Mountain Time Trial Thrills

Well, time trials are dull, right. And to be honest this one wasn’t that exciting until the end. It was a mountain stage and that mean a lot of debate over bike choice. Although not quite as much fuss as in this video:

So there you go. Not sure what that proves, except that a racing bike is quicker than a bunch of bikes that are in no way designed to race. Well done Guardian.

Anyway, back to the racing. It really came down to the impact of torrential rain and then a three-way battle between the big names of climbing as first Valverde, Rodriguez, then Contador set fastest times on the course with some edge of the road riding . Froome was last off and looked to be around 20 seconds down on Contador for the first two time checks, then a planned change to a TT bike allowed him to storm through and gain time even as a rain shower tried to dampen his power.

The final result gave him another stage win and added to his lead by a significant nine seconds. It will be a real kick in the teeth for Contador who seems to be going all out to try and claw back time that he’s lost over the first two weeks. It’s looking like a losing battle if he has any idea of catching Froome. The Sky rider goes into the race’s queen’s stage with a double climb of Alpe d’Huez holding a lead of over 4 and a half minutes.

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