2011 Tour de France

This Tour has been somewhat of an unfortunate one. Alberto Contador, last year's winner, had his hopes to win this year's edition dashed to pieces in the very first stage of the Tour more than two weeks ago when he was caught in a large crash, injured his knee and lost a lot of time to his rivals in what should have been an uneventful and insignificant stage.

This Tour is finally Cadel Evans' to win. He's been playing his cards so cagily all Tour long, putting himself in a position to win it all in tomorrow's Individual Time Trial--a race against the clock. Yesterday he allowed his closest rival, Andy Schleck--who took over the Tour leader's yellow jersey today--to break away and put about a one minute advantage over him--which to me seemed too close for comfort as at one point in yesterday's stage Schleck had about four minutes on Evans.

Schleck and his brother, Frank--who put himself in second place overall after today's stage--tried to put more time on Evans as they know that their time trialing abilities are wanting especially as compared to Evans who is a very good time trialist. But as much as they attacked in the last kilometers of the race, they couldn't shed Evans who rode right with them to the stage's finish line.

The brothers Schleck are in black, white and blue, Evans is right between them in red and black.


Tomorrow's stage is going to be the decider of this year’s edition of the Tour de France, and Cadel Evans may well be Australia's first ever Tour de France winner!