He's known for being a joker among a cosmopolitan team that came to the Tour de France proclaiming their "clean" approach to racing would help smooth their way to success. But when it gets serious in the hectic bunch sprints, curly-haired Briton Mark Cavendish doesn't have time for practical jokes. Cavendish reinforced his status as arguably the fastest sprinter in the world on Friday when he claimed his fourth stage win of this year's edition.
The first radio communication, not one minute after we rolled through K0 was from Millar: “We’ve got a CBF’d Friday boys, it’s bloody wonderful!” The neutral was stressful with a strong crosswind threatening to make the race a crazy one, but I didn’t even get above 200 watts before the field had shut down the road and all you could here were screams, yells and whistles of “pisseee, piano, grupetto.” The first attack was off, and we CREPT for a lovely 30k through the countryside of southern France, truly enjoying a lazy start to the day.
Canadians Andrew Pinfold and Gina Grain did their countrymen proud at the BC Cancer Foundation’s Tour de Gastown in Vancouver, this week, the sixth stop in the 2008 USA CRITS Series. Pinfold, an Ontario native, is a former elite Canadian Criterium Champion, while Grain was the 2007 Canadian National Road Race Champion. Both victories took place in front of tens of thousands of cycling fans, who lined the barriers three to four rows deep on a perfect summer day.
Retail: 5.75 euro (about $9) Web site: www.tacx.com The Tacx Tool Tube lets riders carry tools and spare tubes in their water bottle cages. The screw-top bottle has room for a tube, tire levers, a multi-tool and a CO2 inflator. The lid is watertight and tools are not included.
Italian racer Riccardo Riccò, kicked off the Tour de France for doping, has been remanded in custody for "using a poisonous substance," the public prosecutor at Foix said on Friday. Prosecutor Antoine Leroy said Riccò had been remanded for "using a substance classed poisonous under the terms of the public health code." "Riccò is placed under arrest and is banned from contacting other members of the team,” he added. Leroy said Riccò had told the examining magistrate what he had earlier told police - namely, that he is innocent.
to VeloNews.com's Live Coverage of the 13th stage of the 95th edition of the Tour de France, a 182-kilometer race from Narbonne to Nimes.
Team Columbia's Mark Cavendish won his fourth stage of this year's Tour de France, sprinting into Nimes ahead of Silence Lotto's Robbie McEwen. McEwen took a brief respite from protecting team leader Cadel Evans' overall lead to contest the sprint, but was little match for Cavendish's finishing kick. Evans, meanwhile, finished with the leaders to preserve his one-second overall lead over CSC's Frank Schleck. Cavendish said his velodrome-honed kick saved the day.
Disgraced Italian cycling star Ivan Basso deserves a second chance of resurrecting his career, the Italian's future manager at the Liquigas team said Friday. Basso is nearing the end of a ban handed down after he admitted, without having tested positive for banned substances, to being involved in the Spanish doping affair 'Operation Puerto'. The Italian, a former rival of Lance Armstrong on the Tour de France while racing for the Danish CSC team, is due to return to racing at the end of the summer.
Saunier Duval has sacked Riccardo Riccò and Leonardo Piepoli for infringing the Spanish team’s code of ethics, it was announced on Friday. Riccò was dismissed following his positive doping control for EPO (erythropoietin) at the Tour de France. Piepoli also was sacked, though he had not tested positive; team manager Mauro Gianetti said he, too, had infringed the team's code of ethics. The entire Saunier Duval team voluntarily left the Tour before Thursday's 12th stage.
“I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”— Captain Renault in “Casablanca,” shortly before a coupier presents him with his winnings.
While the news media were massed around the pale yellow Saunier Duval team bus in Lavelanet Thursday just as stage 12 was setting out farther down the street, Philippe Brunel stood back from the crowd watching the spectacle. I felt sorry for him. As an award-winning French sportswriter — he’s the principal cycling reporter for L’Équipe, the major French sports newspaper — Brunel looked to be in a quandary.
Riccardo Riccò's departure from the Tour de France produced a stack of emails and letters to the editor. Here is a sampling: Zero Tolerance Editor, This little gem was in your one of your Ricardo "Vegetable" Ricco articles: "While teams like CSC, Columbia, Garmin-Chipotle and Astana have financed independent blood-monitoring programs, some question whether that “new cycling” will ever occur until doping in sport is criminalized internationally, as it is in France, and the risks outweigh the incentives."
