Tour de France Stage 16: Schleck Keeps Yellow, Vande Velde Fades, Alpe d’Huez Lurks

The Tour de France continued Tuesday with another grueling mountain stage from Cuneo to Jausiers. Stage 16 would take the peloton over the highest mountain pass in the Tour, and CSC’s Frank Schleck and his powerful CSC team were hoping to be able to further distance the Luxembourgian from his rivals. Cadel Evans and Denis Menchov, who both lost time to Schleck in some of the earlier mountain stages, had to make sure that they stayed in contact with Schleck while conserving their energy for tomorrow’s massive climb up Alpe d’Huez, one of the most famous climbs in the history of the Tour.
Cyril Dessel, the Frenchman of the AG2R team took top honors on the day, as he managed to escape from the top contenders along with a handful of other non-GC threats. He beat fellow Frenchman Sandy Casar to the line, taking a huge victory for himself and his French sponsored team. Dessel continued France’s streak of success in this year’s Tour, as he added another stage win for the host country.

Stage 16 ended with a twisting, technical descent into the town of Jausiers, and some of the overall contenders were unable to stay with the yellow jersey group. Rabobank’s Denis Menchov conceded 35 seconds to the yellow jersey on the difficult descent, while Garmin-Chipotle’s Christian Vande Velde faded in the high mountain passes and lost 2:36 in the battle for the overall lead.

Vende Velde has ridden extremely well thus far in the Tour, and it looked as though the American would be able to threaten for a spot on the final podium before he faltered on stage 16. He suffered a crash during the stage, and in losing over two minutes now sits 3:15 off the pace. All is not lost however, as a good day tomorrow on Alpe d’Huez could catapult him back into the overall picture. He’ll have to hope to recover over night and regroup ahead of tomorrow’s decisive stage.

Tomorrow’s stage to Alpe d’Huez will be drama-packed, as there are five riders very close to each other in the classification. Schleck will be put under pressure from all of the GC hopefuls. Look for pure climber Bernard Kohl to ride at the front and hunt for the win, as well as Euskaltel-Euskadi’s Sammi Sanchez. Meanwhile, Schleck’s teammate Carlos Sastre is an excellent climber, and may be able to escape as Evans and Menchov mark Schleck. One sure thing is that CSC will be a handful tomorrow for all the contenders with Schleck and Sastre both toward the top of the classification.