2007 Tour de France, Prologue to Stage 10#Prologue
The prologue of the 2007 Tour de France on July 7, was 7.9 km long and took the riders on a circular route through the city center of the British capital London.
The route through the city center started in Whitehall and led the 189 riders from 21 teams past Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace initially in Hyde Park. After another pass-by at Buckingham Palace the finish line followed on The Mall at St. James 's Park. Apart from a few curves of course had no demanding passages.
As a favorite for the opening victory were ahead of the Swiss time trial world champion Fabian Cancellara, who themselves had to decide already the start of the Tour de Suisse a few weeks earlier, the British David Millar and Bradley Wiggins, as well as the American David Zabriskie.
The riders started from 15:00 local time clock at intervals of one minute. The first rider on the track was the Italian Enrico Degano of Team Barloworld. As the last rider started at 18:08 clock the designated last year's winner Óscar Pereiro in the jersey of his Caisse d'Epargne team.
Among the favorites for the overall victory of the German Andreas Kloden initially shocked the competition with a time of 9:03 minutes, with whom he distanced the specialists in this discipline, George Hincapie and David Zabriskie, in the target ten respectively 19 seconds. As a result, none of the favorites came even close to the time Klödens. His teammate Alexander Vinokourov lost 17 seconds on him and Alejandro Valverde even 30 Only Fabian Cancellara, who went as the third- last driver on the route, times of Germans undercut significantly. At the finish he was 13 seconds ahead of Klöden and secured the third fastest prologue of the Tour 's history, the yellow jersey of the overall leader. The third place in the standings days occupied George Hincapie. For Cancellara was the second prologue win at the Tour de France after 2004.
Fabian Cancellara took the yellow jersey in addition also the green jersey as the leader in the sprint. The best young rider was the Russian Vladimir Gusev, the Cancellara finished the prologue as a day in fifth with a time of 9:15 minutes, thus 25 seconds behind. In the rating by the white jersey he was six seconds ahead of Dutchman Thomas Dekker and seven seconds ahead of Frenchman Benoit Vaugrenard. The peak position in the team standings, the team Astana secured. With Andreas Klöden on the second, Alexander Vinokourov on the seventh and Andrei Kaschetschkin in 16th place they drove out the best team result. Behind the Team CSC and Discovery Channel occupied the other spaces.
Standings
First intermediate time check at West Carriage Drive ( 4.5 km ) (15 m above sea level. NN )
Bradley Wiggins on the drive through central London
Two T- Mobile driver while inspecting the track in front of Buckingham Palace
Xabier Zandio passes Big Ben
Thomas Voeckler of Bouygues Télécom
Prologue | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | Stage 5 | Stage 6 | Stage 7 | Stage 8 | Stage 9 | Stage 10 | Stage 11 | Stage 12 | stage 13 | stage 14 | stage 15 | stage 16 | stage 17 | stage 18 | stage 19 | stage 20
Driver's field
- Tour de France 2007