2011 Tour de France – Stage 21 Wrap-up

Stage 21 from Creteil to Paris marked the end of the Tour de France. Going in to the stage, every major classification – general, young rider, team and mountain – was finalized, save the points classification. HTC-Highroad’s Mark Cavendish entered the stage 15 points ahead of Movistar’s JJ Rojas, which meant that while Cadel Evans was sipping champagne, Cavendish and crew would need to control the peloton heading in to both the intermediate and final sprints. HTC was able to avoid excess work by allowing a break of six to go up the road, eating up the major points available...Continue Reading

2011 Tour de France – Stage 20 Wrap-up

Going into today’s Stage 20, the names Fignon and Lemond were on everyone’s mind, as people pondered whether Leopard-Trek’s Andy Schleck would fall, Fignon style, to BMC’s Cadel Evans by the scantest of margins in this final individual time trial. As predicted, Schleck did lose the yellow jersey to Evans, but not by the handful of seconds many expected. Rather, Evans recorded the time trial of his life, finishing second to TT wunderkind Tony Martin of HTC-HighRoad by a mere 7 seconds. While Schleck performed as well as we’ve come to expect–finishing 2:38 behind Martin–it was not enough to defeat...Continue Reading

2011 Tour de France – Stage 19 Wrap-Up

Today’s 108km stage 19 was billed as a mountain sprint. True to form, the first 14km saw some furious racing before a big breakaway went away. They didn’t last long, though, as Alberto Contador lit up the Telegraphe climb to set off an exciting day of racing. The speed and difficulty of the stage suggested a shake-up of the Green Jersey competition, and as predicted, the autobus finished outside of the time cut and thus was docked Sprint Points. Thus, Movistar’s JJ Rojas is within striking distance of the Points Competition Victory on the Champs Elysess. However, today was a...Continue Reading

2011 Tour de France – Stage 18 Wrap-Up

Stage 18, the Queen Stage of this year’s Tour de France, was a 6+-hour slugfest over 3 Hors Categorie climbs in the Alps–the Agnel, the Izoard, and finally, the monstrous Galibier.

1. Andy Schleck’s attacked on the Izoard with about 60km to go, gaining 2 minutes over the yellow jersey group by the top of the climb and extending it to 4:25 on the descent and the early slopes of the Galibier. Schleck’s move seemed to catch everyone off guard, as there was little to no effort to join or haul back the man who many seemed to have written off...Continue Reading

2011 Tour de France – Stage 17 Wrap-up

Pavé would like to thank Handspun, Clément, and Laekhouse for supporting our coverage of the 2011 Tour de France.

Here’s what we noticed:

1. Like yesterday, the day’s big break was slow to form as the peloton proved finicky in who it would and would not allow to be represented. It took a bit less than two fast hours of racing before 14 men were given the leash they needed to escape. Looking strong were Rabobank and Vacansoleil, with two riders each, as well as Sky’s Edvald Boasson Hagen, Quick-Step’s Sylvain Chavanel, and FDJ’s Sandy Casar. With such a large group, it was...Continue Reading