A seven man breakaway led off for most of the day during today’s stage of the 2009 Tour de France from Tonnerre to Vittel. No big shakeups occurred today, but the Tour de France should get interesting tomorrow as the race goes into the big mountain stages.

Spoilers below….

Bicycle.net: Soerenson wins.

CN: Sorenson speeds to super stage win.

VN: Nicki Sorenson wins.

Astana blog: Stage 12 recap with photos.

LIVESTRONG Video: Chris Brewer recap of Stage 12.

Big collection of links at out Steephill.TV Tour de France dashboard.

The GC standings are really starting to freak me out. Ever since Stage 7, the top three rankings have invariably looked like this:

NOCENTINI Rinaldo (Italy) Agr2-La Mondial
CONTADOR Alberto  (Spain) Astana          +00’06”
ARMSTRGONG Lance  (USA)   Astana          +00’08”

With the exception of Stage 10 when Andreas Kloden briefly bested him, American Levi Leipheimer has been consistently in 4th place at 39 seconds behind NOCENTINI.

What’s up with that?

Spoilers in the links out…

You’ll see race details in the race reports but Cavendish’s win moved him up one place in the GC from 135th place to 134th at 1 hour 14 minutes behind race leader Rinaldo Nocentini.

KWC: Cav unbeatable.

Bike Rumor: Cavendish Continues.

Bike World News: Stage 11 results.

VN: Cav leaps uphill.

CN: Cavendish ties British record with his 4th Stage win

2009 Tour de France Stage 10: Bastille Day Edition

Frenchmen Thierry Hupond (Skil-Shimano), Benoït Vaugrenard (Française des Jeux) and Samuel Dumoulin (Cofidis, Le Credit en Ligne) felt the Bastille Day spirit today as they attacked early in Stage 10 of the 2009 Tour de France today, with Russian Mikhail Ignatiev (Team Katusha) joining in the early breakaway. In spite of the radio ban (or maybe because of it?), the peloton reeled them in just a mile from the finish today.

Rabobank’s Gricscha Niermann mounts a CB radio antenna to his helmet before Stage 10 of the Tour de France to protest today’s race radio ban.

Spoilers below…

Well, alleged spoilers, anyway. Not much has changed in rankings since last week.

Cavendish beat Thor Hushovd and Tyler Farrar as they all sprinted for the finish line in Issoudun. Italian Rinaldo Nocentini (AG2R La Mondiale) retains the Yellow Jersey, while Astana still owns the next four places.

Links out…

KWC: Well, that didn’t work….

Bike World News: Stage 10 Report.

Bike Rumor: Cavendish wins.

Steephill.TV’s “Highlights from today’s action” features a photo of snails on the side of the road 🙂

CN: Cavendish goes long.

VN: Cav charges.

Bicycle.net: Media focus on Andy difficult for older Schleck.

TdF Blog: Armstrong may return for 2010?

Video: Rabobank’s Grischa Niermann mounts a CB antenna on his helmet.

Mild Stallion’s TdF Haiku.

The Union Cicliste Internationale (UCI), the world wide governing body for competitive cycling, is rumored to be drawing up rules to limit the radio technology used in bicycle races, according to this report in the French sports daily L’Equipe.

An anonymous staffer at the UCI officer in Switzerland says the goal is to preserve the purity of the sport by restricting radio technology to what was available in 1972. Race directors and coaches will be required to use vintage CB transmitters from their cars while cyclists will use transistor radios with 9 volt zinc-carbon cells that have been modified to receive CB frequencies. Though cyclists will also be permitted to use transmitters, the power and electronics required effectively restricts their use since they would more than double the weight of the bicycle.

Two way radios were first used in the early 1990s when Motorola sponsored a bike racing team and have since become ubiquitous in the pro peloton.

Several cyclists and teams have been outspoken in their opposition to the race radio ban for Stage 10 Tuesday and Stage 13. The UCI effort to use “traditional” radio technology is thought to be a compromise between those fans who wish to completely eliminate the technology and the teams who benefit from electronic communication.

English translation of the L’Equipe article on the technology restriction here.

The Freakonomics blogs offers a partial feed, meaning the RSS feed only shows a portion of the blog post so you must click on the link to read the full article. Here’s what I saw on my RSS reader Friday night.

You can read what Thomas Voeckler said of his Tour de France Stage 6 win on Freakanomics.

Tour de France Stage 7 finish video, with commentary in French.

Frenchman Brice Feillu of team Agritubel crosses the finish line. did Feillu unzip to protest Agritubel pulling it’s support of the team after the 2009 season is complete?

Bradley Wiggins of Garmin-Slipstream crosses the finish line and is now in 5th place in the GC.

Alberto Contador on Stage 7.

Rinaldo Nocentini celebrates his place on the podium after Stage 7.

Rinaldo Nocentini, happy to be in the Yellow Jersey during his very first Tour de France.