Always on front through Les Gets
10 June 2011

Portuguese rider Rui Costa is keeping almost untouched his chances of making a strong GC result in the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné after the first mountain stage of the Alpine tour, over 210 kilometers from Villars-les-Dombes to Les Gets, the last of the three Cat. 2 climbs into a race which saw Frenchman Christophe Kern (EUC) take the victory after a late attempt.

The squad led by Yvon Ledanois showed good manners in the final climb, where the youngster from Póvoa de Varzim fought until the very end with the GC favourites -he later conceeded only ten seconds on the big group across the finish, not avoiding him keeping his 5th place overall and the white young leader’s jersey-, while teammate David López made it into one of the numerous attempts from the bunch, neutralized with 3km from the finish by an always hard-racing bunch, which covered nearly 100k in the first two hours.

The telephone squad will again be looking for a leading role on Sunday as the sixth, penultimate stage is covered over 192 kilometers, from Les Gets to the demanding Collet d’Allevard (Especial) via Châtillon (Cat. 4), Saint Jean-de-Sixt (Cat. 4), Aravis (Cat. 2), Tamié (Cat. 3) and the Grand Cucheron (Cat. 1).