Ricco claims second win in Tour de France; Kirchen retains yellow jersey

Riccardo Ricco, who fell in Saturday's ride, came back to win his second stage in four days, almostly completely and utterly alone for the last 30 km after passing Sebastian Lang of Gerolsteiner on the Col d’Aspin.

Starting in Toulouse under cloudy skies, today's 139-mile route into the Pyrenees separated the sprinters from the mountain climbers. 

Two casulties were Garmin-Chipolte rider David Millar, who dropped out of the top 10 to 25th overall, and the best new rider, Thomas Lorkvist, who needed the help of Columbia teammate George Hincapie to make it to the mountaintop finish in Bagneres-de-Bigorre. Andy Schleck of CSC replaced Lorkvist, who dropped to sixth in the white jersey category.

Today's Top 10 finishers were:

1. Riccardo Ricco (ITA) SDV – 224km in 5h39’28″
2. Vladimir Efimkin (RUS) ALM – at 1’04″
3. Cyril Dessel (FRA) ALM at 1’17″
4. Dmitriy Fofonov (KAZ) C.A at 1’17″
5. Christian Knees (GER) MRM at 1’17″
6. Maxime Montfort (BEL) COF at 1’17″
7. Alejandro Valverde (ESP) GCE at 1’17″
8. Roman Kreuziger (CZE) LIQ at 1’17″
9. Damiano Cunego (ITA) LAM at 1’17″
10. Yarsoslav Popovych (UKR) SIL at 1’17″

Race leader Kim Kirchen of Columbia finished the ninth stage in 12th spot, pushing him back into the lead of the points classification and keeping him in the yellow jersey for stage 10 tomorrow — Bastille Day.

The only change in the top five overall results after today was Stefan Schumacher and Christian VandeVelde switching third and fourth places.

Here are Top 10 overall results:

Your regular blogger, Biking Bis, is headed to Portland this morning. He is among the 9,500 riders in the STP. You can follow his ride here or on Twitter — BikingBis.

He'll finish sometime this afternoon and be back in this saddle Monday.

This is missusbis signing out.