Tres victorias de Francia para Contador!

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After the biggest fight in his cycling life, Alberto Contador has won a third Tour de France.

"This victory cost me a lot," he said, "and I'm very moved. I suffered a lot, but that's what you have to do to win the Tour."

And when the fat lady was warming up her vocal cords, readying her wide-berthed-self to sing to the tune of the Spanish national anthem, with all his might and power, down came HTC-Columbia's Mark Cavendish on the Champs-Élysées, proving for a fifth time this race, he still is the world's best sprinter.

"Bernie Eisel and Tony Martin were with me at the finish. Bernie took me to the tunnel the last time and Tony did a really good job to drop me on the wheel of Petacchi in the last kilometre," said the once-in-a-lifetime speedster from the Isle of Man.

"Once I was on Petacchi's wheel, I knew I could win the stage," said the 25-year-old, who holds a future as bright as the star of Sirius. "We came out of that last corner and I just jumped... Every sprint in the Tour you try and save as much energy as possible, but the Champs-Élysées, you've got nothing to save your energy for - you just go balls-out to the line, and that's kind of what I did today."

But perhaps the best story of this Tour is the legacy it leaves.

Three weeks ago on July 3, so many automatically assumed a Contador victory was a done deal. Few thought 27-year-old 'Pistolero' would come so close to defeat at the hands of a boyish-faced, slightly naïve Luxembourger 18 months his junior - the man we know as Andy Schleck of Team Saxo Bank.

If this race has proven anything, it is that Contador, contrary to what most originally thought after his dominating ride 12 months ago, does not have a virtual stranglehold on La Grande Boucle for years to come, as much as his Astana team don't have a vice-like grip on his signature.

"Maybe I wasn't in the best shape...there were days I was not at my best. I won't say when the bad days were," Contador said, eternally reluctant to give anything away.

"Just before the Tour started, I was on antibiotics because I had a cold just before the Spanish championships, so this might have influenced my performance. Cycling is not like mathematics; there are moments when you are well prepared and everything runs smoothly, and there are times when you are well prepared and everything does not."

The era of Miguel Induráin, characterised by a monotonous level of superiority and a personality so likeable you wanted to hate him just for the sake of it, is unlikely to recur in the next decade. Not from Contador, anyway.

Yesterday in Pauillac, when the Spaniard wept uncontrollably like a child who'd lost his mother, it was because, as he admitted himself, the hardest day he'd ever ridden on the bike. The race of truth never lies, and over those 52 kilometres, had Contador's legs been two or three percent weaker, he may not have been standing where he was around 6 p.m. is Sunday, flanked by Schleck on his right and on the left, Russian Denis Menchov of Rabobank, who, for the first time, stepped on the Paris podium as quietly as he got there - with little fanfare and less of a trace.

"Yesterday [in the time trial], I thought I was still a few seconds behind Andy," said Contador, "so I never gave up till the finish line. I had a stomach ache before, but eventually things went okay."

Most pundits have said the 2010 Tour was one of the hardest in years. To find a comparatively similar race, one may have to go all the way back to the 1986 Tour that witnessed the famous Battle Royale between Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond; a race that turned teammates into bitter rivals, with the rift remaining so till this day.

A Tour de France won by less than a minute - 39 seconds to be precise - is a great prelude to what may come a year or two from now, when Schleck will be stronger still and Contador likely back to his 2009 Tour-winning form. "I'm sure he will keep improving," Contador said.

Still, in order to win cycling's blue riband prize, one feels Schleck the younger needs to do one of two things, or both.

First, increase his cadence when climbing to allow him to attack with greater bite. Four days ago on the Col du Tourmalet, Contador responded to each of Schleck's attacks with apparent ease, looking more like a shadow than a rival. Most of all, though, the 25-year-old must take steps to eliminate what many feel remains his albatross - the time trial.

Unlike Lance, Petacchi defies the clock

The strategic game played by Norwegian Thor Hushovd, noticeably slower than last year when he took the maillot vert, did not work this time. Certainly, at the start three weeks ago in Rotterdam, Hushovd would never have thought Alessandro Petacchi - who most believed to be well past his prime - would turn out to be his greatest adversary.

Hushovd wasn't the only one taken aback by the La Spezia sprinter.

Cavendish truly felt this 93rd edition was the year he would win the classification that continues to elude him. That the best sprinter - which, by some margin, Cav' was at this Tour and the last - is rarely the one who ends with the most points reinforces the message that consistency and cunning prevails over outright speed in this competition.

Aside from his two stage wins - one ostensibly gifted due to a crash, one truly earned - it was Petacchi's uniformity over three weeks that proved the greatest surprise, including his ability to get through the Pyrénées and Alps unscathed and with speed to spare.

A poor race for polka-dots

With respect, the mountains competition was not really a competition. Because if it was, it would be like the war we saw for green: the best riders of that genre fighting tooth-and-nail as if they were fighting for the maillot jaune.

Not once did we see the Tour's best climbers - Schleck, Contador, Damiano Cunego, Samuel Sanchez, Robert Gesink - go for a mountain prime with the intention of building their lead in the polka-dot classification. Instead, it was Frenchman Anthony Charteau, an all-rounder but certainly no grimpeur, that took advantage of the lackadaisical attitude of the aforementioned and walked away with the third most prestigious (and remunerated) prize at the Tour.

Perhaps it's time for a rethink from messieurs Prudhomme and Pescheux. Time, perhaps, to introduce time bonuses for mountain primes to create a better contest and encourage attacks - which, over time, may lead to another pure climber winning the Tour, à la Marco Pantani in 1998.

You wouldn't go to school wearing the wrong uniform, would you?

At 14:30 p.m., the final stage of the Tour de France began - slowly.

But what normally begins with frolicking and frivolities turned ugly when the RadioShack nine donned some custom-made jerseys, all bearing the number 28 - referring to the 28 million people around the world suffering from cancer - after they had signed in with their standard-issue 'Shack garb. Unsurprisingly, the commissaires wouldn't have a bar of it - which, embarrassingly for Lance Armstrong et al., led to the team changing back to their real kit on the roadside.

Then, with ridiculous irony, Contador and Schleck staged a faux-sprint for the cameras - and the latter's chain got caught up, requiring a bike change! This time, however, Contador waited.

And so, with the day's drama out of the way, the peloton hit the Place de la Concorde ensemble for their final 50-odd kilometres in what has been a most arduous Tour de France. However, when it came to the inevitable sprint finish, one man possessed a pair of legs fresher, stronger and faster than those he came with three weeks ago, Cavendish making a virtual mockery of his fast-twitched rivals as he put five bike-lengths between he and Petacchi, second, and Garmin's Julian Dean, who placed third.