Luxembourg’s Schleck brothers Andy and Frank soaked up a late attack from yellow jersey rival Alberto Contador as the Tour de France moved a step closer to the final two mountain stages yester-day.
Europcar leader Thomas Voeckler avoided two late crashes in the hectic finale of the 17th stage, won by Edvald Boasson Hagen, of Team Sky, to keep a hold of the race leader’s yellow jersey ahead of two mountain-top finishes in the Alps.
But during a dramatic finale on the tricky 8km descent to the finish from the Col de Pramartino the Frenchman gave up 27secs to his rivals as he flirted with disaster three times.
As Boasson Hagen celebrated his second victory of this year’s Tour, Voeckler lost precious time to a nine-man group which contained the Schleck brothers as well as Contador, Samuel Sanchez and Cadel Evans.
“Mountain biking is not my speciality!” said Voeckler, who on the third near-miss misjudged a bend and ended up in the courtyard of a house.
“I left the road three times and the third time I was lucky. If there had been a wall in front of me, I wouldn’t have had time to stop.”
Contador’s attack late on the Col de Manse outside Gap on Tuesday helped salvage a yellow jersey bid that had looked severely compromised following a series of crashes inside the first nine stages.
Yesterday, the Spaniard went on a downhill attack again after cresting the 6.6 km Cote de Pramartino, only for the Schleck brothers – who had lost time to Contador and Evans on stage 16 – to counter.
Once over the summit Contador was followed by Sanchez and together they took all the risks on the tight turns of the descent to open up a gap on the Schlecks and Evans.
With Voeckler showing the peloton how not to take the turns, the chasers were nervous. But as the road straightened out the chase was on, with the Schlecks and Evans closing the gap to the Spaniards inside the final kilometre.
Ahead of two mountain-top finishes, and the penultimate stage time trial over 42.5 km in Grenoble on Saturday, competition for the yellow jersey is far from over this year.
With Evans second at 1:18 behind Voeckler, Frank Schleck is still in third place at 1:22, with brother Andy fourth at 2:36.
Sanchez is fifth at 2:59 while Contador is sixth at 3:15.