Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador – One on One
Alberto Contador won his first Tour de France when he was Andy Schleck’s age, and 2010 is shaping up to be the year for young riders.
The two-time Tour victor finished the 9th stage 41 seconds behind Schleck and is now happy to lie in wait for the Pyrénées challenge. The Alps already eliminated most of the original favourites, but the Pyrénées are the truly decisive mountain passes this year.
The 2010 Tour de France was the return to the tradition of opening the race with a prologue, which was won by Fabian Cancellara. Sylvain Chavanel took 1st place from Cancellara in the second stage, only to give it back in the third. Chavanel took it again in the seventh stage, only to lose it the next day to Cadel Evans.
Lance Armstrong’s performance in the eighth stage took him out of the running for the yellow jersey. Chavanel announced that the true battle was to be fought between Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck, and Cadel Evans. Schleck took the jersey from Evans in the ninth stage and then Evans dropped out of the running due to an elbow injury.
And then there were two.
"I know what my goal is and I know which wheel to follow, that's the one of Andy Schleck," said Contador to television reporters. "There was an opportunity to gain some time over dangerous riders for GC, these were the circumstances of today's stage. I'm happy with my sensations. I felt very good today."
The Spaniard did not waste his strength following every attack to the end of the race, as he did in the eighth stage. Instead, he has correctly re-evaluated the Tour as a two-man race to Paris. Contador is right to be confident. He doesn’t need to beat Schleck through the mountains – if he stays close enough to the leader, he can overtake him in the final 52km time-trial. One year ago, Schleck finished the 40.5km time trial 1:45 behind Contador.
Schleck tried to widen the gap while climbing the Col de la Madeleine, but Contador had no trouble keeping up. Instead, the two opponents worked toward the same goal of maintaining the lead on the other general classification riders and closing the gap to the stage leaders.
"The difference from this year to last year is that I could never drop Contador, but he can't drop me either," said Schleck. "The difference now is that I'm 41 seconds ahead of him and if he wants to win this he has to attack me."
If Contador was ever clearly outdoing Schleck, it was during the high-speed descent from the final climb. Schleck was noticeably nervous, though he had done the descent in training while the road was wet. He admitted to his opponent that he would rather lose time than risk descending in an ambulance.
Schleck, riding for Team Saxo Bank, expressed regret that Evans was out of the running, stating that having Evans in the yellow jersey would relieve the pressure on his own team, who are now expected to control the race. That is not to say that he is unhappy to be in the lead.
“There's Contador and me, the third is already at two minutes fifty,” said Schleck. “Behind that the gaps are running up to nine minutes, ten or fifteen minutes. For the upcoming stages it's a bit easier for the team to control the race than how it was during the first week; it won't be easy of course."
Schleck, the overall leader, has won the white jersey twice and has felt the weight of expectation this year. He again took the white jersey on the first day in the Alps and swapped it for the yellow only two days later. Schleck is expecting the former favourites to be going on the attack in the coming stages.
"It was Alberto and I who decided the race today. The others can attack too, but they don't. If I were in their position and finished today on five, six, eight, nine minutes, I would go tomorrow and go all in and somehow try to turn this game around."
Will the one on one between Contador and Schleck continue as the Tour progresses? We'll just have to wait and see what happens in the Pyrénées.
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