"There's no real lesson from today's stage. I could not have done anything differently."
The possibilities posited by the Tour de France's two top riders differed greatly ahead of today's stage finish on the Montee Jalabert. Alberto Contador was weary to make any predictions, whilst Andy Schleck was a bit more forthright: "I will try to win some more time, and who knows, maybe I can win another stage. I expect that Contador will attack, but I also expect that I can follow him. It will be like the finale at Morzine-Avoriaz, so there are opportunities to create some time gaps. It is a sharp rise that fits me well."
At the end of the day, however, Alberto Contador had put 10 important seconds into Schleck, and his acceleration in the latter moments of the climb was significant.
Again, this morning, Schleck confirmed that this was a climb for his abilities and resembled the kind of ascents that he rides everyday in training back home in Luxembourg, but 210 kilometers later, and Andy told an entirely different tale: "This morning I counted on losing a couple of seconds to Alberto today because I really don’t like this climb. It’s on my black list."
"It is simply too short and too steep for it to appeal to my abilities. I'm not explosive enough to keep up with Contador under those circumstances, and I knew that ahead of time."
Team manager, Bjarne Riis, warned his Yellow Jersey protege of what he could expect as well: "Bjarne told me this morning that I should not be nervous when Contador attacked. He was sure to do that, but for me, the goal was just to limit the defeat."
The whole day was one of suffering for Andy though. The finale made it apparent, but the 125 miles leading into it did him no favors either: "I will be the first to admit that it was a hard day. I suffered most of the time, and I really felt the pressure of the yellow jersey today, while in the other stages it was a pleasure."
Andy describes the finale: "We rode the last 20 km to the Croix-Neuve with a speed of 75-80 kph, and then the climb started, and it was steep immediately...It’s really short and you cannot really find a rhythm so my plan was to just stay on his wheel but he never came past me. I tried to play it a little bit cool at the bottom but he just stayed behind me. Then he attacked at just the right moment and I was not able to follow."
Schleck for his part, looked to be in difficulty on the climb, but did not panic. He lost a big gap to Contador immediately, but then settled back into his own rhythm, conserved as much time over the top as possible, then pushed it home to lose only 10 seconds.
“I just kept calm and I told myself, ‘Right, on the steep part I’ll hold my rhythm’… then at the top I wanted to speed up. And at the end he only gained 10 seconds, and that’s like what I took out of him at Morzine-Avoriaz."
While the pundits and fans alike try to make sense of the stage, the current race leader by 31 seconds says there's nothing to take from the day's final ascent.
“There’s no real lesson from today’s stage. I could not have done anything differently. The team did a really great job today. The race went really fast right from the start this morning and, after a while, there was a group out there with riders who were quite close in the classification but I said to the team, ‘Right, we ride and we keep them at a certain limit, but the riders who are out there are ones who I’ll gain time on in the Pyrenees… so even if I lost the yellow jersey, it’s okay’. If one of them took the lead, I would not really have cared because I am still only aiming to have the yellow jersey in Paris.”
Andy parts with words of warning though for anyone that may think his gig may have run its course: "My preparations for the Tour are fully geared for me to peak in the Pyrenees, so no one should assume that I am in anyway worn out. We have seen today that I have a team around me that has both the strength and willingness to give me the maximum support."