Andy Schleck furious over Tour prologue ride

Andy Schleck was so furious with himself when he finished the prologue of the Tour de France that it was his elder brother Fränk who talked to the press. "Not now", said Andy as he was asked for comments.

Later on www.team-saxobank.com, he said: "The rain made the course completely different from the one we trained on yesterday but I had to give it everything in order not to lose too much time. I have done all I could to be prepared for the race and it's too late to do anything else than just to do the race and I am very excited about it."

On Twitter, besides his congratulations to his winning teammate Fabian Cancellara, Andy Schleck said, "I had a real shit day!" Schleck's result of 122nd position, 1:09 down on Cancellara, doesn't match his status of number one challenger to Alberto Contador and the two general classification rivals are actually separated by exactly the same gap as one year ago: in the 15.5km long Monaco time trial, Schleck (17th on the day) also finished 42 seconds down on Contador (2nd place).

However, it remains a surprise to see the younger of the Schleck brothers behind. Fränk is ranked higher than him in 79th place as he rode 12 seconds faster. They both spent some time together on the Saxo Bank team bus after they completed their prologue but Fränk was the one to comment about his race.

"I'm not a specialist of the prologues", Fränk said. "I knew I'd lose 10, 15 or 20 seconds to the leaders [it's 35 seconds to Lance Armstrong, ed.]. The change of weather conditions with a dry road for Contador doesn't favour us much. It's not a secret that it's easier to ride on a dry road than on the wet, you see it in a car as much as on a bike. I didn't have any words to say about our starting time and order. Our directors take care of that."

"The gaps will be enormous at the Tourmalet, I know the Tour will be decided in the Pyrénées", Andy told Luxemburg daily newspaper Le Quotidien. Andy also said in the same interview to Le Quotidien, "If Fränk and I want to win the Tour, we'll have to be in yellow before the final time trial in Pauillac."

The 52km individual time trial from Bordeaux to Pauillac, the Tour's penultimate stage, is the only other race against the clock in this year's Tour de France.