Stage 6 of the 2008 Tour de France turned out to be the delicious appetizer for the coming mountain stages that I’d hoped it would be. All of the expected GC contenders were there to stretch their climbing muscles, not to mention a few opportunists who did their best to steal a march. But in the end, thanks to a strong team ride by Caisse D’Epargne the last 2 minutes turned into a flat out uphill sprint to the line.

Christian Vandevelde (Garmin Chipotle) and Leonardo Piepoli (Saunier Duval) made an attack at the bottom of the slope of Super Besse in an attempt to stake their claim, but they were reeled in inside 2 km to go and when they were, the remainder of the peloton just went hell for leather. In the chaos, Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner) looked to me as though he was matching it with the rest of them when he happened to touch the wheel of another rider with just over 300m to go. Down he went and off went the yellow jersey with it.

Up to the finish and Riccardo Ricco (Saunier Duval) showed too much speed to take it to the line ahead of Alejandro  Valverde (Caisse D’Epargne) and, playing the role he has to play, Cadel Evans (Silence Lotto) crossed the line on his wheel.

Three seconds behind Evans was Kim Kirchen (Team Columbia) and this catapulted him into the race lead. Evans is now in second place, 6 seconds back and the unlucky Stefan Schumacher is another 10 seconds back in 3rd.

Thanks to a gutsy breakaway by Sylvain Chavanel he has picked up enough points to snatch the King of the Mountain off Thomas Voeckler’s back. Young rider jersey is being worn by Thomas Lovkvist, my tip for the young rider winner is Roman Kreuziger and he sits 1’26” back in 4th place.