Riccardo Riccò always wanted to be like his hero, Marco Pantani. The self-styled "Cobra" got his wish Thursday and made a Pantani-esque implosion as two French gendarmes hauled him away after he failed a doping control from stage four at the Tour de France. In a scene that was an eerie replay of Pantani’s exclusion from the 1999 Giro d’Italia for testing for high hematocrit levels, Riccò made his own forced exit Thursday that could have equally grim consequences.
Australia's Cadel Evans has called on cycling's detractors to take a long hard look at what is being done in the sport to clean up its image. For the second consecutive day the Tour de France was rocked by controversy following the news that Italian climber Riccardo Ricco had become the third rider to test positive for the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin). Ricco won two climbing stages last week, becoming one of the most followed riders in the Pyrenees where he left many established climbers — including Evans — in his wake with his lightning fast accelerations.
Tour de France organizers ASO may be regretting the choice of music played after the peloton rolled out of Lavelanet at the start of stage 12 Thursday. Only 45 minutes after the news of Ricardo Riccò’s positive test for red-blood cell booster CERA rocked the start village, the public address system blared Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” — fitting perhaps as the swansong for a defiant young rider who rocketed into the spotlight while simultaneously thumbing his nose at the sport’s establishment.
French anti-doping authorities and Saunier Duval team officials confirmed Thursday that Italian climbing sensation Ricardo Riccò (Saunier Duval) has tested positive for a new form of the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO). Informed of the positive just an hour before the start of Thursday’s 12th stage of the Tour de France, Riccò was taken by gendarmes to a local police station for questioning. Within minutes of Riccò’s departure, his entire team voluntarily withdrew from the Tour.
Mark Cavendish (Team Columbia) won the 12th stage of the 95th edition of the Tour de France — his third stage of this year’s race — as Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) retained the leader’s yellow jersey.[nid:80277] "I’m a bit tired now but I was still fastest across the line," said a weary Cavendish with a chuckle. "I’m glad I could do that for my teammates. It’s just so nice to get another one." Evans also praised his team for its efforts on a hot, windy stage.
With the Pyrénées in the rearview mirror, the riders in the 95th Tour de France can now look forward to three less nervous stages across the South of France, where the main obstacle to overcome will be the heat. Temperatures will be in the upper-80s by the end of Thursday’s stage 12 in Narbonne, and somewhat warmer the following two days.
CSC’s Kurt Asle Arvesen emerged atop a successful 12-man break to take the 11th stage of the Tour de France Wednesday, outsprinting a group of four riders that gapped the group near the end of the 167.5km race from Lannemesan to Foix. Following a rest day and a big GC battle on the slopes of Hautacam on Monday, the moderate stage in the foothills of the Pyrenees offered a good opportunity for a break to form and Arvesen managed to join the decisive move that formed at 20km into the stage.
After a quality day of rest in Pau, complete with Chipotle burritos, it was straight back into racing today from the second the gun went off. With big time gaps now in place there are a lot of guys no longer a threat on GC and the chances of breakaways making it to the finish are far higher than in the first week. Garmin's strategy has now shifted a bit, moving from being aggressive wild cards to now sitting in the position of protecting an overall contender.
World cycling chief Pat McQuaid has called on the Spanish authorities to increase their efforts in the fight against doping after the latest doping affair at the Tour de France. Moises Duenas of the Barloworld team became the second Spaniard to leave the race under a cloud Wednesday after being told he had tested positive for the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO). Fellow Spaniard Manuel Beltran, of Liquigas, was suspended by his team last week after he also tested positive for EPO.
Don’t Touch His Shoulder: Cadel Evans might be a charming bloke away from the TV cameras, but it’s quickly becoming obvious that he doesn’t particularly enjoy the media duties that come along with the maillot jaune. The Australian is finding time for the media. He patiently answered nearly an hour’s worth of questions on a rest-day press conference Tuesday and worked the line in post-stage comments from TV and radio behind the podium. It seems, however, that Evans is losing his patience with the growing horde.
