Originally Posted by
Keith99
But I will ask why were Astana Riders working in that break? Think about it. Their working made it so the team in yellow had ot work to minimize the time to be sure they kept yellow. It meant Astana riders had to work, when otherwise all Astana had a free ride. It would gain a most a few seconds, simply not worth it. Unless of course the idea was to get Lance placed ahead of Contador.
That's the only part I don't get. Did it really make much sense for Astana to work with the break to get Lance more time? If it made sense for Lance to gain time on that stage, why didn't it make sense for Contador to 'break' team orders and attack on stage 7?
If it was because they didn't want the yellow jersey so early in the race (on stage 7 that is), it seemed that they were definitely trying to get the yellow even earlier in the race during the team time trial with Lance missing the yellow by fractions of a second.