Result: Luis Leon Sanchez won a three-man uphill sprint, beating Thomas Voeckler and Sandy Casar. Voeckler takes over the yellow jersey as Thor Hushovd finally relinquished his grip on the race lead.
Here’s how it happened: The break of the day contained five strong riders Voeckler, Casar, Sanchez, Johnny Hoogerland and Juan Antonio Flecha. With the exception of Hoogerland, all of them are previous winners of a stage in the Tour de France.
Three of them, Voeckler, Casar and Sanchez made it to the finish together about four minutes ahead of the G.C. contenders, to fight it out for the stage win.
Voeckler, who is usually excellent at these kind of finishes, expended plenty of energy driving the breakaway to ensure he gained enough time to take the yellow jersey . Sanchez, who looked far stronger than either of the French duo, jumped past to take the third Tour de France stage win of his career.
The Big Winner: Thomas Voeckler. Seven years after he first wore the yellow jersey and won the hearts of the French public, he is back in the race leader’s jersey at the Tour de France.
Voeckler is an immensely popular rider amongst cycling fans and the yellow jersey is an appropriate reward for his non-stop aggressive riding.
The Big Losers: It was a stage once again marred by crashes which has meant more riders leaving the race. The most high profile casualty was Alexandre Vinokourov.
The veteran Kazakh, who was riding in his last Tour de France, crashed off the side of the road into a crop of trees with about 100km left in the stage. He suffered a broken elbow and a broken pelvis.
Other victims in the same crash were last year’s fifth place finisher Jurgen van den Broeck who broke his shoulder blade and the American David Zabriskie who broke his wrist.
Also, with 33km to go to the finish there was an outrageous incident at the front of the race. A French television car tried to overtake the breakaway riders and swerved into the them to avoid hitting a tree on the side of the road.
The car hit Juan Antonio Flecha knocking him to the ground, this also caused Johnny Hoogerland to go flying off the road into a barbed wire fence. Both riders’ chances for a stage victory were destroyed as they soldiered on but got caught and passed by the peloton.
On a crazy day in the Tour, there was also an incident where the Russian Vladimir Karpets appeared to shove Alberto Contador off his bike on to the side of the road.
What about the Irish? Nicolas Roche came across the line in 17th place, conceding just eight seconds to the main group containing Contador and the Schlecks. He is now in 13th place overall, 3’45″ behind Thomas Voeckler.
So what happens tomorrow then? A well deserved break for the riders as the Tour reaches the first of two rest days. There will by another hilly rolling stage on Tuesday. This is followed by one more relatively flat stage on Wednesday before the race finally reaches the big mountains of the Pyrenées.
