2011 Tour de France Stage 16: Contador and Evans Dominate While Schlecks Crack

After a relaxing rest day, it’s time for the peloton to begin the journey back to Paris. Standing between them and their destination, however, is the torture track through the Alps.

A number of riders chose not to get on their bikes on the rest day, which is highly unusual, most notably Tommy Voeckler, who felt that a day’s recovery was essential for him to finish the Tour on a high.

Stage 16 was a quiet stage for the most part, but then the whole race was turned upside down on the ascent of the Col de Manse.

On a comparatively benign, category two climb, Alberto Contador caught everyone by surprise by launching an attack. Initially, he was matched by the top six riders, but then something odd happened.

One by one, the contenders started to drop away. Frank and Andy Schleck cracked, as did Thomas Voeckler and Ivan Basso.

Only Contador, Cadel Evans and Sammy Sanchez survived to start the descent 30 seconds ahead of the peloton. The wet roads were treacherous, making a tricky technical decent even more of a challenge.

Evans, a former mountain bike world cup rider, is a very comfortable descender and Contador and Sanchez slipped back, unable to match the Aussie in the downhill speed department.

This was a watershed moment for Cadel Evans.

Evans is often lambasted for not attacking or being able to dominate a stage, and, while this wasn’t a stage win for him, he did dominate the riders who mattered.

He beat home every other rider in the top ten, pulling three seconds on Contador, 21 seconds on Frank Schleck and Voeckler and over a minute on Andy Schleck.

Elsewhere on the stage, Thor Hushovd secured his second stage win of the Tour, again being involved in a successful breakaway, showing that there’s life in the old dog yet.

But the news is the tremor that rattled through the top of the leader list.

There are troubling signs for the Schlecks and Basso. To have been dropped on a category two climb would have come as a big surprise. Maybe it was a hangover from the rest day, but it will have shattered their confidence, particularly when the riders face two horrendous days climbing on Thursday and Friday.

Everyone expected that this race would be won in the Alps, however, few would have expected that it would have started this soon.

Tomorrow will be fascinating, and it’s hard to imagine that Contador and Evans won’t want to repeat the dose tomorrow as the course gets a few more and bigger bumps on it.

Whether it will work remains to be seen, but Le Tour is a race where mercy is not shown and vulnerabilities are deliberately targeted.

Contador is back and is now in a position to start leap-frogging the riders around him. Voeckler has been telling anyone who will listen that he cannot win the Tour, and Evans is finally realizing some of the promise that he has shown since 2008.

The Tour just got interesting…