What an amazing night of racing at the Tour de France last night. Without doubt it was a crucial mountain stage with some huge efforts to possibly change the overall result.

Andy Schlek was far and away the best rider of the day. It was old fashioned riding in the mold of Eddie Merckx and Miguel Indurain. He saw his chance to break away on the second HC* climb and took it. He made his stand to make the 2011 Tour his own.

I think most of the other key players thought he went too early because he was only on the second of the three HC climbs for the day. But Andy Schlek had enough in his legs to keep going. This combined with the help of his team mates that were further up the road on the break away he was able to continue to build a lead.

Overall it was the best tactical racing I have seen in a number of years at the Tour de France. As much as I am a Cadel Evans man, I have to admire Andy Schlek for throwing down the gauntlet and staking his claim for the yellow jersey in Paris.

It was also interesting to see no-one willing to help Cadel Evans with 15 kilometres to go when he wanted to chase down Schlek and reduce the margin. Team Europcar Captain and yellow jersey holder Thomas Voeckler ordered his team mate not to help Evans and this meant Cadel had to do 9 kilometres on the front himself.

So where to now the last two crucial stages of the Tour? It looks like Voeckler has had his last day in the yellow jersey. He looked too spent to give any more. To me it is now a race in three – Andy and Frank Schlek and Cadel Evans. Contador has said knee pain has ruled him out of a podium finish.

I think tonight we might see Andy and Frank Schlek reverse their roles from last night. Andy might stay with the leaders until a few kilometres to go and Frank might make a move early to distance himself from Evans to build a gap for the final time trial on Saturday night.

However in saying this Frank Schlek has said he is prepared to sacrifice his own race to see his brother win. He might just take his brother off in to the distance and risk his own podium finish?

As it stands Cadel Evans is still in a good place to win overall because he is such a good time trialer. With the time trial being 42.5 kilometres, and being only 57 seconds behind Andy Schlek, he has enough to win. However he can not afford to lose any more time to him in the shorter but difficult stage tonight. He must keep it about a minute to be sure of victory.

One thing is for sure, the next two stages are vitally important. As Cadel Evans said in an interview last night on SBS before the stage… Whoever is the most consistent in the last three stages will win the yellow jersey and they will ride the final stage into Paris with it on their back.

Let’s hope it is Cadel Evans! I am yelling for Cadel!

God Bless,

Dave

*HC = Hors Categorie. French for ‘Without Category’. That means a super big steep climb!