Round-up of 2011 Tour de France from Stage 1 to Stage 15: Part 2
Article continued from Round-up of 2011 Tour de France from Stage 1 to Stage 15: Part 1
Stage 2
Second stage of the Tour was Team Time Trial stage with a distance of 23 kilometres in Les Essarts and it happened to be a nail-biter as Garmin Cervelo answered the entire criticism faced by the American cyclists in this year's Tour de France with only few
seconds to go in the stage.
Hushovd won the yellow jersey by beating Cadel Evans with a very tight finish as US Team came up with one of their best performances and winning by four seconds.
Alberto Contador lost valuable time against Saxo Bank Sungard as he finished 28seconds behind and put him under enormous pressure at the second stage.
Team Garvin-Cervelo finished first with BMC racing Team at second and Sky Procycling at third position at the end of stage 2. Team Leopard-Trek, HTC-Highroad and Team RadioShack came at fourth, fifth and sixth positions, respectively.
Thor Hushovd of Team Garmin Cervelo was the race leader in general classification of stage 2 with David Millar at number two and Cadel Evans at the third position. Philippe Gilbert topped the points table with 45 points followed by Cadel Evans with 35 and
Thor Hushovd with 30 points.
Philippe Gilbert of Omega Pharma-Lotto won the mountain classification of stage 2. Geraint Thomas and Edvald Boasson Hagen of Sky Procycling won the first and second positions as the best young rider classification for stage 2, while Tejay Van Garderen and
Matthew Harley Goss of HTC Highroad were at third and fourth positions, respectively.
Stage 3
Tyler Farrar was the debutant in this Tour and the winner of Stage 3 and could not have scored a better win as he gave USA the timeliest win on the Independence Day. Stage 3 stretched to 198 kilometres from Olonne-Sur-Mer to Redon.
As an honour to Wouter Weylandt, who died during the crash on the third stage of May’s Giro D’ Italia, Ferrar made a “W” sign with both his hands as a tribute to his close friend as he said, “This has been a horrible last two months with everything that
happened in Giro, I’ve had a lot of ups and downs but in the end I wanted to come back and do something special and this is certainly the biggest stage that you can do that. I’ve trained hard and I could feel I was getting stronger over the last few weeks.
It’s a little bit unbelievable that it could happen. Everything just came together.”
Hushovd was first followed by team-mate, Julian Dean, and Ferrar tucked in with only three other riders in the bunch. Ferrar went for the first position with 150 metres left in the race and was never bothered by any cyclist after that.
Feillu finished second and was the only cyclist who was close to Ferrar while Rojas grabbed third and Sébastien Hinault came fourth. Tour’s favourite, Mark Cavendish, was well behind as he finished fifth.
Rojas performance earned him a green jersey, while Hushovd’s performance was good enough to carry on to the next stage with the yellow jersey.
At the end of stage 3, Tyler Ferrar leads the points table with 45 points along with Romain Feillu at the second spot with 35 points and Jose Joaquin Rojas at the third position with 30 points. Sébastien Hinault had a total of 26 points and Mark Cavendish
with 22 points.
Denis Galimzyanov, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Geraint Thomas, Rob Ruijgh and Roman Kreuziger topped the list of young riders for stage. The 25-year-old French cyclist, Mickaël Delage, won the most aggressive cyclist classification at the end of stage 3.
Top three teams at the end of stage 3 in general classification were Team Garmin-Carvelo, BMC Racing Team and Team Leopard Trek. Thor Hushovd, David Millar and Cadel Evans were the top three cyclists at the end of stage 3 in general classification respectively,
with the Schleck brothers at seventh and eight positions. Geraint Thomas tops the list of young rider classification at the end of stage 3.
Article continued from Round-up of 2011 Tour de France from Stage 1 to Stage 15: Part 3
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