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| July 09, 2008 | Wednesday | Rajab 5, 1429 |
Valverde, Evans keep strength for time trial
NANTES (France), July 8: France celebrated a double success on the third stage of the Tour de France, while race favourites Alejandro Valverde and Cadel Evans kept their strength for Tuesday’s crucial time trial.
Samuel Dumoulin of France won a closely contested sprint finish, and countryman Romain Feillu gave success-starved French fans further cheer when he claimed the yellow jersey by finishing third on Monday.
Valverde, the race leader since winning Saturday’s opening stage, lost the yellow jersey by dropping from first to fourth, but “it doesn’t change a lot” for the Caisse d’Epargne team.
Tuesday’s 29.5-kilometer (18.3-mile) clock race, beginning and ending in Cholet, will start in reverse order from the overall standings. This means Valverde rides fourth-from-last and gives him the chance to see how fast Evans goes.
Evans, sitting one second behind Valverde and ninth in the overall, starts about 10 minutes before Valverde.
Tuesday’s fourth stage will give the first real indication as to which riders are looking strong.
Other Tour contenders like Russia’s Denis Menchov, and Spain’s Carlos Sastre, also need a strong time trial.
Sastre is six seconds behind Evans and seven seconds behind Valverde. He is not particularly fast — so if he loses too much time on Tuesday he may struggle to make that time up later on when the Tour hits the Pyrenees and Alps.—AP
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