Stage 11

The road

At the start

Out of the mountains, into the Drôme

Andy Schleck holds 41 seconds on Contador and 2:45 on Samuel Sánchez, and the Alps are behind them. Today links two towns that have never hosted the Tour, 180 kilometres across the Drôme with the third-category Col de Cabre in the middle of it. It is filed as a flat stage and is nothing of the kind, but the sprinters have had four days in the mountains and want the race back.

How it was won

1. 125 km to go

   A late catch

   The three leaders are held at a minute for forty kilometres and only reeled in after the 25-kilometre banner. It leaves plenty of road for the opportunists, which is exactly what the sprinters' teams did not want.

2. 217 km to go

   Crosswinds in the last seventeen

   The run into Bourg-lès-Valence is exposed and the wind is across it. Saxo Bank go to the front for Schleck and RadioShack for Leipheimer, and their nerves end up doing the sprinters' work for them.

3. 3At the line

   Thirteen for Cavendish, and Renshaw is sent home

   Eisel holds the train together through Lampre's spoiling and Cavendish goes from 400 metres out, beating Petacchi, Farrar and Rojas for a thirteenth Tour stage — one more than Zabel. Hours later the commissaires expel Mark Renshaw for head-butting Julian Dean, and the best lead-out man in the race is off the Tour.

The result