7th stage:

After 6 days of racing,yesterday the riders of La Grande Boucle had to face the first mountain stage.The finish-line was on the Arcalis climb,which is 10 kms long.
Although the stage was supposed to be very hard,9 brave riders (Kuchinsky,Kern,Pinau, Riblon, Frohlinger,B.Feillu,Egoi Martinez,Nocentini and José Ivan Gutierrez) formed a breakaway with still 200 kms to go.The "fellowship of the 9" (when the Italian chronists called the riders of the breakaway in that way,I couldn't avoid wondering myself things like "Where's Gollum? And who has the ring?") soon managed to gain some minutes of advantadge on the rest of the peloton.
With 55 kms to go the breakaway riders had an advantdge of 12 minutes on the rest of the peloton.Meanwhile,Cancellara punctured twice and showed his amazing descent-skills to all the people who were watching the stage.

At the beginning of the Arcalis climb,the 9 breakaway riders still had about 6 minutes of advantadge.With 5 kms to go,neo-pro Brice Feillu (not to confuse with his brother Romain,that is much shorter than him) attacked and left all his companions behind.He eventually managed to win in a great way.
"I believed I had a chance,as it was a finale to my taste,"said Feillu."With four kilometres to go,the gap was still the same,about 10 seconds,I think. hen it increased about 10 seconds every kilometre,but in the last kilometre it went down again and I got really frightened.I really dug deep then."

Brice's victory made Romain Feillu cry."When I heard of his victory on the radio,I started to cry",he said .The older of the Feillu brothers cried until the finish-line and arrived 28 minutes after his brother.
The first rider to cross the finish-line after the 23-year-old Brice was Cristoph Kern,who was then followed by Frohlinger and Nocentini.Nocentini needed to gain at least 3.14 minutes on Armstrong and Cancellara if he wanted to wear the yellow jersey.Meanwhile Fabian had lost contact from the main group and Cuddles,ehm,Cadel Evans had attacked.The Aussie was soon caught by the group of the main GC riders,and the next to attack was his teammate Jurgen Van Den Broeck (7th in last 2008 Giro's GC).When the other Silence-Lotto rider got caught,it was Contador's turn to attack.He soon gained some meters on the group of the best riders,pulled by Andy Schleck.Unfortunately Andy and the others didn't manage to catch the Spaniard,who crossed the finish-line after 8 of the 9 breakaway riders (poor Kuchinsky crossed the finish-line 11 minutes after B.Feillu) and 3 minutes after Nocentini.And so the Italian managed to get the yellow jersey."For me, this is incredible. When I jumped into the break this morning, I never thought about taking the yellow jersey.I rather thought about a stage win". 21 seconds after Contador (who said:"I would have liked to get more time on the other GC riders,but I'm happy anyway"),the main contenders for the overall classification crossed the finish-line.Together with Andy and Frank Schleck in the GC group there were also Evans,Wiggins (who lost 6 kgs during the last 12 months),Leipheimer,Armstrong,Tony Martin (didn't xpect him to be so strong in the mountains!),Menchov,Sastre,Karpets and Vande Velde.Nibali arrived 10 seconds after them,Pellizotti and Kloden after 23".Kirchen lost 52" from los Schlecks' group,while Kreuziger lost 1 minute and 1 second.The best Saxo Banker was Andy (yip de do da day!),11th,while Big Bro Frank was 13th.Chris-Anker Sorensen was 48th (he crossed the finish-line 6'14" seconds after Feillu),while Cancellara and Larsson arrived together 9 minutes after the stage's winner.
Talking about the GC,first is Nocentini,while second is Contador (he has 6 seconds of delay from the Italian rider) and 3rd is Armstrong (8 seconds).Andy is 9th (1'49" of delay),while Frank is 13th (2'25").Andy is also 2nd in the young rider classification,with 49" seconds of delay from Tony Martin.
(Photos Reuters)