to be a bid to take the yellow jersey. The final climb to the Super Besse ski station saw several attempts at breaks among the leaders, and eventually Costa was able to open a gap to the rest of the breakaway group. Vinokourov overhauled the rest of the escapees, but he was caught within the last kilometre, while Costa won the stage. Philippe Gilbert broke clear of the peloton to secure second place, and the lead in the points competition, while Hushovd, contrary to expectations, finished in the first group to retain his overall lead. Van Garderen, by virtue of having been the first rider over the category two Col de la Croix Saint-Robert, assumed the lead in the climbers' category. Stage 9 10 July 2011 — Issoire to Saint-Flour, This stage, like the preceding one, had more points available for the king of the mountains competition than all the preceding stages added together. There were no breaks from the peloton until the first climb of the day, which was contested by Thomas Voeckler () and Johnny Hoogerland (), who were joined by Juan Antonio Flecha (), Sandy Casar (), Luis León Sánchez () and Niki Terpstra (). Terpstra was unable to stay with the escapees on higher climbs as the day went on, but the remaining five riders extended their lead. An early fall by Alberto Contador, after a collision with Vladimir Karpets, caused aggravation to an earlier knee injury, but a later fall delayed many riders, and caused the elimination of GC contenders Alexander Vinokourov and Jurgen Van den Broeck, and injury to Andreas Klöden and other riders. The pursuit of the breakaway was delayed to allow riders involved in the crash, or who stopped to help their colleagues, to rejoin the peloton, thus increasing the likelihood that Voeckler, less than a minute and a half behind in the general classification, would take over the race leadership. Within the final 40 km, two of the leading five riders were involved in a dramatic crash after Juan Antonio Flecha was sideswiped by a France Télévisions car during an overtaking manoeuvre, causing fellow breakaway rider, Johnny Hoogerland to crash into a barbed wire fence. His wound required 33 stitches. Although both riders were able to finish the stage and they shared the combative rider award for the day (one of the rare cases when it had been jointly awarded), they