Andy Schleck Finishes Second Overall in the Tour de France

After three weeks of hard and vicious riding around France, the field today went out on lthe last 164 kilometer of parading the caravan to Paris, of which 52 kilometres were done on one of the world's most busy streets, the Champs Elysées. Here the last serious duel in the battle of the green jersey was being fought between Norwegian, Hushovd (Cervelo) and British, Cavendish (Columbia).

In addition, there was no contest between the GC-riders whose positions finally fell into place after yesterday's ascent to Mont Ventoux, where Team Saxo Bank's Fränk Schleck advanced to an overall position as fifth while Andy Schleck consolidated his second place in the overall standings and left a strong belief in a future victory in the toughest race in the world.

On today's eight final laps on the famous Parisian avenue a group of seven riders escaped, but they we were all wheeled back in by Team Columbia who was preparing the mass sprint for Cavendish who demonstrated totally dominance by winning in front of his teammate Renshaw.

Team Saxo Bank has dominated this year's edition of Tour de France from start to finish. On the first day the team's Swiss king of TT, Fabian Cancellara, won the initial time trial with a safe margin and he was dressed in yellow after the very first stage. The strong time machine from Bern was also close to victory on the second time trial but was beaten by Contador (Astana) with just three seconds after forty kilometers alone on the road.

Danish Nicki Sørensen managed to entertain a whole world on stage twelve where he caught the breakaway alone, escaped from this group with Calzati (Agritubel), left him and kept everyone behind, crossed the line alone and took the perhaps most impressive stage victory of the Tour de France this year.

In retrospective, Team Saxo Bank had an absolutely satisfying Tour de France counting three stage wins, two riders in the top five in the GC and winning the youth competition.

"We are very pleased with the proceeds of this year's Tour de France which has been a race beyond all expectations. The whole team has demonstrated world class and with Andy and Frank as leading figures, we have demonstrated that we can compete for the overall victory in the years to come. I would say to thank the fans who turned up during the stages to support our team. It has an enormous impact on the riders especially when it hurts the most out there", said a happy sports director, Kim Andersen after the last stage of the Tour de France.

Nicki Sørensen was as content as his sports director:

"It has been my best Tour de France so far. It has been a lot of fun and extremely tough at times but we did a fantastic piece of teamwork where everyone had an important role to play and I have been very happy about our team captains", said Danish Nicki Sørensen after the last lap on Champs Élysées.