Today's stage: Time-trial over 42.5 km to decide the winner of the Tour de France
Who won the stage? Tony Martin (HTC-High Road) rode an amazing time trial to defeat the GC guys and World Champion Fabian Cancellara (Leopard-Trek), winning over this course for the second time this year (the other was at the Criterium du Dauphine in June).
What matters in the GC race? Everything. Cadel Evans (BMC) rode the best time trial of his career, finishing just 7 seconds behind Martin, to overtake Andy Schleck (Leopard-Trek) and win the Tour de France barring some sort of catastrophe tomorrow on a stage that is largely neutralized until the inevitable bunch sprint on the Champs-Elysees. Schleck dropped to second while his brother Frank (Leopard-Trek) held on for third to finish on the podium.
What matters in the other competitions?
Green jersey (Best Sprinter): Nothing changed today. The race still comes down to Mark Cavendish (HTC-High Road) vs Jj Rojas (Movistar) with Cavendish already having an advantage and being a huge favorite.
Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Mountains): Sammy Sanchez (Euskatel) wrapped up this competition with his second place finish on Alpe d'Huez yesterday.
White Jersey (Best young rider): Pierre Rolland (Europcar) surrendered much of his lead, but still held on to win the competition over Rein Taaramae (Cofidis). Nobody else was withing 7 minutes of the two leaders.
Biggest Surprise: Cancellara just didn't have it today. The rider known as Spartacus is the best time-trialer in the world by a wide margin, but he just wasn't clicking today, finishing 8th after being a heavy favorite for this stage entering the Tour.
Biggest Disappointment: Andy Schleck didn't ride better. Don't get me wrong here, if Schleck had rode one of the best time trials of his career, he wouldn't have won today. That said, Sammy Sanchez is not a great time-trialer either and he finished 7th on the stage, a minute ahead of Schleck, who should have been right with Sanchez on the stage standing.
Other items of note: Garmin-Cervelo won the team competition today with another strong ride in the time trial. The team competition is calculated by taking the time of the team's top three riders on each stage... The Schleck brothers need to get better at the time trial discipline. Both are weak and neither can count on a course with this little amount of time trial kms considering it was the fewest since World War II...With the GC done, attention can now start turning to the start of the Vuelta a Espana next month. The course there is difficult, keeping with the general theme of this year's Grand Tours with little time-trialing needing. There are six summit finishes (the Tour had four plus a medium mountain uphill finish) and ten mountain stages.
What is coming tomorrow? Short celebratory stage that will likely end in a bunch sprint on the Champs-Elysees. Only four times since the race started finishing here in 1975 has the race not been a bunch sprint. That year, Alexandre Vinokourov escaped from the peloton at the very end to steal the stage from the sprinters.
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