ANGOULEME (France), July 27: France's Sandy Casar, riding for the Francaise des Jeux team, picked himself up after crashing into a stray dog to win the 211km 18th stage of the Tour de France from Cahors to here on Friday.

Discovery Channel's Alberto Contador retained the yellow jersey with a 1min 50sec lead on Australian Cadel Evans, and 2:49 on his American teammate Levi Leipheimer.

Contador, Evans and Leipheimer will each go into Saturday's penultimate but decisive stage, a relatively flat 55km time trial from Cognac to Angouleme, with a chance of winning the race's yellow jersey.

It was partly for that reason – keeping their leaders as fresh as possible – that the teams of the yellow jersey rivals were forced to allow another opportunistic breakaway to go all the way to the finish.

A four-man group pulled away from the peloton after 16km and went on to build a massive lead of over 17 minutes, which put Dutchman Michael Boogerd virtually in the top five.

However, it was clear that Boogerd was simply going for the stage win.

The smily Dutchman had started the day in 16th at 27:50 behind Contador but admitted Thursday that the ejection of Michael Rasmussen, his former teammate at the Rabobank team, had left a bitter taste.

Rasmussen's eviction for lying to his team bosses about his whereabouts led to his sacking, and left the Dutch outfit bereft of the team leader who had also been wearing the yellow jersey.

Boogerd went on the attack after seeing Jerome Lefevre and Casar pull ahead on the day's first small climb a few kilometres previously.—AFP