Cancellera, 26-year-old Swiss, will be the first to wear the yellow jersey after beating German Andreas Kloeden of the Astana team by 13 seconds. American George Hincapie of the Discovery Channel came home third.
Fabian Cancellara. Photo EFE
Swiss Fabian Cancellara of the CSC team won the 7.9-km prologue of the Tour de France on the streets of London on Saturday. (CSC stands for Computer Sciences Corporation, I go by their monumental building on Town Lake in Austin all the time, wondering what goes on in that mystery complex).
Cancellara, already a winner of the Tour’s opening time trial in 2004, coped perfectly with the flat course starting at Trafalgar Square and finishing in The Mall to set the best time of eight minutes 50 seconds, according to provisional results.
The 26-year-old Swiss will be the first to wear the yellow jersey after beating German Andreas Kloeden of the Astana team by 13 seconds. American George Hincapie of the Discovery Channel came home third.
So begins this year’s Tour, which will be broadcast on cable tv Versus (formerly OLN). Today it was somewhat overshadowed, in at least in my world, by the Live Earth juggernaut.