Garrett Lai

While Saturday was the first climbing stage of this year’s Tour de France, it’s Sunday's stage that provided our first real glimpse into who has the goods to be a contender.

There is no clear leadership at this year’s Tour, and it’s going to hurt a lot of riders. Sunday's stage was unforgiving, harsh, and hot. Four rated climbs, with a very tough trio of Cat 1 ascents for the finale, made for a very hard course profile that was made all the more difficult by a flurry of very aggressive, bold attacks early in the stage. Everybody is eager to put their stamp on this year’s Tour. We’re seeing some serious racing, with big chances being taken for the overall lead.

We may have seen some weakness in pre-race favorite Alexandre Vinokourov’s Tour prep on Thursday’s Stage 5, when he crashed with about 25 km to go, just as the pack upped the pace to put some heat on an early breakaway group. Astana sent back every man but two to pull Vino back into the group, and they couldn’t do it. After just 15 km of chasing Vino’s team was spent — he was left to go it alone, finishing 1:20 behind the lead group. When the stage was over Vino was sent to the hospital, accompanied by his lieutenant Andreas Kloden who’d been in a pileup of his own on the same stage. Both made painful starts the next day — Kloden with a hairline fracture of his tailbone, Vino with more than a dozen stitches and a serious bruise on one buttock.

A stage race isn’t a simple affair — it’s more than a matter of the strongest man winning. It takes a combination of talent, strategy, teamwork and luck. Vino might have the legs but his Astana team doesn’t appear to have the fitness to back him up. Coupled with the bad luck of double crashes for Vino and his super domestique Andreas Kloden, on the same stage, and Vino might be in trouble.

But Vino thrives on being the underdog. As the red-headed stepchild on his old T-Mobile squad, Vino was shunted aside in favor of Jan Ullrich but managed to eke out strong stage wins and vie for contention, despite little team support. Where other racers might see a first-week injury as a handicap, Vino might see it as motivation.

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On Sunday's stage an early group of 16 racers led the pack by almost two minutes as they hit the Cormet de Roselend, the first of Sunday's three finishing climbs. Michael Rasmussen, who won last year’s polka-dot jersey for best climber, rocketed out of the main group and rapidly bridged to the lead bunch, which ultimately gained a five-plus minute advantage on the pack. Then came the usual selections — non-climbers quickly falling back, everyone watching the favorites to see who has a strong hand. And suddenly, Alexandre Vinokourov’s Astana team drove to the front and started to put the whip to it, with American Levi Leipheimer content to sit in.

Michael Rogers — an early favorite, and the leader on the road after a smart move that put him into that early breakaway group — crashed on a descent, slamming into a guardrail. He was quickly on another bike, and looked to be shaken but OK. And then it was obvious that he wasn’t, as he wasn’t even trying to hold tempo on the climb. The main group passed him like a speedbump, and he had to stop and get into the team car, his Tour over. So that changes the overall picture a bit. With fewer people in contention it simplifies strategy for the front-runners.

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