotti of Liquigas was also in the break, trying to solidify his lead in the King of the Mountains jersey. And in fact when Pellizotti went over Grand-Saint-Bernard, he added 20 points to his total, bringing the gap in the KOM up to 28 points.

In the ascent up Petit-Saint-Bernard, the pace in the breakaway and the peloton both accelerated quite a bit. Saxo Bank, as people thought they would, took control of the peloton and hit the gas. Andy Schleck said that their team would attack “until they die,” and he was proving it here. The Saxo Bank pace blew up the peloton so there were only about 15 riders left.

With 35 km left, and only a few km left in the climb, Schleck attacked and split the remainders of the peloton. Contador, Bradley Wiggins, and a couple others made it, but Lance Armstrong couldn’t accelerate fast enough. Neither could other favorites Carlos Sastre, or Christian Vande Velde.

The Schleck brothers, Andy and Frank attacked again and again to try to knock Contador out, but Contador kept holding on. So did Wiggins and Andreas Kloden.

Then out of nowhere, Armstrong attacked out of the peloton! He waited until the attackers stopped accelerating, and then started crossing the gap. Only a km or so later, he attached himself onto the back of the lead group. At the top of the mountain, Pellizotti took full points, to vastly extend his lead in the King of the Mountains. Over the top of the mountain, the top GC men were all back together. When Armstrong bridged the gap, other riders were able to grab onto his wheel and get back to the lead group. When that happened, the lead group gave up the accelerations and accepted that they weren’t going to get any significant time on Contador. At the bottom of the descent, it was Miguel Astarloza who ended up taking the stage. None of the top GC men gained or lost any time.

As per usual, Fabian Cancellara set the early best time. Cancellara is the strongest time trialist in the world, so this result was not much of a surprise. Denis Menchov, the winner of the 2009 Giro d’Italia who has had a miserable Tour so far, finished with another disappointing time. Cadel Evans, the 2007 and 2008 Tour de France runner up, has also had a terrible Tour this year. But he summed up some strength to set a top 10 time on the road. Carlos Sastre, the 2008 Tour winner, has not had a great year, and his time trial wasn’t good either, at 59th best at the finish.

First Time Check
Wiggins set a blistering pace, faster than everybody. He was fast enough to displace Kloden in virtual fifth place. Armstrong set the second fastest, putting him into virtual third place. Andy Schleck scored a strong 8th best time, not losing too much time. Then Contador came through and destroyed everybody’s time by 18 seconds. This is one of the many reasons he is the best stage race rider in the world right now.

Second Time Check
Wiggins again set the best time at the top of the only mountain on the course. Kloden was 15 seconds down at the check, enough to put him behind Wiggins on overall GC standings. Lance had a very hard climb, losing 42 seconds to Wiggins. Wiggins started the day only 58 seconds behind Armstrong, so Lance was in danger of losing his virtual podium position. Andy Schleck put in a very strong climb, finishing only 40 seconds behind Wiggins. Then Contador came over the mountain again obliterating Wiggins’ time, 30 seconds ahead.

Finish Line
Wiggins faded a bit on the final stretch of road, finishing fifth. Kloden finished 8th, 50 seconds down. That put him behind Wiggins in the overall GC standings, but just by a few seconds. Armstrong also faded somewhat, finishing in 15th place but keeping him ahead of Wiggins, and slotting him into third overall, putting him into a podium position. Frank Schleck dropped way down, finishing 33rd, 2:30 back. Andy Schleck, though, was staying as strong as he possibly could, 1:41 behind the current best time. But then we watched Contador beat that best time by three seconds. This performance likely solidified his position as the winner of the Tour. He ended the day 4:11 ahead of Andy, with Lance another 1:14 back and Wiggins 11 seconds behind Lance.

With the top GC riders not going all out today, this is the type of stage where a breakaway could succeed. And in fact, a large 19 man breakaway escaped out of the main field. It was a very strong break, containing riders like Cadel Evans, David Millar, and Yaroslav Popovych. Normally such a large break with riders such as those could make it all the way to the finish. Unfortunately for them, the Rabobank and Milram teams went to the front of the peloton and dragged the breakaway back at the 35 km mark.

