American Floyd Landis underlined his yellow jersey credentials with a resounding performance in the Tour de France’s 11th stage, which gave him the yellow jersey on Thursday.
Russian Denis Menchov of the Rabobank team took the victory after 206,5km of racing between Tarbes and Pla de Beret, of which almost 62km was climbing into the high mountains.
Menchov, last year’s Tour of Spain winner, won a three-man sprint at the summit finish ahead of American Levi Leipheimer of Gerolsteiner and Phonak team leader Landis.
Landis took the race lead from Frenchman Cyril Dessel, who lost the race lead by a matter of seconds.
The Frenchman had been dropped earlier in the day, but produced an impressive effort to fight back on the last climb of the day.
Landis, a former member of Lance Armstrong’s old team US Postal team, now leads Dessel by eight seconds in the race’s general classification ahead of Friday’s 12th stage, which rides out of the mountains.
In third place overall is Menchov, whose acceleration in the final 200m of a thrilling finish atop the misty summit of the Puerto de Beret climb gave him his first Tour stage win.
Menchov is 1:01 off the pace of Landis, while Australian Cadel Evans is fourth at 1:17 and Spaniard Carlos Sastre is fifth at 1:52.
The toughest of two stages in the Pyrenees, the stage took its toll on a whole bunch of race favourites.
T-Mobile, who had dominated throughout the day, fell off the pace on the final climb, leaving their de facto team leader Andreas Kloden 2:29 off Landis’s pace.
His teammate Michael Rogers is at 3:22.
American George Hincapie, of the Discovery Channel team, also fell out of contention. — AFP
