Stage 9

The road

At the start

Eight climbs to Saint-Flour

Rui Costa held off the favourites at Super-Besse while they marked each other under the kilometre banner; Robert Gesink kept white but lost a minute. Hushovd is still in yellow, a second up on Cadel Evans, four on Fränk Schleck. Today is the hardest day of the first week and the last before the rest day: eight climbs across the Cantal, over the Puy Mary and Prat de Bouc, to an uphill finish in Saint-Flour.

How it was won

1. 1168 km to go

   Voeckler over the Côte de Massiac

   An hour of attacks produces nothing until the first climb, where Voeckler leads over from Hoogerland and the two press on. Flecha, Casar, Luis León Sánchez and Terpstra make it six.

2. 2108 km to go

   The descent of the Pas de Peyrol

   Tipping over the Puy Mary the bunch comes apart — riders on the road, riders in the ditch, riders in the woods on the right. Jurgen Van den Broeck and Fredrik Willems break collarbones, Vinokourov breaks an elbow and a femur, Dave Zabriskie breaks a wrist. Four abandons out of one descent, and the Tour has lost a podium contender and the man who was second on the Mûr.

3. 353 km to go

   Voeckler buys the mountains

   A truce behind lets the break out to nearly eight minutes, and Voeckler works out that the yellow jersey is genuinely within reach. So he trades: Hoogerland can have every summit unchallenged in return for cooperation in between them. Over Prat de Bouc the Dutchman has the polka dots sewn up.

4. 436 km to go

   The television car

   A France Télévisions car tries to come past the five leaders down the grass verge, swerves back into the road to miss a tree, and sends Flecha cartwheeling along the tarmac. Flecha clips Hoogerland, who is thrown somersaulting into a barbed-wire fence on the far side. Both riders get back up. Both of them go on.

5. 51 km to go

   The last thirteen hundred metres

   The road tilts up into Saint-Flour and Casar and Sánchez ride side by side, so intent on each other that neither watches the third man. Voeckler, who has done the lion's share of the work all afternoon, quietly slides in behind them.

6. 6At the line

   Sánchez wins, Voeckler takes yellow

   Voeckler jumps first, three hundred metres out, and Luis León Sánchez simply has more — a third Tour stage for the Spaniard. The Frenchman gets the maillot jaune instead, seven years after the last one. "The last time I wore it, it was said they let me take it," he says. "This time I went out looking for it. I sacrificed the stage to win it."

The result