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96th Tour de France

Stage 18 - Annecy ITT - 40.0 km (25.0 mi)

23 July 2009

After having to deal with Lance Armstrong coming out of retirement and trying to steal his leadership role on the team --  being placed in a position where he'd already won all three grand tours by the age of 25 yet still had his job in doubt -- Alberto Contador has persevered and is on the cusp of his second Tour de France victory. Contador has silenced all the doubters from 2007 that said he only won because Rasmussen was pulled by his Rabobank team when it was revealed that he had evaded the drug testers in the months before the Tour. He has silenced the critics that said he should defer to his elder in the power struggle. He has defied the wishes of Bruyneel and Armstrong, who have treated their breadwinner as a pariah, and usurped the Texan's comeback bid with one of his own.

Don't forget, this is the first time when Contador has been able to defend his 2007 crown. Because he went to Astana with Bruyneel, Levi Leipheimer and a large chunk of the rest of the defunct Discovery Channel crew with which he'd won the Tour, Contador was kept from getting his chance to defend in 2008 when ASO ostracized the Kazakh-sponsored team who, in their Vinokourov incarnation, had brought disgrace upon the Tour de France with a stream of doping revelations. The name was pestilent enough to dissuade the race organizer from looking at the wholesale changes which had occurred. So this is sweet vindication for Contador, who is just a hop, skip and a jump over Mont Ventoux away from extending the Spanish streak of wins to four in this race.

He put the exclamation point on his dominant return in a fashion which, were they not enemies embedded in the same roster, would make Lance Armstrong do a double take. During his seven-year reign, Armstrong won the race by playing a calculated climbing game and then dominating his fellow contenders for the yellow jersey in the time trials. Contador took a page right out of his playbook in this race, winning the race up to Verbier in a manner just like we witnessed with Armstrong from Sestrieres at the beginning of his reign in 1999 to Courcheval in his final of seven Tour victories in 2005. But few expected Contador, despite the fact that he arrived at this race newly bedecked in the jersey of the Spanish national time-trial champion, to play the Lance method in the race against the clock.

But with his run today, Contador proved that he's more than merely a mountain goat. He has improved his form wildly in the time trial, and has a tactical savvy that belies his age. Perhaps that was always the biggest problem with the strained Lance-Alberto relationship, and the thing that made it different than the Hinault-LeMond led La Vie Claire team of the mid-1980s to which it is most often compared. Whereas Greg LeMond still had a few things he could stand to learn from five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault, it is obvious that Contador is already skilled enough both physically and tactically to accelerate away from everyone else. He doesn't need to be mentored -- he already has accomplished, in a way, a more diverse range of successes than Armstrong, something which LeMond never could boast even after his three Tour de France wins in a five-year period.

For the greater part of the day, it seemed that we would see a repeat of the opening-stage time trial, where Fabian Cancellara took the yellow jersey with his win. Starting the course slightly off the pace, the former world time-trial champion ramped up his effort in calculated measures throughout the route. By the time he crossed the line, barreling down from the third-category Cote de Bluffy, he had gained twelve seconds on then-leader Mikhail Ignatiev of Katusha. Then the waiting began.

The riders kept coming, but no one could beat the time of the Swiss dynamo. Neither U.S. time-trial champion David Zabriskie, who bested Armstrong in the 2005 opening-stage time trial in Nourmoutier, nor former world TT champion David Millar (both of the Garmin-Slipstream team) could better Cancellara's time. One after another, guys came and guys went, but no one could knock Fabian off the podium. The GC contenders started rolling through, Cadel Evans and Christian Vande Velde, Bradley Wiggins and Andreas Kloden, and yet no one could pip the top time.

Of course, there's no shame in falling to a time-trial specialist... especially one of Cancellara's caliber. Lance Armstrong, who spent years dominating this discipline in Tour after Tour, could only muster the thirteenth best time at that point when he crossed the line back in Annecy. One man remained, clad in yellow and white from head to toe. Contador blistered the course, setting a top-two time at every time check on the course. He was a full 18 seconds faster than Bradley Wiggins at the first check eighteen kilometers in.  By the second check, he had eased off a bit from his torrid pace, crossing the 25-kilometer mark three seconds behind early leader Ignatiev. By the top of the 3.7-kilometer, six-percent climb up the Cote de Bluffy, Contador passed through the third time check a full thirty seconds up on Wiggins' then-leading time. Cancellara had surpassed Wiggins for the best time at the fourth check, three kilometers from the end. But Contador blazed through fifteen seconds up on the first maillot jaune of the 2009 Tour, slacking just a bit off the pace at the end to finish three seconds ahead of Cancellara.

