Portugal’s Alberto Rui Costa hung on during a tense finish to claim his maiden Tour de France victory on the eighth stage held over 189km from Aiguirande to Super-Besse on Saturday.
Norway’s Thor Hushovd upset predictions to retain the race lead on the first day of climbing in the Massif Central as an expected skirmish between the real yellow jersey favorites failed to materialize.
Hushovd, who took the lead after the second stage when Garmin-Cervelo won the team time trial in Les Essarts, was expected to lose it on the first of two consecutive hilly stages, but the reigning world champion kept pace with the climbers and punchers, who had threatened to steal Rui Costa’s thunder in a wet finish to the stage.
Photo: Reuters
After waiting several minutes for confirmation, Hushovd was finally happy to have retained his one second overall lead on Australia’s Cadel Evans of BMC.
“I’ve been happy with my Tour de France so far ... so if I’d lost the jersey, it wouldn’t have been a big problem,” the Norwegian said. “Of course, when I heard my name, I was happy.”
Having been part of a nine-man breakaway that held a lead of 5 minutes, 30 seconds with 106km to race, Rui Costa did well to stay up front when it split early on the category two climb to Croix Robert.
Photo: Reuters
Biding his time as Tejay Van Garderen of the US and France’s Christophe Riblon launched a series of attacks and counterattacks, the Portuguese finally struck out with 5km to race to finally go it alone.
“It was a very hard stage, but I’m really happy to have taken this win,” said Rui Costa, who had feared being caught by Alexandre Vinokourov as the Kazakh continued his bid for the win and the yellow jersey. “When I saw the gap to Vinokourov in the final kilometer, I thought it would be difficult for me, but I paced myself well.”
The chasing peloton were not far behind, with yellow jersey favorites Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck and Evans testing each other with short bursts on the final 1.5km climb to Super-Besse.
The peloton soon swallowed up Vinokourov and as the favorites kept a close eye on each other’s moves, stage one winner Philippe Gilbert slipped into the big chain ring to launch a telling attack.
In the end the Belgian champion came over the finish 12 seconds in arrears.
“I needed another couple of hundred meters, but Rui Costa would have won anyway,” Gilbert said.
Three seconds later, Evans led a peloton containing Schleck and reigning champion Contador over the finish.
Despite BMC working hard earlier in the day to close the gap to an early nine-man breakaway, Evans claimed that not having the yellow jersey was not a problem.
“I didn’t get the jersey, but for us it’s not a problem right now. As I keep saying, there’s a long way to go to Paris,” said Evans, a two-time runner-up, in 2007 and 2008.
Contador, who is still 1 minute, 41 seconds behind Evans and 1 minute, 30 seconds behind Schleck, said the first skirmishes on the climbs are not likely until the first of three consecutive stages in the Pyrenees next week.
“I felt really good going up the climb, I managed to follow Gilbert, but what counts most for me is to know I’ve got good legs,” said the three-time champion and recent Giro d’Italia winner. “If there is any battle to come, I don’t think it will start until the Pyrenees.”
In the final kilometer to the finish Contador tried to ride away several times, prompting Andy Schleck to counter.
The Leopard-Trek climber, who lost the race to Contador by only 39 seconds last year, is not giving the Spaniard an inch so far.
“We knew Contador was going to try and attack, so I was on his wheel straight away,” the Luxemburger said. “We’ll get to the Pyrenees soon. After Luz-Ardiden [on stage 12] and the Plateau de Beille [stage 14], we’ll have something to say.”
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