After the fall: post-stage comments

The team time trial is always a dramatic stage of the Tour de France as teams battle the clock and fight to surf the ragged edge of nine riders' lactate thresholds. The objective is to stay together to the finish, or at the very least to lose as few riders as possible. But it's a long, extraordinarily hard test and as fatigue accumulates, crashes in the closing kilometres are not unusual. Dave Zabriskie's crash almost within sight of the finish line when his CSC team was on course to win the stage and successfully defend his yellow jersey is nevertheless one of the unluckiest in Tour team time trial history.

CSC regroups

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