Stage 9

The road

At the start

The battle for yellow begins

Thibaut Pinot's win in Porrentruy did nothing to the top of the standings: Bradley Wiggins leads Cadel Evans by ten seconds and Vincenzo Nibali by sixteen. Today is forty-one and a half kilometres against the clock to Besançon, rolling for the first twenty and flat after that. The specialists should take three or four seconds a kilometre out of the climbers; BMC would settle for losing under a minute.

How it was won

1. 136 km to go

   Up on Evans inside five kilometres

   BMC came into the day hoping to keep the damage under a minute. Bradley Wiggins is quicker than Cadel Evans before either of them is properly warm, and from there the Australian's afternoon is damage limitation.

2. 225 km to go

   21:05 at the first check

   Wiggins comes through in twenty-one minutes and five seconds — five up on Chris Froome, already more than a minute up on Evans. Fabian Cancellara's mark, set hours earlier, has been obliterated by both of them.

3. 316 km to go

   Nibali limits it

   Vincenzo Nibali started the day third overall and rides the whole thing as an exercise in not losing the Tour. It works, in the sense that anything can be said to work against two riders going this fast.

4. 410 km to go

   Nineteen more seconds

   Between the first check and the second, Evans concedes only nineteen seconds. For about ten kilometres it looks as though he has found the floor.

5. 5At the line

   51:24, and a Tour taking shape

   Wiggins stops the clock at fifty-one minutes twenty-four, Froome second at thirty-five seconds, Evans sixth at 1:43 — exactly the gap between the two of them at the Dauphiné a month ago. Nibali is 2:07 down and fourth. Sky now hold first and third, and the yellow jersey is not going anywhere.

The result