Christian Vande Velde stepped out of the Garmin-Chipotle team bus Wednesday morning in Lannemazen to find a good-sized media scrum waiting to speak with him. The fact that a dozen scribes and a few TV camera crews wanted to learn more about the American sitting third place overall revealed just how far Vande Velde’s stock has risen midway through the 2008 Tour de France. “I surprised myself a little bit on Hautacam the other day,” Vande Velde said. “But it’s everything I’ve worked for, so every day it’s becoming less and less of a surprise.”
Barloworld’s Moises Duenas has been pulled from the Tour de France after a urine sample provided after stage 4 showed signs of the blood booster erythropoietin. Police later found banned substances in Duenas' hotel room, according to a statement on the Barloworld Web site. The Spaniard was in 19th place in the overall standings, 6:43 behind overall leader Cadel Evans, following Monday’s stage to Hautacam. The team was informed of the positive test by the French Anti-Doping Agency (AFLD) on Wednesday morning and Duenas was immediately suspended from the team.
If Mavic sold the pro-only version of the R-SYS, which popped up at this year’s Tour, it would have been a winner from the beginning.
There’s a “down home” quality to Cadel Evans that was emphasized by his rest-day get-together with the media on Tuesday. It was certainly not a rest-day event in the style of a Lance Armstrong, whose Tour de France press conferences were all business, much in the style of Armstrong himself.
Suggested retail: Panache Eleven Bib Short - $240; Panache Eleven Jersey - $120; Panache Arm Screens - $45. Web site: panachecyclewear.com The Eleven Bib Short is a summer short from a new clothing company, Colorado-based Panache Cyclewear Co.[nid:80211]
Seventeen of the world's top cycling teams said on Tuesday they would not be seeking ProTour licenses for 2009, according to a statement released at Pau during the first rest day of the Tour de France. The UCI launched the ProTour in 2004 in a bid to revamp the cycling calendar and have the best teams riding in the best races. However, since then the series has met with resistance on several fronts.
Unpredictable. That’s just what the Tour de France wanted when it designed a wild route this year without time bonuses, shorter time trials and no prologue. Ten days into the race, Tour officials must be very happy. The first half of the 2008 Tour has delivered just the kind of sparks and wide-open racing they were hoping for. Five riders have already worn the yellow jersey. Following the first individual time trial and two mountain stages across the Pyrénées, the top 5 is separated by less than one minute, a number almost unconceivable so deep into the race.
Editor’s note:We’ve been doing Live Updates of Tour de France stages for 14 years now, and for many of those years the same cranky old character – Live Update Guy – has kept you abreast of events on the road. When the action hits a lull, the Live Update Guy – or “LUG,” as we like to call him – kills time with limerick and haiku contests, “where are you from" contests and answering readers' questions. Today's a rest day, but we thought we would wake the old LUG up to answer a few of the most common questions we get.
CSC has promised a repeat of the collective power that virtually eliminated Caisse d’Epargne’s Alejandro Valverde from contention once the Tour de France hits the Alps this weekend. But this time, it is Australian Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) and Denis Menchov (Rabobank) who will be in their sights. Evans took the race lead by a second over CSC's Frank Schleck after Monday's thrilling day of racing in the high mountains of the Pyrenees.
Australian rider Cadel Evans' tenuous grip on the yellow jersey is likely to be undone because of the "weakness" of his Silence-Lotto team, according to Spaniard Alejandro Valverde. The Caisse d’Epargne rider virtually dropped out of the running for the overall victory in the Tour de France on the 10th stage from Pau to Hautacam on Monday, when Evans took the race lead by a second from Luxembourg's Frank Schleck of Team CSC.
When Phil Anderson became the first rider from the Southern Hemisphere to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour de France back in 1981, the French called him “Le Kangourou” simply because he’s Australian. Almost three decades later, this Tour’s new maillot jaune, Cadel Evans, might well be named the “Boxing Kangaroo” after the courageous way he picked himself off the canvas Sunday and came back Monday to fend off his closest opponents and take the overall lead.
Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) seized the yellow jersey atop Hautacam on Monday as Leonardo Piepoli (Saunier Duval-Scott) won the mountainous stage 10 of the Tour de France, while Garmin-Chipotle's Christian Vande Velde solidified his third-place overall standing. "I can't believe it now and I couldn't believe it on the podium," said a tearful Evans, the first Australian to wear the yellow jersey since sprinter Robbie McEwen in 2004. "Yesterday was by far my Tour low and today it's definitely my Tour high. Only 26 hours have passed and it's been a bit of a rollercoaster."
