It's Contador's Tour to win

That's the headline from stage 15. Contador attacked and no one could match him. Most of the contenders (Schleck, Schleck, Sastre, Evans, Wiggins!) finished ahead of Armstrong, who was 95 seconds back.

The new top 10:
1. Ablerto Contador, Astana
2. Lance Armstrong, Astana, 1.37
3. Bradley Wiggins, Garmin-Slipstream, at 1.46
4. Andreas Kloden, Astana, at 2.17
5. Andy Schleck, Saxo Bank, at 2.26
6. Rinaldo Nocentini, AG2R, at 2.30
7. Vincenzo Nibali, Liquigas, at 2.51
8. Tony Martin, Columbia-HTC, at 3.07
9. Christophe Le Mevel, Francais des Jeux, at 3.09
10. Frank Schleck, Saxo Bank, at 3.25


Armstrong said all that needs to be said about Astana's game plan for the next week. Contador is the strongest; he rides for Contador.

The race isn't over with 2 alpine stages, Ventoux, and a time trial, but no one has been able to stay with Contador, his time trial is pretty good, and his team is the best in the race. The other contenders need Contador to mess up in order to catch him.

Other stuff:

What does Astana do about the other goals besides winning the yellow jersey? Lance and Kloden are both podium contenders. They lead the team competition. Sweeping the podium and winning the team race would be a massive accomplishment.

Brad Wiggins is a huge surprise. Can he do it again and again, or will he pop?

Liquigas is having a realy good tour. Pellizotti is wearing dots. Niboli is a podium (and white jersey) contender. Kreuziger is also a white jersey contender.

Shouldn't Andy Schleck be ahead of Frank Schleck? Speaking of the SaxoBank team, the work Voigt and Cancellara did to set the pace on the slopes of the climb was just phenomenal. Those guys will sleep well tonight.

Nocentini may have lost the yellow jersey, but he did well to keep it over a week, and he rode well today. He's actually still in the top 10, but I expect he'll drop a lot of places now that he's lost his incentive.