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Cadel Evans moved into second place and just six seconds from the overall lead after an eventful sixth stage of the Tour de France.
Italian Riccardo Ricco of Saunier Duval won the 195.5km stage from Aigurande to the Massif Central today, with Kim Kirchen of Luxembourg, riding for the Colombia team, taking the race leader’s yellow jersey.
Spain’s Alejandro Valverde and Evans finished on Ricco’s wheel as the Italian won in 4hr 57min 52sec while Kirchen went clear in the overall standings after Stefan Schumacher of Gerolsteiner came off his bike in the final stages to lose almost 30 seconds.
After the crash on Wednesday that left Valverde with cuts, bruises and a sore shoulder, it was time for Evans, the Spaniard’s big rival, to have a brush with misfortune before he roared back in a grand finale to stand just 6sec behind Kirchen.
Schumacher stands a further 10sec adrift after his late mishap when he clipped the wheel of teammate Bernhard Kohl.
As the peloton upped the pace to bring down a deficit of five minutes on a three-man, all-French breakaway, Evans suffered a puncture.
It was nothing too dramatic, although his Silence-Lotto team, who had been up at the front sitting behind Schumacher’s Gerolsteiner team, were forced to pull back and wait for the Australian.
Evans, the runner-up last year, was finally brought back to the bunch by Ukrainian teammate Yaroslav Popovych, but not before the Aussie hit out, physically, at a policeman on a motorbike – apparently for blocking his way.
Despite the hilly profile of the course, the pace of the chasing peloton finally closed the deficit on Sylvain Chavanel, Freddy Bichot and Benoit Vaugrenard to just two minutes with 43km to race.
At that point, on the easier percentages of the Croix-Morand climb, Vaugrenard began trailing his compatriots.
As Valverde’s Caisse d’Epargne team took over setting the pace at the front, the first category two climb of the race played host to the first signs of panic.
Numerous counter-attacks came and went, and just before the summit Frenchman Thomas Voeckler, the provisional King of the Mountains, raced ahead to claim some of the points on offer for his polka dot jersey.
Voeckler, whose efforts allowed him to pull level with Chavanel in the polka dot competition, went over the summit 54secs behind the front pair, and his acceleration prompted Sandy Casar and Spaniard Gorka Verdugo to follow him.
The trio hit the descent at speed in a bid to plug the gap, but were soon reeled in by the peloton.
Chavanel, who had instigated the day’s breakaway, finally relented 20km from the finish line.
Vaugrenard, of Agritubel, could not hold off the peloton on his own and his solo ride came to an end with 13.5km to go, just before the 11.5km climb to the first summit finish of the race.
There, Ricco took his chance to bag the day’s honours while Kirchen did enough to claim yellow with his fifth place at 4sec adrift.
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