Contador calls on his team to switch support; TOUR DE FRANCE ALBERTO CONTADOR.called for his Astana team The Astana Team (UCI Team Code: AST), is a professional road bicycle racing team sponsored by the Astana group, a coalition of state-owned companies from Kazakhstan – including Air Astana – named after its capital. to back his Tour de France bid after the Spaniard seized the leader's yellow jersey with an emphatic victory on the 15th stage yesterday afternoon. Contador produced a devastating break in the final five kilometres of the first-category climb to the finish line in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier to come home 43 seconds clear of Saxo-Bank's Andy Schleck Andy Schleck (born June 10, 1985) is a Luxembourgian professional road bicycle racer who, since 2005, has been riding for the Team CSC outfit in the UCI ProTour race series. Andy is the younger brother of Fränk Schleck, whom he rides alongside at Team CSC. . The 2007 champion's victory on the 207.5km trek through the Jura mountains sees him top the overall classification by 97 seconds from Astana team-mate Lance Armstrong, who could not respond to Contador's break for the line. Lance The stage was viewed as the start proper of the battle for the overall lead of the race and Contador emphatically underlined his billing as one of the favourites for the title with his performance. The Spaniard's lead over seven-time champion Armstrong will take some overhauling, and Contador believes it is time for the Astana team to back his bid at the expense of the American's. "I think the differences are now pretty big so I think it's clear that the team should now support me and ride for me," Contador said. "I'm sure my team-mates will work hard for me for the rest of the Tour." The 26-year-old admitted his break in the closing kilometres had been somewhat premature, although he always had enough in the tank to claim the stage win. And he appeared much fresher than Armstrong - 11 years his senior - at the finish. "When I came out of the peloton
The peloton (from French, literally meaning ball and related to the English word platoon), field, bunch or , I attacked before I intended to, but looking at the situation I decided to have a go at it Verb 1. have a go at it - have sexual intercourse with; "This student sleeps with everyone in her dorm"; "Adam knew Eve"; "Were you ever intimate with this man?" ," he added. "I saw I was opening a gap and just kept on going. I'm extremely happy about the gap to my rivals. Tomorrow is a rest day so I will recover tomorrow, but next week will be extremely hard." Schleck claimed the white jersey for the best young rider after his spirited ride to second place, while Vicenco Nibali took a deserved third for Liquigas. Britain's Bradley Wiggins put on a remarkable performance to finish alongside Frank Schleck and reigning champion Carlos Sastre and move into third place. Armstrong The 29-year-old Wiggins now sits 1min 46secs behind Contador ahead of today's rest day. Erstwhile race leader Rinaldo Nocentini has dropped to sixth place in the overall standings. Leading final positions after Stage 15 (Pontarlier - Verbier, 207.5km): 1 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana 5hrs 03mins 58secs, 2 Andy Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank at 0.43, 3 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas at 1.03, 4 Frank Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank at 1.06, 5 Bradley Wiggins (Gbr) Garmin-Slipstream at same time, 6 Carlos Sastre Candil (Spa) Cervelo TestTeam at same time Selected Others: 47 Charles Wegelius (Gbr) Silence - Lotto 5hrs 08mins 56secs, 103 David Millar (Gbr) Garmin-Slipstream at 12.11, 130 Mark Cavendish (Gbr) Team Columbia - HTC HTC HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) Component HTC High Tech Computer Corp (Taiwan, China) HTC Hennepin Technical College (Minnesota) HTC High-Throughput Computing at 18.12 General classification: 1 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana 63hrs 17mins 56secs, 2 Lance Armstrong (USA) Astana at 1.37, 3 Bradley Wiggins (Gbr) Garmin-Slipstream at 1.46 Selected Others: 59 David Millar (Gbr) Garmin - Slipstream To fix a bug or add enhancements to software without identifying such inclusions by creating a new version number. 63hrs 58mins 30secs, 64 Charles Wegelius (Gbr) Silence - Lotto at 41.46, 139 Mark Cavendish (Gbr) Team Columbia HTC at 1:49.01. CAPTION(S): Lance Armstrong |
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