Serhiy Honchar who rides with the powerhouse (and highest paid pro team in cycling) T-Mobile squad took control of this years time trial besting all of the GC hopefully by more than one minute. Floyd Landis was the only GC contender who rode impressively and now sits in second place on the general classification (Honchar is in yellow after his impressive ride today). Today many eyes were on the American’s who did not ride as many had thought they would, it was only 5 weeks ago in the Dauphine when the Americans placed four riders in the top five in the time trial. Today however was the Tour de France, the fastest men in peak condition was a bit much for that repeat performance.
Levi Leipheimer rode a very unimpressive race coming in more than six minutes behind Honchar (96 place out of 170 riders) in what will prove to be too much in the end for the California’n to hope for yellow in this years Tour de France. Bobby Julich of team CSC also had his hopes washed away when he hit the deck at nearly 35 miles per hour when his rear wheel slipped away from him in a corner. It was really hard to watch Julich climb into the ambulance afterwards.
Expect the race to really start to heat up now as Landis will sure try to reduce his deficit to Honchar once the Tour reaches the mountains (Tuesday and Wednesday) in hopes of snagging yellow. At this point of the race Floyd Landis is in the perfect spot just one minute down to the race leader who can not climb all that well.
Stage 7 2006 Tour de France Time Trial:
1 Serhiy Honchar (Ukr) T-Mobile
2 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak 1.00.62
3 Sebastian Lang (Ger) Gerolsteiner 1.04.27
4 Michael Rogers (Aus) T-Mobile 1.23.87
5 Gustav Erik Larsson (Swe) Française Des Jeux 1.33.48
6 Patrik Sinkewitz (Ger) T-Mobile 1.38.65
7 Markus Fothen (Ger) Gerolsteiner 1.41.77
8 Andreas Klöden (Ger) T-Mobile 1.43.26
9 Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank 1.43.90
10 Joost Posthuma (Ned) Rabobank 1.44.41
11 Cadel Evans (Aus) Davitamon-Lotto 1.49.39
12 Vladimir Karpets (Rus) Caisse d’Epargne-Illes Balears 1.51.68
13 David Zabriskie (USA) Team CSC 1.56.59
14 Matthias Kessler (Ger) T-Mobile 2.02.77
15 Christophe Moreau (Fra) Ag2R Prévoyance 2.03.46
16 Eddy Mazzoleni (Ita) T-Mobile 2.04.61
17 Victor Hugo Peña (Col) Phonak 2.08.98
18 Carlos Sastre (Spa) Team CSC 2.10.59
19 Paolo Savoldelli (Ita) Discovery Channel 2.12.20
20 Thomas Lövkvist (Swe) Française Des Jeux 2.35.79
21 Bert Grabsch (Ger) Phonak 2.38.16
22 Viatcheslav Ekimov (Rus) Discovery Channel 2.40.23
23 Oscar Pereiro (Spa) Caisse d’Epargne-Illes Balears 2.40.92
24 George Hincapie (USA) Discovery Channel 2.42.07
25 Didier Rous (Fra) Bouygues Telecom 2.50.59
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