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Last Update: Thursday, July 20, 2006. 7:28am AEST

All contenders ... Cadel Evans (l), Oscar Pereiro (c) and Andreas Kloden (r) (AFP)

Disaster for Landis keeps Evans in Tour hunt

The race to succeed Lance Armstrong as winner of the Tour de France was spectacularly blown wide open overnight after the stunning collapse of overnight leader Floyd Landis.

Denmark's Michael Rasmussen, of Rabobank, won the 16th stage, considered the hardest climbing stage on this year's race.

However the skinny Danish climber's feat, after a long breakaway which saw him take maximum points on all four Cols, was overshadowed by the yellow jersey changing hands.

Phonak's Landis lost the race lead to Caisse d'Epargne's Oscar Pereiro after the Spaniard finished third at 1min 54sec behind Rasmussen.

Australia's Cadel Evans finished fourth on the stage to move up two places to fifth on the general classification. He is now 2:56 behind Pereiro and still very much in the hunt for a podium place.

Michael Rogers finished 12th and is now seventh overall.

Pereiro, a former team-mate of Landis and who was allowed by the American to take the race lead a few days ago thanks to a 29-minute breakaway, now leads fellow Spaniard Carlos Sastre by 1min 50secs ahead of tonight's hilly stage in the Alps.

Sastre, of CSC, was instrumental.

His turn of pace on the day's fourth and final climb to the summit finish left Landis struggling, and the American eventually finished over 10 minutes adrift to drop to 11th overall at 8:08.

It was a collapse that even Pereiro did not expect to see.

"We never reckoned on Landis struggling as he did," said Pereiro, who spent four years with the Phonak team before leaving last year.

"I'm sad for him. I wanted to fight Floyd for the yellow jersey. Until last year he was my team-mate at Phonak, and it was thanks to him that I got a ride on the Tour."

"I wouldn't have been the first to attack him."

He added: "To have the yellow jersey is the dream of every rider, but there's two big stages still to go.

"And look at what happened to Landis. He showed that anybody can have an off-day."

Pereiro won a stage on the Tour last year but here he appears a slimmer, more determined rider than he was while riding at the Swiss outfit.

But with the potentially decisive final time trial over 57km on Saturday, he knows that keeping the yellow jersey until Sunday will be difficult against the likes of Germany's Andreas Kloden.

Kloden also benefited from Landis's collapse by racing ahead of Russian Denis Menchov in the final five kilometres of the race, taking Evans and Pereiro with him.

He finished fifth at 1:56 to move up to third overall at 2:29 - a deficit he does not want to have on the day of the time trial.

The German, who finished a runner-up to Lance Armstrong in 2004, said however he would rather attack the Spaniard on Thursday's final, less punishing day in the Alps.

"I have to see how the legs are. It's getting tougher day by day," said Kloden.

"But if we have a chance to attack tomorrow, then we have to. To close a deficit of 2:29 on Pereiro on the time trial will be too difficult. We have to try and claw back more time before then."

In the race's first time trial over 52km, won Ukrainian Serhiy Honchar, Kloden had the best time of all the current race favourites finishing at 1:43 behind his T-Mobile teammate.

Sastre finished 28secs further back, with Pereiro barely a minute behind Kloden.

Kloden admitted that they had been crazy to allow Pereiro, who before the race was not considered a big contender, to move up the general classification after his long breakaway on stage 12.

"It's too bad we gave Pereiro that gift of nearly 30 minutes," added the German.

Landis meanwhile was left nursing his pride.

Phonak team manahger John Lelangue said he was still mystified as to what had happened to his star rider.

"We don't know what happened. All we know that he wasn't feeling too great in the (penultimate climb) Col du Mollard," said the Belgian.

-AFP

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