Yesterday’s final mountain stage of the 2005 Tour de France was one of the last chances for Lance Armstrong’s rivals to close the gap in front of them. But as they neared the Tour’s last major challenge, the Col d’Aubisque, the race already seemed a battle for second place. Ivan Basso (CSC), Mickael Rasmussen (Rabobank), and Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile) seemed to have yielded to the reality that it would take a miracle to beat the American.

The entire top 10 finished with the same time in the southwestern city of Pau, three minutes and 26 seconds behind the stage winner. In cases like these, when the Tour winner seems a foregone conclusion and the yellow jersey is buried in the pack, all eyes turn to the front of the race. There, lower-placed riders compete for a stage victory, which is at least a small note in the history books. This time, though, there was more to it than personal glory.

By the middle of this 16th stage, it appeared certain it would be captured by either Oscar Pereiro (Phonak) or Cadel Evans (Davitamon Lotto), who controlled the breakaway from the start. Pereiro narrowly missed out on a stage victory on Sunday after he turned in a gutsy performance on the Tour’s toughest stretch only to be edged out at the finish line by Armstrong’s teammate, George Hincapie.

Pereiro was looking for redemption, but the Australian Evans had a special motivation. On Monday, the Australian women’s road-racing team was on a training ride in Germany when a car crashed head-on into the riders. Amy Gillett was killed in the accident, and five of her teammates were critically injured. Evans, who wore a black armband throughout, vowed to push himself to the front in their honor.

“The least I can do,” he said before the race, “is to get in a break and dedicate the stage win to the entire Australian national team.” Besides Evans, there are nine other Aussies riding in this year’s Tour.

Evans took off from the peloton at the 25-kilometer mark and led a breakaway group of about dozen – including Pereiro. He muscled to the front of that group and led it until the Col d’Aubisque. Then, he took off on a gritty attack that surely made his countrymen proud. It was a full-fledged, uphill sprint. Pereiro was part of a chasing group that got away on the Aubisque.

Evans had a 45-second-lead when he started down the twisting descent. The Australian coasted and braked cautiously – it was the same road where he crashed and broke his collarbone on a training ride a few years ago – and Pereiro was able to catch up to him. Evans said afterward that he was glad the Spaniard caught up with him, as he was anxious to have someone in front of him who knew the roads well.

After just a few moments in the lead, however, Pereiro had to pull over to have his punctured wheel changed. A speeding Eddy Mazzoleni (Lampre) swooped downhill and took his place. Pereiro and fellow Spaniard Xabier Zandio (Iles Baleares) – the only other survivor of Evans’s original break – caught up after a few kilometers, and the four riders cruised together along the final 50 kilometers toward the finish.

Behind them, Armstrong and his Discovery Channel-led group made little effort to catch up. Armstrong was mostly concerned with keeping Rasmussen and Basso within reach, and keeping attacks from the T-Mobile squad under control – things he accomplished without breaking a sweat on a comfortable, partly cloudy day. Armstrong said he was so relaxed it felt his bicycle “didn’t have a chain.”

The quartet’s lead on the peloton dwindled to about four minutes as they raced through the mostly flat approach to Pau. Evans was at the front, doing most of the grunt work as Pereiro – who played the work horse on Sunday – stayed comfortably back in his draft. In the final meters, Evans strained to take the stage and Pereiro never even grimaced. With 300 meters to go, he swept off to Evans’s left and easily took the stage.

Evans had proved his point, though, and would not have been in a mood to celebrate. “I might have missed out on the stage win, but I wanted to do something today to show my respect,” he said at the finish, visibly shaken by the tragedy of the day before. “I simply haven’t got any words to compensate for the loss.”

He improved to seventh place overall. Basso and Rasmussen are still 2:46 and 3:09 behind the American, respectively, positions that likely will not change on today’s long, flat ride from Pau to Revel.

The 11th-placed rider, Andreas Kloden (T-Mobile), rode to the finish with a fractured hand and may have to withdraw from the race. He and teammate Mattias Kessler were part of an crash early in yesterday’s stage. Kloden gritted out the ride, but went to the hospital after the finish and was diagnosed with a hairline fracture. Kessler is also questionable for today’s stage due to a concussion suffered in the crash.