Stage 2

The road

At the start

Liège roads, and the Col du Rosier

Cancellara keeps the jersey after a finish nobody controlled: ten seconds on Tony Martin, twenty on Millar, twenty-seven on Contador, with Petacchi in green. Today borrows its roads from Liège-Bastogne-Liège, flat at first and then a string of côtes through the Ardennes, the six-kilometre Col du Rosier taken from the side nobody uses and twelve kilometres out. The puncheurs have waited a week for this.

How it was won

1. 125 km to go

   Chavanel alone on the Stockeu

   The Stockeu is where a pent-up peloton finally pounces, and only Sylvain Chavanel and a labouring Jurgen Roelandts offer any resistance to it. Chavanel goes over the top still in front.

2. 221 km to go

   Oil, rain and half the peloton

   The descent off the Stockeu is wet, and a motorbike has laid oil down the middle of it. Something close to half the field goes down on it. Armstrong and Contador both hit the tarmac; Andy Schleck falls twice inside two hundred metres and gets up both times, and the road behind is strewn with bicycles and men.

3. 315 km to go

   The race decides not to race

   At Coo what is left of the bunch comes back together and simply stops racing, riding to Spa as one group in protest at a course it thinks unsafe.

4. 43 km to go

   Chavanel over the Rosier

   The Frenchman crosses the last climb of the day with a lead nearing three minutes and less than four kilometres to ride.

5. 5At the line

   Chavanel takes the stage and yellow

   Chavanel wins in Spa by 3:56 and pulls on the maillot jaune, exorcising a bad memory from these same roads. Behind him the peloton crosses the line en masse with no sprint contested and no points awarded.

The result