Rui Costa breaks duck in tense finish
Hushovd keeps yellow jersey
Portuguese 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 yesterday.
Norwegian 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 favourites failed to spark.
Hushovd, who took the lead last Sunday when Garmin-Cervelo won the team time trial in Les Essarts, was expected to lose it on the first of two consecutive hilly stages.
However, 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.
After waiting several minutes for confirmation, Hushovd was finally happy to have retained his 01sec overall lead on Australian 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, really,” said the Norwegian rider.
“Of course, when I heard my name I was happy.”
Having been part of a nine-man breakaway that held a lead of 5min 30sec with 106km to race, Rui Costa did well to stay up front when it split early on the climb to the category two Croix Robert climb.
Biding his time as American Tejay Van Garderen and Frenchman Christophe Riblon launched a series of attacks and counter-attacks, the Portuguese finally struck out with 5 kms 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.
The chasing peloton were not far behind, with yellow jersey favourites Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck and Evans testing each other with short bursts on the final 1.5-kilometre climb to Super-Besse.
Contador is still 1:41 behind Evans and 1:30 behind Schleck.