Stage 15

The road

At the start

Port de Balès, a hundred years on

Ax-3 Domaines separated nobody and nothing has changed: Schleck leads Contador by 31 seconds, Samuel Sánchez third at 2:31. Today is a hundred years since the Tour first went into the high Pyrenees, and it crosses the Portet d'Aspet and the Col des Ares that it climbed in 1910. Then comes the Port de Balès, a pass opened for this race in 2007, with ramps at eleven per cent and a very fast descent into Luchon.

How it was won

1. 186 km to go

   A hundred kilometres to get away

   Attack after attack fails until, with nearly a hundred of the day's 187 kilometres gone, ten riders finally go clear — Voeckler and Turgot both in it for Bbox Bouygues Telecom.

2. 251 km to go

   Ten minutes at the sprint

   In the shadow of the Port de Balès the escape takes the second intermediate sprint 9:54 clear, and pushes it past ten minutes three kilometres later. The stage is gone.

3. 332 km to go

   O'Grady and Voigt light the Balès

   Saxo Bank put their two hardest men on the front and the lead falls to 7:16 in a few kilometres. Behind them the peloton comes apart in layers, leaving a Schleck-Contador filling and very little else.

4. 425 km to go

   Schleck attacks

   Chris Anker Sørensen empties himself and swings off, and the yellow jersey goes immediately. Contador, Samuel Sánchez, Menchov and Van den Broeck go with him: the top five on general classification, alone on the Port de Balès.

5. 524 km to go

   The chain comes off

   Two kilometres from the summit Schleck stands on the pedals to attack again and the chain jumps off the rings. He wrestles at it, stops, gets off the bike. Ahead of him Contador, Vinokourov, Sánchez and Menchov keep riding, and the Tour de France goes up the road without him.

6. 622 km to go

   Thirteen seconds at the top

   Schleck crests the Balès with Van den Broeck thirteen seconds down and a long descent to Luchon in which to fix it. On the way down it becomes twenty-two.

7. 7At the line

   Voeckler wins, and the jersey changes hands

   Thomas Voeckler has ninety seconds to celebrate alone in Bagnères-de-Luchon. Down the mountain the argument arrives in pieces: Schleck loses 39 seconds, and the maillot jaune, and the rest of the Tour will be about whether Contador should have waited.

The result