When the peloton was all back together, team Columbia-HTC started amassing their riders up at the front to try to get Mark Cavendish the sprint victory. Cavendish is not a strong climber, and going over the second category hill will be very difficult for him. But earlier this year, Cav won the Milan-San Remo race which includes some significant climbing. So he has shown that he is able to climb when he needs to.

At the bottom of the climb, Rabobank hit the gas again to eliminate as many riders as possible. In ones and twos, riders were dropping off. However, there were still a number of riders left. There were small attacks off the front of the peloton, but nothing serious until the World Road Champion Alessandro Ballan took off and got a small 15 second gap. Columbia was still driving the train for Cavendish though, with green jersey holder Thor Hushovd right on Cav’s wheel. With 5 km left, the two riders off the front had only 7 seconds, not enough to finish ahead. And even though the escapees made it farther than people thought, the catch was made at 1.2 km.

With 1 km left, Columbia had exhausted all their riders, and they only had one leadout man left for Cavendish. And even he had to swing off early, leaving Cavendish alone on a long straightaway. The straightaway tested him like no other stage, since he had to accelerate and keep his speed up for a long time. But in the end, he was able to win again, for his fifth victory of the Tour.

Today, the Tour ascended that epic climb. At the very end of the day, the riders climbed 20 km at a 6% average gradient. Alberto Contador had essentially solidified his yellow jersey, but 3rd through 6th place were separated by only 38 seconds, which can disappear almost immediately on Ventoux.

At the start of the stage, a breakaway of 16 riders got away, and got a maximum gap of about 10:30. But that gap was not expected to hold for very long. And as expected, the gap began dropping quickly.

About halfway up the climb, the breakaway had just over three minutes on an ever shrinking peloton. With Saxo Bank again setting a punishing pace, everybody but the best climbers in the world began dropping off the pace. All the main GC contenders were left, but few others. With 13 km remaining, Frank Schleck attacked and dropped nearly all the non GC men. Then Andy Schleck attacked and dropped even more people, including Christian Vande Velde and Andreas Kloden. Lance Armstrong, Bradley Wiggins, Contador and Frank were still up front though.

Andy attacked again and again, dropping people repeatedly, but he could not drop Contador, and the top men kept clawing back. But after one attack, he dropped everybody but Contador. Vincenzo Nibali also managed to bridge the gap. Finally, all the other GC men came back.

However, polka dot jersey holder Franco Pellizotti jumped away uncontested, chasing down the two remaining breakaway riders.

In the last km, it was clear the breakaway was going to succeed. And Juan Manuel Garate of the Rabobank team out kicked Tony Martin to take the stage victory. At the top of the GC standings, Andy Schleck was never able to dislodge Contador, and Frank Schleck could never get rid of Lance Armstrong. And out of tradition, with no attacks for position tomorrow going into Paris, Alberto Contador just won the 2009 Tour de France. Andy Schleck finished in second, and 37 year old Lance Armstrong, four years after retiring, will return to the Tour podium to finish third.

However, this is the crown jewel stage for the sprinters. Winning a sprint stage into Paris is considered to be the greatest honor in the Tour de France for the sprinters.

The peloton spent most of the day soft pedaling and talking with other riders. They were just enjoying the day, because they knew once they hit the Champs Elysees the pace would increase dramatically. And once they reached it, the race suddenly got much faster. A flurry of attacks came out right away, with a breakaway of seven riders got away. They stayed away for just about five full laps on the road.

Just before the last lap, the peloton caught four of the breakaway riders, but three were still away, with just nine seconds' advantage. In the final lap, the peloton was all back together. The speeds began to approach 30 miles an hour, and Garmin-Slipstream took over the peloton from Columbia-HTC for the first time, for their sprinter Tyler Farrar who has finished a close second to Mark Cavendish a number of times. All of a sudden, Columbia counterattacked and took control again. Once that happened, Cavendish was unbeatable and won his sixth stage of the year.