It was an interesting stage today as the Tour had its first mountain stage, in the Pyrenees. As expected Cancellara lost the yellow jersey, and surprisingly, it was a relatively unknown Italian who took it.
Most notably though near the end of the climb that ended the stage, Contador made a break on his own from the leaders and ended up second overall two seconds ahead of Armstrong. According to Armstrong in this video interview, that was not the plan. Astana was supposed to sit with Cadel Evans and others.
Personally, I welcomed seeing Contador getting ahead of Armstrong. The leadership of Astana appears to be in flux. If I were Contador, I would have expected the team to be supporting me going into this tour. However, with Armstrong in the mix and plainly up until today looking for glory himself, there doesn't seem to be any direction on who the leader is. Team director Johan Bruyneel's comments are interesting further down in this article. What they do seems to be up to the racers to plan. Is Bruyneel not going to be a part of any leadership decision making?
Of course, a team could have more than one leader, but I think lends itself to some confusion. Who are the domestiques to support? Both it seems, but that may be alot to ask, and might some domestiques have an allegiance to one leader over the other? Does one leader sometimes support the other and vica versa?
Though as a teammate might be expected to do today, Armstrong did remain with the other leaders and not help out in any chase of Contador.
Well, a couple more mountain stages in the Pyrenees and then plenty more of the Tour to come particularly in the Alps. Glad we've got Saturday and Sunday to watch tomorrow's mountain stages.
