Round 2
By JoE Silva

If you were look at the remainder of the tour as an abbreviated prize fight, today’s stage over the twin peaks of the Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard and the Col du Petit-Saint-Bernard was the second of five rounds of Alberto Contador versus Team Saxo Bank. Contador easily won the first round, outpacing the man who has now declared that this is a fight to the death. Young Andy Schleck tried but failed to catch the Spanish captain of team Astana up to the Swiss ski station at Verbier, but he didn’t allow himself to be completely ridden out of contention.

Today was the second assault by Schleck and his Saxo Bank companions, but as you could tell from the pictures beamed out of the Team Astana car, directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel calmly instructed his men that all was well in hand, and that is indeed how it went down. When the attack finally came it was big brother Frank that did the pace making. The ensuing panic saw a number of riders being shelled, including (momentarily…) Lance Armstrong. But Contador was there alongside the Schlecks, not missing a beat. Armstrong returned to the fold, and then Saxo bank suffered a major casualty in the loss of their hard man Jens Voigt. The German rider rode over one of the white lines on the roads of the final descent and it was just slick enough to take the wheels right from under him. Voigt was shipped off to hospital and will almost certainly be out of the game for the foreseeable future. Ultra-popular with fans of the pro peloton, Jens will be missed, but not as much as he’ll be missed in the remaining stages of the Tour.

Tomorrow’s queen stage to Le Grand-Bornand is 169kms of sawtooth terrain that includes no less than four cat 1 climbs and a cat 2 ascent thrown in just for good measures. If Andy Schleck is going to break the will of Alberto Contador, tomorrow would be an ideal stage to do it. The time trial of Annecy follows and Schleck will need to shore up as much time between the young rivals as possible before they get there. Otherwise, it will all come down to Ventoux. It sits at the end of this week like a giant, looming over everything that has come before during the Tour. Either a 11th hour reshuffling of the general classification will take place on it, or the heavy hitters will neutralize one another, and the Tour will not be the beneficiary of the explosive finale that the organizers and the rest of the cycling world was hoping for.