French cyclist Sandy Casar won his first Tour de France stage on Friday with his shorts ripped and hip bruised from a crash when he hit a dog earlier in the Stage 18 breakaway.
Challenging him to the end were Axel Merckx (T-Mobile) and Michael Boogerd (Rabobank), both of whom have announced this was their last Tour de France, and Laurent Lefèvre (Bouygues Telecom).
Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, riding for Discovery Channel, remained in the yellow jersey, retaining his lead over Australian Cadel Evans and teammate Levi Leipheimer of the US.
Casar attacked the peloton about 9 miles after leaving Cahors and was soon joined by three others. Casar and one of them, Frederik Willems (Liquigas), crashed into a dog along the way. While Willems ended up back in the peloton, Casar caught up with the breakaway again, and was joined by Merckx.
The breakaway stayed in front of the peloton for the remaining 120 miles, gaining as much as 17 minutes at one time. Discovery Channel stayed at the front of the peloton during the bulk of the ride, until Euskaltel took over to protect their Mikel Astarloza from being overtaken by Boogerd.
The four-man breakaway entered the city of Angouleme and Casar attacked on the inside of a traffic island about 1 1/2 miles from the finishline. He got a good jump on the other three, but Boogerd dragged the others back to Casar with about a half-mile to go.
Before anyone else could attack, Casar went again and the other three couldn't respond.
Merckx, son of five-time Tour champion Eddy Merckx, has never won a Tour de France stage. He turned pro with Team Telecom in 1994, and was an early teammate of Lance Armstrong on the Motorola teams of the mid-90s.
The other cyclist in the breakaway who is finishing his career, Boogerd, has stage wins in 1996 and 2002 to his credit. He spent most of this year's Tour working in support of Michael Rasmussen, who was thrown off theRabobank team for lying to the director about his whereabouts during training.
Many of the others in the peloton used this day to keep their legs loose for Saturday's individual time trial, the last stage before Paris.
Although Contador has a 1:53 lead on Evans, the Australian is known as a better time trialist. Third place Leipheimer also is strong in that game.
No changes in the Top 10 overall:
1. Alberto Contador (Spa) Discovery Channel
2. Cadel Evans (Aus) Predictor – Lotto — 1:53 1:50 behind
3. Levi Leipheimer (USA) Discovery Channel — 2:49
4. Carlos Sastre (Spa) Team CSC — 6:02
5. Haimar Zubeldia (Spa) Euskaltel – Euskadi — 6:29
6. Alejandro Valverde (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne — 10:18
7. Kim Kirchen (Lux) T-Mobile Team — 11:36
8. Yaroslav Popovych (Ukr) Discovery Channel — 12:50 12:47
9. Mauricio Soler (Col) Barloworld — 13:31
10. Mikel Astarloza (Spa) Euskaltel — 13:42
Full results and green and polka dot jersey standings at CyclingNews.
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