Rabon rolls to Murcia TT win

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Frantisek Rabon (HTC-Columbia) won the 22km individual time trial stage at the Tour of Murcia on Saturday and took the overall race lead.

The time trial specialist from the Czech Republic set a time of 25:10 for the flat 22km course, beating all the other big name favourites to earn his team's 10th win of the season and the leader’s yellow jersey.

Denis Menchov (Rabobank) was 33 seconds slower, Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) was third at 48 seconds and Andreas Klöden (RadioShack) was fourth at 52 seconds.

Rabon started the time trial with a five second advantage on most of his rivals and so leads Menchov by 38 seconds with only Sunday’s flat stage remaining.

Lance Armstrong (RadioShack) finished eighth in the time trial, 1:18 slower than Rabon and so is now seventh overall. Dave Zabriskie (Garmin-Transitions) was tenth at 1:23 on the stage.

Rabon also won the time trial stage in last year's Tour of Murcia and said, "My performance was pretty similar, but I think the big difference overall is that last year after winning the time trial I got dropped on the mountains the following day. This time we've already had the race's most mountainous stage and I got through fine.

"I was feeling confident because I'd done pretty well in my previous race, the Tour of the Algarve [in Portugal], where I was seventh overall. I was third last rider to start, which was an advantage because I had time references on my rivals and knew when I had to go faster."

Rabon is optimistic about defending the leader's jersey on Sunday's final stage. "Some of the other teams will try to attack me on the last stage, and of course it can be dangerous, but I've already shown I'm pretty strong in the climbs," said Rabon. "We've got a good team here, so if everything goes well I'll be able to hold on."

The Tour of Murcia finishes with a 121km stage from Redyser to Murcia. The stage includes two climbs but is expected to end in a sprint.