The Battles on the Bernards......

Euskaltel-Euskadi are mountain climbers. They dont bring sprinters and they dont do lead out trains. The Boys from the Basque country (well it's actually a disputed zone) relish the challenge of the mountains, they live in the Pyrenees and usually perform there, but today Mikel Astarloza brought his climbing legs to the Alps. After tough climbs over the two Saint Bernards, Astarloza descended brilliantly and then attacked his 3 breakaway companions (and the 4 hot on their heels) with 2km to go for a well earned victory.

Franco Pellizotti was in the leading group over the line again, he is riding in fine style and certainly cemented his lead in the mountains classification with a gutsy performance being the first rider to crest both the grand and Petit Saint Bernard summits. That gained him the maximum 50 points available today and his lead went from 9 points to 59 points. Should mention here that if you look back to the preview section for the race, we backed him at $24! Yeah!

There was of course another race going on involving a few fellows after a yellow jersey. The 'grand' saint Bernard was without trouble but on the slopes of the 'Petit' Saint Bernard things started to get interesting.........

Saxo bank were up to their usual tricks of quickly thinning the peleton, Nicki Sørensen and Chris Anker Sørensen (not related BTW) took a big turn each on the front to whittle the peleton back to about 20 men, setting things up for the Schleck brothers who took their chance to shake things up and went with all their might. Andy Schleck skipped away from the peleton for a brief moment but then across came brother Frank, Contador and his sidekick Kloden, Brad Wiggins and the emerging Nibaldi. This small but select group quickly put 40 seconds into the group behind containing Armstrong and the rest of the GC contenders. Sastre was initially dropped by the asrmstong group but worked hard to get back, same can not be said for Cadel Evans though, he was gone and lost almost 3 minutes on the leader by the end of the day.

Then we saw Armstrong attack his group, he was able to bridge the gap to the Schleck led front group and it was an amazing few minutes from the 37 year old who gritted his teeth and reminded us of old times. He got across to his two teammates, dragging Christian Vande Velde and Rigoberto Uran with him. Not sure why he dragged other contenders up though? Was it planned? Certainly once back in the group with contador he worked for the man in yellow. With 3 Astana riders in their group the brothers Schleck looked broken and the attacks ended, they tried and they almost isolated Contador. They will be trying again tomorrow i would think.

The early breakaway group had splintered, Astraloza/Pelizotti and their small band of cohorts had gone and their were remnants of this breakaway scattered across the mountain. The Schleck/Contador/Armstrong group sauntered their way through these lone riders, the momentum was gone though and the big move of Andy Schleck to fracture the peleton was undone when the groups came back together to make a bunch of 20 with all the big names present except Cadel Evans. Dave Zabriskie led the peleton down the descent at a great rate of knots but they were never going to catch Astarloza and his group, eventually coming in 59 seconds behind the stage winner.

I was glad Saxo Bank had a decent go, it was not a particularly hard climb, just long. Tomorrow there are 5 category 1 climbs in what some commentators are saying is the single hardest stage of the tour. I think it will be on for young and old again.


Full Results
1 Mikel Astarloza Chaurreau (Spa) Euskaltel - Euskadi 4:14:20
2 Sandy Casar (Fra) Française des Jeux 0:00:06
3 Pierrick Fedrigo (Fra) BBOX Bouygues Telecom
4 Nicolas Roche (Irl) AG2R La Mondiale
5 Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Bel) Silence - Lotto
6 Amaël Moinard (Fra) Cofidis, Le Credit en Ligne
7 Franco Pellizotti (Ita) Liquigas 0:00:11
8 Stéphane Goubert (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale
9 @ 0:00:59 - 19 riders including Contador / Nibali / Armstrong / Kloden / Wiggins / Vende Velde /Schleck & Schleck / Kreuziger / Sastre etc etc.Velasco (Spa) Astana

General classification after stage 16
1 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana 67:33:15
2 Lance Armstrong (USA) Astana 0:01:37
3 Bradley Wiggins (GBr) Garmin - Slipstream 0:01:46
4 Andreas Klöden (Ger) Astana 0:02:17
5 Andy Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank 0:02:26
6 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas 0:02:51
7 Christophe Le Mevel (Fra) Française des Jeux 0:03:09
8 Fränk Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank 0:03:25
9 Carlos Sastre Candil (Spa) Cervelo Test Team 0:03:52
10 Christian Vande Velde (USA) Garmin - Slipstream 0:03:59
11 Mikel Astarloza Chaurreau (Spa) Euskaltel - Euskadi 0:04:38
12 Roman Kreuziger (Cze) Liquigas 0:04:40
13 Kim Kirchen (Lux) Team Columbia - HTC 0:05:05
14 Rinaldo Nocentini (Ita) AG2R La Mondiale 0:05:26
15 Sandy Casar (Fra) Française des Jeux 0:05:40
16 Vladimir Karpets (Rus) Team Katusha 0:05:56
17 Cadel Evans (Aus) Silence - Lotto 0:07:23
18 Luis León Sánchez Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne 0:08:23
19 Stéphane Goubert (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:09:14
20 Brice Feillu (Fra) Agritubel 0:10:00