An energy bar that tastes like food Flavors: Peanut Butter & Jelly; Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate Chip Price: $1.99 Calories: 250 Web site: www.bonkbreaker.com Jason Winn created the Bonk Breaker after growing frustrated with his options for real food energy bars for racing and training. To dial in the Peanut Butter & Jelly formula, he called in the big guns: Mom. And as any mother would approve, the Bonk Breaker bars are all made from natural ingredients. Many ingredients are organic, too.
to VeloNews.com's Live Coverage of the 10th stage of the Tour de France, a 156-kilometer race from Pau to the summit finish at Hautacam.
Christian Vande Velde had reason to smile following Monday’s summit finish up Hautacam. The Garmin-Chipotle captain remains within striking distance of the yellow jersey in third at just 38 seconds back. Vande Velde, however, believes his day could have turned out even better and quietly cursed a missed opportunity to make more of his great form. The 31-year-old Vande Velde rode impressively up the day’s hors categorie steeps to finish 10th at 2:17 in the five-man group that included new leader Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) and arch-rival Denis Menchov (Rabobank).
The paint job on Erik Zabel’s Colnago was originally used 25 years ago, but even that classic look can not hide the new form beneath it. Zabel debuted Colnago’s new EPS (Extreme Power Special) frame at this year’s and is the only rider using in the peloton.
Though not the French version he’d hoped to don this July, Levi Leipheimer (Astana) did appreciate the Oregonian yellow jersey he slipped on Sunday at the close of the Cascade Cycling Classic’s sixth and final stage, the Awbry Butte Circuit Race. Atop the podium alongside BMC riders Jeff Louder in second and South African Darren Lill in third, the two-time Tour of California winner smiled when handed the CCC trophy: “They didn’t even give me a trophy at the Dauphine!”
Riccardo Ricco (Saunier Duval-Scott) won the ninth stage of the Tour de France on Sunday in a bold solo assault, while Kim Kirchen (Team Columbia) finished safely with the bunch to retain the overall lead.
On a day when race leader Kim Kirchen of Team Columbia admitted he was suffering, and third-placed Stefan Schumacher of Gerolsteiner was dropped on the final climb, Garmin-Chipotle’s Christian Vande Velde rode as strongly as he has ever since the start of this 95th Tour de France — and he moved up to third place on GC. It’s already been a remarkable performance by the Chicago native, whose best previous Tour rides were 25th last year and 24th in 2006 when he was riding as a team player for CSC.
Not to minimize Stefan Schumacher’s surprising stage 4 time trial win, but the 2008 Tour de France saw its first truly amazing performance Sunday as Saunier Duval-Scott’s Ricardo Riccò rode away from the best riders in the world to take his second stage win in four days.
A thrilling two-up sprint, contested by 2008 Olympian Adam Craig (Giant) and Mathieu Toulouse (Maxxis), ushered in what will likely be the first of many NMBS races at Windham Mountain. After racing four laps of the newly constructed course at this first-time venue in New York’s Catskill Mountains, Toulouse took the win by a wheel over Craig. Both finished within a second of each other, stopping the clock at 1:35:10.7 and 1:35:11, respectively. Jeremiah Bishop (Trek-VW) was third.
After yesterday's stressful stage in the rain I woke up this morning feeling a bit groggy for the first time so far. Looking around at breakfast I wasn't the only one; I think there really is something about a day in the rain that wears on the body. As I walked upstairs from breakfast I got a call from a friend, quickly plural, still going strong on the town in Boulder. There was nothing better than some seriously entertaining drunken jibberish to lighten the mood and put a smile on my face — just in time to get kitted up and head down to the bus.
Moises Aldape (Team Type 1) and Kristin Armstrong (Cervelo-Lifeforce) proved victorious in their respective races in Saturday’s fifth stage of the Cascade Cycling Classic, the Pacific Power-Cascade Lakes road race, which ended in the parking lot of the Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort. After being in a break almost the entire day, Aldape outsprinted second placed Chad Beyer (unattached) and Bradley White (Successful Living) at the line.
