Lance Armstrong Finishes 2nd in Tour de Suisse

Lance Armstrong jumped up from 7th place in the GC today on the 9th and final stage of the Tour of Switzerland, which was a 27 kilometer individual time trial in Liestal, Switzerland with a very solid performance completing his race training for the Tour de France which starts just 12 days from now.  Though he finished over a minute behind the stage winner Tony Martin of Team Columbia (just missing out of the top ten on the day), his overall performance was good enough to place him just 12 seconds behind Frank Schleck of Saxo Bank, this year’s overall winner.

Team RadioShack’s riders put in a very strong performance all week in Switzerland with good rides in the prologue, the flats, and in the one mountain stage where Lance looked in particularly good form.  The Shack placed 3 riders in the top 10 of the GC; Lance Armstrong 2nd, Andreas Klöden 8th, and Levi Leipheimer 10th and they all shared a lot of television time during this race with excellent rides in the front of the peloton.  Saxo Bank and HTC-Columbia also had strong performances throughout the week with several riders placing well in the ITT and the overall GC.

Here’s what the preliminary results looked like at the time of writing:

Stage 9 ITT Results

1 Tony Martin HTC-Columbia 32:21
2 Fabian Cancellara Saxo Bank +17
3 David Zabriskie Garmin – Transitions +29
4 Gustav Larsson Saxo Bank +48
5 Levi Leipheimer RadioShack +48
6 Andreas Klöden RadioShack +52
7 Jakob Fuglsang Saxo Bank +52
8 Maxime Monfort HTC-Columbia +57
9 Wouter Poels Vacansoleil +1:02
10 Stijn Devolder Quick Step +1:07

Final General Classification
1 Frank Schleck Saxo Bank 35h.2:00
2 Lance Armstrong RadioShack +12
3 Jakob Fuglsang Saxo Bank +17
4 Steve Moabito BMC Racing +23
5 Robert Gesink Rabobank +27
6 Tony Martin HTC-Columbia +27
7 Rigoberto Uran Caisse d’Epargne +33
8 Andreas Klöden RadioShack +48
9 Joaquin Rodriguez Katusha 1:09
10 Levi Leipheimer RadioShack +1:14

Going into the final stage today, the yellow leader’s jersey, Robert Gesink of Rabobank was holding on to a 29 second lead over second place rider Rigoberto Uran of Caisse d’Epargne.  Both rode the hearts out in the final ITT today but didn’t quite have the horsepower to keep their positions.  As expected the GC ended up quite scrambled from the previous day as some of the world’s best put on a show of impressive time trial skills with a somewhat technical course on a damp and chilly day.

So it looks like that’s the last major tune up before the fireworks begin in the big one starting in Rotterdam on July 3rd. It looks like this powerful team is ready for the TDF!

By George T Hurst, staff writer