Tour De France: Stage 12

An odd stage today.  I thought this would be one for a breakaway and a big group did get away, but the peleton would never let them get too far out, because it contained a couple of guys in the top 15 overall.  Then as they came up to the final short, but steep climb of the day things heated up amongst the GC contenders and this blew the chances of the lone leader Alexander Vinokourov.  Some might say Vino should be angry, because it was his own teammate Alberto Contador who helped bridge the gap to him, but truth is he would have lost the stage with or without Contador's involvement.  And as we know from watching Vino compete for GC in the past he believes that every second you can get counts, so he would have supported the efforts of Contador at the end of the day as Contador managed to claw back 10 seconds on Andy Schleck, and exposed a bit of weakness in Schleck that we had not seen before. 

Also Thor Hushovd got back points in the green jersey competition to reclaim his lead, and Anthony Charteau grabbed enough mountain points to get back that jersey.

General classification after stage 12

#	Rider Name (Country) Team	Result
1	Andy Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank	58:42:01
2	Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana	0:00:31
3	Samuel Sánchez Gonzalez (Spa) Euskaltel - Euskadi	0:02:45
4	Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank	0:02:58
5	Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Bel) Omega Pharma-Lotto	0:03:31
6	Levi Leipheimer (USA) Team Radioshack	0:04:06
7	Robert Gesink (Ned) Rabobank	0:04:27
8	Joaquin Rodriguez (Spa) Team Katusha	0:04:58
9	Luis León Sánchez Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne	0:05:02
10	Roman Kreuziger (Cze) Liquigas-Doimo	0:05:16

Points classification

#	Rider Name (Country) Team	Result
1	Thor Hushovd (Nor) Cervelo Test Team	167	pts
2	Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) Lampre-Farnese Vini	161
3	Robbie McEwen (Aus) Team Katusha	138
4	Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team HTC - Columbia	132
5	Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne	122

Mountains classification

#	Rider Name (Country) Team	Result
1	Anthony Charteau (Fra) Bbox Bouygues Telecom	107	pts
2	Jérôme Pineau (Fra) Quick Step	92
3	Andy Schleck (Lux) Team Saxo Bank	64
4	Christophe Moreau (Fra) Caisse d'Epargne	62
5	Mario Aerts (Bel) Omega Pharma-Lotto	58