THE RACE LIVE

The film of the stage

Valverde’s Confirmation

There was a lot of anticipation surrounding Alejandro Valverde’s debut in the Tour de France. On the day that the race arrived in the high mountains of the French Alps he proved he was worthy of the hype. Only a rare breed can beat Lance Armstrong on the crucial days but that’s just what the young Spaniard did at Courchevel. The 25-year-old was one of three riders capable of matching the surges of the Texan who is back in the yellow jersey after a dramatic day that saw the collapse of many pre-race favorites.
Forget about the one-two-three punch that the T-Mobile team insisted would help them win the title of the 92nd edition of the French event. Alexandre Vinokourov, Andreas Kloden and Jan Ullrich may have shown what was possible on the final climb of stage eight. But they didn’t win that stage and their taunting only encouraged Armstrong to ensure his Discovery Channel troops were better organized for the first mountain-top finish of this year’s race.
Instead of seeing the German team’s trio of champions attack the six-time Tour winner on the category-one climb to the ski station in the Savoie we saw the Discovery crew eliminate ‘Vino’, ‘Klodi’ and ‘Ulle’ with 10km to go. The scene was reminiscent of what has happened on the major mountains since the beginning of the Armstrong Era. It’s a formula which requires phenomenal legs and perfect timing.
The policy is simple: ignore the early escapes, don’t panic on the first mountain, get to the final challenge with a complete team setting a pace that’s high enough to ward off any dangerous attacks, let the ‘domestique’s go into overdrive to sort the pretenders from the contenders, and then give Lance the chance to dance.
That’s what happened again today but Armstrong didn’t have it all his way. His team had already destroyed the T-Mobile trio before the business end of the stage. And okay, Lance did drop his main rival from the mountains of last year, Ivan Basso with eight kilometers of climbing still ahead. But he tried everything to take the King of the Mountains Mickael Rasmussen and a strong Illes Balears duo out of the equation, but they matched him all the way to the summit.
Jens Voigt knew that his time in yellow was going to end but he expected Basso, Bobby Julich or Carlos Sastre would be the heirs. Sastre tried an early attack on the final rise but he only inspired Armstrong’s young Ukranian colleague Yaroslav Popovych to prove that he wasn’t injured in a crash on the descent from the Cormet-de-Roseland. The new Discovery Channel recruit was the last man in line before his boss took over. ‘Popo’ put every ounce of energy into his pedal strokes 11km before the summit and then peeled off ready to limp home to 19th place almost four minutes behind Valverde.
There was one winner today but four champions. Francisco Mancebo has a contorted technique that makes him look like he’s in a world of pain and there’s no doubt he was. The former Best Young Rider in the Tour joined his team-mate Valverde, as well as Armstrong and Rasmussen to create a quality quartet that would finish over a minute ahead of everyone else.
Each of these four took turns to set the pace up the second half of the 22.2km climb to Courchevel. They wanted to put as much time as possible in the casualties from the first half and their cooperation was admirable.
The only thing which prompted attacks in the closing kilometre was the prospect of acquiring double points for the climbing classification and the stage win. The first reason was why Rasmussen surged first but the others chased him down without too much trouble. With 500 meters to go, Armstrong must have remembered his “no gifts” policy from 12 months ago and he raced ahead for the stage win.
Lance expected to throw a victory salute but Valverde had other ideas. “I’m a bit disappointed not to have won because I’ve been looking for a victory since the beginning of the year,” said the rider who now leads Rasmussen by 38 seconds in the general classification.
Valverde is closing in on the yellow jersey. He began the day in 24th place overall and finished it in fifth. It’s a confirmation of Lance’s appraisal of his rivals. "My opponents were slightly different than what we expected," he said after the stage. Indeed they are formidable riders but it is becoming rather obvious that the six-time winner is on course to claim title number seven.

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