American Taylor Phinney won a world junior championship title Saturday in the 3,000m individual pursuit in Cape Town, South Africa. In addition to collecting another world junior title to go with the world junior time trial mantle he picked up last year, the 18-year-old also received confirmation that his preparation for the Beijing Olympic Games is on track. Another American, Colleen Hayduk from Kutztown, Pennsylvania, scored a bronze medal in the scratch race in the first day of competition.
Sprinters who are capable of winning stages of the Tour de France rarely keep winning for long. They either burn themselves out (either mentally or physically) or soon lose the leg-speed that’s so essential for winning a highly charged field sprint at 40 mph. In view of the astounding finishing speed and dominant margins of victory shown by Team Columbia’s Mark Cavendish in his stage wins at Toulouse on Saturday (and in Châteauroux on Wednesday), I thought it was worth seeing where the 22-year-old Brit stacks up again great sprinters in recent Tour history.
You might call it greed or an addiction to victory. Team Columbia — simultaneously eager to protect Kim Kirchen's overall lead and set up sprinter Mark Cavendish for a stage win — controlled the peloton for most of Saturday's eighth stage of the Tour de France. The U.S.-based team kept an early break's lead to a manageable gap and then put the hammer down in the last 10k to reel it in and deliver its young British fast man to his second Tour stage victory.
WHAT MAKES CAV SO FAST?
It looks like Mark Cavendish was born to win.
Despite losing the wheel of his lead-out man Gerard Ciolek after riding cautiously through the final bend with just over one kilometer to go to avoid crashing on wet roads, Great Britain’s “Cannonball” was still able to blast across the line with apparent ease to win for the second time in a week.
At 23, Cavendish is using his raw finishing speed and tenacious personality to make up for any lack of experience he might have in what is his third grand tour start.
CSC-Saxo Bank’s national Luxembourg champion Frank Schleck dismissed statements made by race leader Kim Kirchen Friday that there was no love lost between the compatriots. Following Friday’s difficult stage, which saw the CSC team of brothers Frank and Andy Schleck set a high tempo that nearly shattered Kirchen’s Columbia team, the race leader insinuated that the tactic had, at least in part, intended to shed the first Luxembourgian maillot jaune in 50 years.
One week. That’s all it took before a doping scandal erupted on the 2008 Tour de France. Photos of Spanish veteran Manuel “Triki” Beltrán doing a perp walk as French police hauled him away in handcuffs from the Liquigas team hotel Friday evening pushed the Tour back into the type of headlines the race is trying to avoid. Perhaps it was appropriate that clouds and rain greeted riders in Figeac before the start of the eighth stage as the pall of cycling’s troubled past reared its ugly head after a week of titillating racing seemingly pushed scandals off the headlines.
French police have taken Spaniard Manuel Beltran away for questioning in the wake of the first doping scandal to emerge at this year's Tour de France. Beltran, best known for helping Lance Armstrong to the last three of his seven Tour de France wins, tested positive for the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) on the Tour's opening stage, according to top anti-doping officials on Friday.
Caisse d'Epargne's punchy climber Luis Leon Sanchez won the seventh stage of the Tour de France on Friday, attacking the lead group several times on the run-in to Aurillac, before finally establishing a solo break in the final two kilometers. Sanchez was followed in by Stefan Schumacher, who had hoped to score a stage win to soothe his wounds after losing the yellow jersey due to a crash in the final kilometer Thursday.
USA Cycling has added the final three names to its 24-member Beijing Olympic cycling squad. Roadies Amber Neben (Irvine, California) and Christine Thorburn (Sunnyvale, California) and mountain biker Mary McConneloug (Chilmark, Massachusetts) are the latest additions to the squad that will represent the United States in China next month. They join the 21 riders USA Cycling announced on July 1 (list below). The three earned discretionary selections and were nominated by a nine-person selection committee. A second Games for Thorburn[nid:79896]
The first skirmishes in the battle for the Tour de France yellow jersey left damage in their wake during the tumultuous seventh stage to here on Friday. But the biggest souvenir from the second day of climbing in the 'medium' mountain stages was the full exposure of the existing rivalry between three of Luxembourg's most talented bike riders. In one corner is Kim Kirchen, the Columbia team leader who has been wearing the yellow jersey since the end of Thursday's sixth stage.
