After nearly two and a half weeks of high drama racing, the most open Tour de France in years can now be narrowed down to just two possible winners Cadel Evans, and Alberto Contador. While the 163km on Stage 16 between Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux and Gap looked relatively innocuous on paper, Contador and Evans (as well as Sammy Sanchez) were able to put time into all their major rivals. They showed strength, their rivals weakness. Thor Hushovd was the stage winner on the day, taking his second win of this years event from breakaway companions Ed Boasson Hagen and Ryder Hesjedal.
But surprisingly, today was all about the GC, when defending champion Alberto Contador showed he was no quite dead yet with an explosion on the Col de Manse. This was only a cat-2 climb mind you, and while his initial attack was matched by all the main GC men his second was far more devastating. 7km from the summit he went – and only Evans and Sanchez could follow. The Schleck brothers were too busy staring lovingly into each other’s eyes to respond, while Ivan Basso and Thomas Voeckler simply could not match the acceleration. Contador, Evans and Sanchez stayed together to the summit of their climb, where Evans took over – his manic descending allowing the three to build up a bigger and bigger buffer over the flailing GC aspirants behind them. Andy ‘dumb as dogs**t’ Schleck, not realising that his Tour might be being decided right here, got a little scared on the descent and so took it easy to lose even more time than his other rivals. Obviously he had left his own suitcase of courage back in Luxembourg. That is not the kind of soft effort that wins a Tour.
In the end, Evans power over the last few kilometres was ominous, and he even broke away from Contador and Evans late to pick up another vital 3 seconds on GC, the holy trio finishing around 4:23 behind Hushovd on the day. The peleton had been blow apart on the Manse, and the other GC guys came in at irregular intervals. Frank Schleck rode away from his sulking brother and lost only 20 seconds to Evans while Basso was another 32 seconds back. Andy was finally led home like a lost sheep by teammate Maxime Monfort, over 70 seconds behind Evans – his winning chances are shot.
Evans performance over the Tour so far has been immense, and he is clearly this years deserving winner in Paris. But the defending champ Contador is not done yet! El Pistelero showed he was starting to get back to his best, riding with the explosive acceleration and panache that has seen him win the last 6 Grand Tour’s he has contested. He still trails Evans by almost 2 minutes though. So the situation is like this. Contador has to try and blow Evans away on the two big Alpine summit finishes on the Galibier and Alpe d’Huez. I’m not sure how much time he needs. Probably those 2 minutes. The two are both quality time triallers, and while Evans has struggled under pressure in final ITT’s in the past, he has never been in this sort of form in the last week of the tour. At this stage I am marking them even in the final time trial and so it will come down to whoever is leading the GC after the finish on L’Alpe on Friday night. Evans has been able to match everything thrown at him so far though, and you would think those 2 minutes would be mighty hard to claw back. For the first time all Tour, Cadel Evans is the bookies favourite to wear the Yellow Jersey in Paris – and I think they have that betting right. But as we have seen in the past, all it takes is for Cadel to have one bad day in the mountains to lose it all. And if that happens – Contador will be ready to pounce. Bring on the Alps!!!!
Yellow Jersey – Thomas Voeckler
Green Jersey – Mark Cavendish
Polka Dot Jersey – Jelle Vanendert
White Jersey – Rigoberto Uran
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