In doing so, Contador solidified his hold on the yellow jersey to the point where even the surreal vistas of Mont Ventoux on the penultimate stage should not be able to wrest it off his back. Now over four minutes up on nearest competitor Andy Schleck, the Spaniard can revel in keeping the Iberian invasion alive for another year. And the way he's going -- already on the cusp of his second Tour de France and fourth grand tour overall at an age where his nominal teammate Lance Armstrong was battling with cancer -- it's wholly possible that he'll surpass the Texan's record before it is all said and done. Hell, the way he's going, he could be making an assault on Eddy Merckx's record of eleven total grand tour victories...

RESULTS - STAGE 18

1. Alberto Contador (Astana) 48:31
   
2. Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) +0:03
   
3. Mikhail Ignatiev (Katusha) +0:15
   
4. Gustav Erik Larsson (Saxo Bank) +0:32
   
5. David Millar (Garmin-Slipstream) +0:40
   
6. Bradley Wiggins (Garmin-Slipstream) +0:42
7. Luis Leon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne) +0:43
   
8. Christophe Moreau (Agritubel) +0:45
9. Andreas Kloden (Astana) +0:53
   
10. David Zabriskie (Garmin-Slipstream) +1:01
    

GENERAL CLASSIFICATION

1. Alberto Contador (Astana) 73:15:39
2. Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) +4:11
3. Lance Armstrong (Astana +5:25
4. Bradley Wiggins (Garmin-Slipstream) +5:36
5. Andreas Kloden (Astana) +5:38
6. Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank) +5:59
7. Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) +7:15
   
8. Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Slipstream) +10:08
9. Mikel Astarloza (Euskaltel-Euskadi) +12:38
10. Christophe Le Mevel (Francaise des Jeux) +12:41
    

POINTS CLASSIFICATION

1. Thor Hushovd (Cervelo TestTeam) 230
2. Mark Cavendish (Columbia) 200
3. Jose Joaquin Rojas (Caisse d'Epargne) 126
4. Gerald Ciolek (Milram) 122
5. Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Slipstream) 110
6. Nicolas Roche (AG2R-La Mondiale) 100
   
7. Oscar Freire (Rabobank) 97
8. Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas) 96
9. Alberto Contador (Astana) 86
10. Andreas Kloden (Astana) 79

KING OF THE MOUNTAINS

1. Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas) 196
2. Egoi Martinez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) 118
3. Pierrick Fedrigo (BBox-Bouygues Telecom) 99
4. Christophe Kern (Cofidis) 89
5. Alberto Contador (Astana) 88
6. Mikel Astarloza (Euskaltel-Euskadi) 86
7. Sandy Casar (Francaise des Jeux) 84
   
8. Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Silence-Lotto) 76
9. Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank) 68
10. Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step) 67
    

BEST YOUNG RIDER

1. Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) 73:19:50
2. Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) +3:04
3. Roman Kreuziger (Liquigas) +9:57
4. Brice Feillu (Agritubel) +21:47
   
5. Pierre Rolland (BBox-Bouygues Telecom) +25:46
6. Nicolas Roche (AG2R-La Mondiale) +27:38
7. Chris Anker Sorensen (Saxo Bank) +38:35
8. Peter Velits (Milram) +38:39
9. Rigoberto Uran (Caisse d'Epargne) +50:58
   
10. Tony Martin (Columbia)  +51:28

TEAM CLASSIFICATION

1. Astana -- 218:23:07
2. Garmin-Slipstream -- +16:14
3. AG2R-La Mondiale -- +23:45
4. Saxo Bank -- +24:28
5. Liquigas -- +43:40
6. Cofidis -- +45:43
7. Euskaltel-Euskadi -- +47:45
8. Francaise des Jeux -- +50:57
9. Katusha -- +57:28
   
10. Milram -- +1:07:08