Tour de France Stage 2 the Team Time Trial  

So Alberto Contador’s reward for being caught on the wrong side of Saturday’s crash with 10k remaining in the opening stage, was first team to start the team time trial. Alberto’s team Saxo mates had to all drop back and try and ride back some time for the defending champ dropping the entire team to last overall.

So come Sunday, Alberto seemed determined to ride himself back into contention, and Saxo appeared to be setting a blistering pace, and stood up against many of the weaker teams, but once the big teams like Robobank and Garmin Cevelo, set out, it became apparent that Saxos time would not stand up. The Garmin team appeared to be handpicked to win this stage in mind, and betterd Saxo by almost 30 seconds.

So not only did Alberto not make up time, he may have blown apart his team in the process, driving team Saxo and dropping 3 teammates in the process as they couldn’t keep up to the blistering speed.

At the end of the day, BIG THOR topped the podium, Alberto dropped an additional 20 seconds on the leader, and Andy Schleck is sitting pretty only 4 seconds away from the yellow.




So what’s up for Monday? A relatively uneventfull stage with 1 category 4 climb at Sainte Nazerine, about a third of the way in, leaving tons of time for the peleton to regroup, and reel in any of the climbers. There are also some sprinter points up for grabs which will also motivate those teams to not let too big a gap develop on the climb, so stay tuned for Redon to Olonne-Sur-Mer.

And the defending champ has some work to do.