2009 Tour de France: Stage 6 Results – Millar Performs, Hushovd Wins

Today’s 181.5 km Gerone to Barcelona Stage 6 of the 2009 Tour de France was an exciting one! After a powerful 28km solo breakaway by David Millar, the peloton caught him in the last kilometer and Thor Hushovd outsprinted Oscar Freire to win the stage.

Rain clouds moved over the course around 25km to go, quickly making the roads slick and dangerous. As the peloton circled a round-a-bout where a small wipeout took out a Columbia-HTC’s Michael Rogers and sent Tyler Farrar over a railing (he got back on the bike), Garmin-Slipstream’s David Millar broke off from the lead pack for a solo attempt with 28km to go and about 55 seconds on the main pack.

As a time trial stud, Millar could make it work, and he made short work of the final climb and threw caution to the wind on the wet, curvy descent.

Txurruka also took advantage of the climb to launch himself off the front of the lead pack also and went all out on the descent trying to catch Millar. With considerable water on the road, the main peloton would undoubtedly take more caution.

As they neared Barcelona, the gap was about 38 seconds for Txurruka and 49 seconds for Millar. Coming into town, Astana took the lead of the peloton, likely to keep it at a safe speed under the drizzly conditions, allowing the two breakaways to put seconds on them.

(pics, results and the rest of the story when you hit “more”)

Columbia-HTC took more of a backseat in the peloton today, likely deciding they were tired of doing all the work, and with just under 16km to go, Millar moved from 10th overall into Yellow with a 1’08” gap on the peloton, then 1’11” at 13km to go, tucking himself into his TT position.

At 10km to go, the Peloton swallowed up the last two stragglers from the lead pack, and Team Milram started pushing the pace. Besides wanting to keep Contador in Yellow and save positioning in the GC, the rest of the teams started driving forward to position riders for the win and challenge Millar’s hopeful stage win.

With about 7.6km to go, a wreck near the back of the peloton split the pack a bit, then another wreck at 6.7km that took down Tom Boonen as he crossed some of the white strips in the road.

At just under 6km to go, the peloton was within 42 seconds of Millar. Armstrong, Cavendish and Cancellara remained safely in the front part of the peloton with plenty of support riders around them. At 3km the gap had narrowed to 23 seconds.

Millar prepared to suffer up the final 2km climb to the finish, but at 1km it proved too much and the peloton caught him as Astana moved a lot of riders to the front. Oscar Friere and Cadel Evans made their way to the front, started to jump and Thor Hushovd thundered around for the win.

Hats off to Millar for a stellar effort!

Hushovd gains some points, moving closer to taking the green jersey from Cavendish. As exciting as the racing has been, all the GC contenders stayed in the front, and the overall standings didn’t change much after today’s Stage 6, just a little shuffling at the bottom of the top 10.

Hushovd takes the stage win.

Cancellara retains Yellow, for now…

Millar gets “Most Courageous Rider” award for Stage 6.

Tomorrow’s 224km stage is the first mountain top finish, and most suspect Cancellara will no longer be in Yellow when it’s said and done. Call in sick, then tune in on Versus (or just stream it online at work…)

2009 TOUR de FRANCE STAGE 6 TOP 10:

2009 TOUR de FRANCE OVERALL STANDINGS AFTER STAGE 6: