acting as a free agent (a sprinter without his own leadout train) in the flat stages. The team hoped for a mountain stage win and possibly a high overall placing from Gesink. The team was mostly quiet in the race's first week. Menchov rode poorly in the prologue time trial, nearly a minute off the winning time of Fabian Cancellara and five seconds worse than Gesink, despite the fact that Menchov is generally the far superior time trialist. In stage 2, when dozens of riders from nearly every team crashed on a slippery descent of the Col du Stockeu in Spa, Gesink crashed and broke a bone in his right arm. It was reported as likely that he would withdraw from the Tour, but he rode on. Freire had difficulties in the early flat stages, tenth in stage 4 the closest he came to a victory. In stage 7 to Station des Rousses in the Jura, the first stage with any significant quantity of climbing, Menchov and Gesink both finished with the peloton, a result which moved Menchov into tenth overall after being distant in the overall classification to that point. The next day, in a more climbing-intensive stage, Menchov and Gesink finished with the second group on the road, ceding 10 seconds to Andy Schleck and Samuel Sánchez but gaining time against everyone else in the race. This result moved Menchov up to fifth overall, and Gesink to 11th, up from 23rd. In the next stage, one which featured one of the Tour's hardest climbs, the Col de la Madeleine, Menchov and Gesink rode most of the stage together. They lost two minutes to Schleck and Alberto Contador and effectively any chance to win the race, and also lost one minute and ten seconds to Sánchez, but gained time against nearly everyone else in the race. They occupied fourth (Menchov) and seventh (Gesink) after the stage. During stage 14, Menchov and Sánchez pulled back 14 seconds from Schleck and Contador, after the two leaders engaged in a bizarre seeming track stand during the stage's final climb to Ax-3-Domaines. They still sat over two minutes behind them in the overall classification, an effectively insurmountable time gap. Gesink also passed Levi Leipheimer in this stage to move up to sixth overall, as the American lost 45 seconds to Gesink's group. In stage 15, Menchov and Sánchez were tangentially involved in the