After seven stages, the 2008 Tour de France is one-third over and starting to take shape, even with the Monday’s first high-mountain stage looming in the distance. Four of the first week’s six road stages have seen separation on the day’s final climb, with the race’s GC contenders coming to the fore to show their cards and limit their losses. And in an unusual twist, the race has seen only one field sprint, won by Columbia’s Mark Cavendish, and its first solo breakaway victory, won Friday by Caisse d’Epargne’s Luis-Leon Sanchez.
There are no easy days in this very different Tour de France. This was especially true on Friday when stage 7 was raced more like a one-day classic than a semi-mountain stage of the Tour. One man who knows a thing or two about the classics (and the Tour!), George Hincapie, had this to say about a stage where his Columbia was stretched to the limit in defending the yellow jersey of Kim Kirchen.
As long as you move a rigid object in a straight line, it does not matter how its mass is distributed throughout it; the amount of work to move it will be the same. This is not true if you drive the object by rotating it; then how the mass is distributed does play an important role in how much energy it takes to move it. In the case of a wheel, it is probably obvious that it will take more work to accelerate it if the mass is concentrated out at its edge than at its center. But how do you quantify that?
Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Chipotle) has been one of the revelations so far in the first week of the Tour de France. Through the first opening seven stages, Vande Velde has ridden with consistency and strength to slot into fourth overall at just 44 seconds out of the yellow jersey. After years in the service of others, Vande Velde is finally getting a crack at being a team leader, and he’s making the most of it. VeloNews spoke to Vande Velde ahead of Thursday’s stage to gauge his first week. Here are excerpts from the interview:
MILLAR TIME OVER David Millar officially gave up the chase for the yellow jersey after a give-all raid that ran out of air early in Thursday’s hilly course across Massif Central. Despite struggling up Super-Besse in Wednesday’s stage, the Garmin-Chipotle captain was still dreaming of the yellow jersey in one last, final shot. Milllar started the day fifth overall at 47 seconds arrears and worked into a promising five-man breakaway that also included German marauder Jens Voigt in the opening 50km.
“Phew! That’s not even one of my farts! I told you, I’ve got four farts. My Heineken fart, my broccoli fart, my rice-pudding fart and my dairy-creamer fart. And the fart I’m smellin’ right now is definitely not one of mine.”—the late, great George Carlin, from “Napalm and Silly Putty”
The agency charged with carrying out anti-doping controls at this year's Tour de France has played down a report that 10 riders are about to be issued warnings for "suspect" blood samples. A report in the French newspaper Le Monde on Friday suggested that the riders were being specifically targeted by the AFLD, France's national anti-doping agency, because of suspected doping. However a statement by the AFLD, later in the day, dismissed those claims as speculation.
Belgian-based frame builder Ridley has completed two new models in time for this year’s Tour de France with the goal of putting Silence-Lotto's top rider on the top step of the podium in Paris on July 27. Anyone can hope, of course, but Ridley has the technological chops to back it up. Aside from Team Columbia's prototype Giant, which we’ll look at in another piece, Ridley’s Dean and Noah are the big tech stories of this year’s Tour. And, unlike Columbia's new time-trial bike, both Ridley models are slated for 2009 production.
While the spectacular battle for stage 6 unfolded on the erratic climb to Super-Besse on Thursday, I was standing at the finish line next to Bob Stapleton, the owner-manager of Team Columbia. As we watched, we speculated whether his team leader Kim Kirchen could make up the 12 seconds by which he trailed Stefan Schumacher and take the yellow jersey. Right then, as Kirchen and the other race contenders were about to start their sprint for the line, Schumacher fell off his bike.
Team Type 1's Matt Wilson crossed the finish line just ahead of Garmin-Slipstream’s Tom Peterson to win Thursday’s second stage of the Cascade Cycling Classic, and also slipped on the yellow leader’s jersey. Most important to him, though, was dedicating the wins to Ben Brooks, his Aussie teammate who remains in a nearby hospital in stable condition after a serious crash in the first stage. [nid:79776]
Britain's David Millar has all but given up hope of finally ending his eight-year wait to wear the Tour de France yellow jersey again. However, the Garmin team leader said his encouraging performance on the race's first foray into the hills on Thursday can now boost his second objective of a stage win at this year's race. Millar began the first medium mountain stage of the race, a 195.5km hilly ride from Aigurande to Super-Besse in the Massif Central, in third place overall at 12 seconds behind Stefan Schumacher of Germany.