Ricco Explodes As Lotto Disintegrates Over Super-Besse

The expected shake up on the day's stage from Aigurande to the ski-resort and extinct volcanoe of Super-Besse eventuated. The peleton finished strewn across this years first mountain top finish after a hectic tempo was set by Caisse D'epargne up the final climb.

Enigmatic Italian Riccardo Ricco showed his form from the Giro d'Italia had carried over to the Tour as he used his explosive climbing ability to power to victory in the stage, launching his attack just as his Saunier Duval teammate Leonardo Piepoli was caught by the lead group. Ricco's sprint over the last 1.5km (the steepest part of the climb) was matched only by overall favourites Alejandro Valverde, and Cadel Evans who finished 2nd and 3rd respectively, 1 second back. It is unfortunate that Ricco's sole focus this year had originally been the Giro (he finished second), because with his ability he would have been able to match the leading riders at this years Tour had he set himself for it. At 24 though time is still on his side and his shot at a yellow jersey in Paris will surely come in the future.

Again the Tour proved that while you might not be able to win the tour on the first mountain stage you can certainly lose it. And it seems that at the conclusion to Stage 6 we can already strike one of the pre-race favourites from the list of contenders for overall honours this year. Damiano Cunego could not much it with his fellow GC rivals and lost over 30 seconds to Valverde and Evans on the final climb. He is clearly the weakest time-trialler of the yellow jersey hopefuls and cannot afford to lose any time in the mountains. Today's finish looked made for him and his performance suggests he does not have form good enough to win the tour this year.

All the other major favourites will have been fairly happy with their performance with Denis Menchov and Carlos Sastre losing only a handful of seconds to the winner. The greatest concern may be that of Evans who saw his Silence-Lotto team absolutely blown apart on the final climb. While Valverde's team set a solid tempo, none of Evans teammates were to be seen ( Yaroslav Popyvich finished the closest 50 seconds back). While some have suggested that this means Evans is 'there for the taking', he is lucky that the majority of this years contenders (except perhaps Valverde) seem unlikely to be willing to attack him at this point of the race. In terms of overall honours, I still have Evans as a strong favourite, but have revised up my expectations of how close Valverde can get to him given the relative strength of their teams. Menchov would be the only other man I could see winning the title at this stage. Cunego was a huge disappointment today after supposedly setting himself for this years race. Let's hope it was just a bad day and he bounces back in the high mountains.

The stage saw the 5th change in the overall race leader in just 6 days. Yellow jersey wearer Stefan Schumacher had seemed destined to save his lead in the race before crashing in the final kilometre after clipping the wheel of new race leader Kim Kirchen. Schumacher could not recover in time and with Kirchen finishing 5th on the stage the lead in the race passed to the Luxembourgian, who now leads the GC by 6 seconds from Evans. It is nothing more than Kirchen deserves after finishing heart-breaking seconds in two stages already. He has also regained his lead in the points competition after losing it to Thor Hushovd the day before. With the first category 2 climbs of the tour appearing in the stage there was also a shake-up in the King of the Mountains competition. Sylvain Chavanel now holds the Polka Dot Jersey (tied on points with previous wearer Thomas Voeckler) after picking up a stack of points by participating in the days breakaway. Ricco's win sees him move into third place in the competition, and without the GC title as his goal he could really target the spotted jersey over the next two weeks. Thomas Lovkvist retains his hold over the White Jersey after an impressive ride to finish only 23 seconds behind Ricco back in 15th place.

Yellow Jersey - Kim Kirchen
Green Jersey - Kim Kirchen
Polka Dot Jersey - Sylvain Chavanel
White Jersey - Thomas Lovkvist