Dekker pounces as peloton dawdles

David Millar's painful first week ended yesterday when the young Briton finished outside the time limit set for the stage, over 35 minutes behind the winner, Erik Dekker of Holland.

However, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich and Joseba Beloki, last year's top three, also missed the cut, as did the entire field apart from 14 riders in the day's winning escape, according to the president of the Tour's disciplinary committee, Giovanni Meraviglia. Fortunately, and entirely unsurprisingly, they were all permitted to stay in the race as the rules allow in "exceptional circumstances".

And this was an exceptional stage. Millar described it as "horrific" but for the first time this Tour the entire field shared his suffering. They finished chilled and sodden to a man after almost six hours in the rain, which varied through the day from heavy to torrential. Horrific it certainly was, but things may be looking up for the lone British rider, although he remains in last place, the first Briton since Paul Sherwen in 1985 to wear the "red lantern".

Millar finished in the main pack yesterday, something he has not managed since his crash in the opening time trial nine days ago and on Saturday, conscious of the need to make a show on Bastille Day for his Cofidis team, he was one of a three-rider group that held the lead to the top of the first climb.

"It's picking up a bit, I'm definitely feeling a bit better," he said.

With yesterday's sodden six hours coming on top of a week of pain, Millar will end up with caractere, as well as sweat, oozing from every pore.

Yesterday's great escape began three miles from the start and its 14 participants stayed huddled together, as if for warmth, as the Tour headed south, initially a stone's throw across the Rhine from Germany and finally running parallel to the border with Switzerland.

With their minds merely on getting through the day, the peloton let the 14 upstarts squelch away to a lead of over half an hour, unprecedented for any break in the post-war years, which meant the main bunch had not reached the banner marking 25km to go when Dekker out-sprinted the Spaniard Aitor Gonzalez, the Belgian Servais Knaven, and Marc Wauters, who delighted the home crowd with a stage win in Antwerp on Monday.

While Dekker added a sodden victory to his three stage wins of last year, there were major ramifications as the result transformed the overall standings. The yellow jersey, which switched on Saturday from Stuart O'Grady to his German team-mate Jens Voigt, is now back on the shoulders of the Australian, who was one of the 14, and he also relieved Erik Zabel of the points leader's green jersey, his long-term objective here.

The reason why the peloton took so little interest was not merely down to the weather: of the 14 escapees, only one, Millar's Kazakh team-mate Andrei Kivilev, has any reputation as a man who can climb mountains; he now leads Lance Armstrong and the other favourites by some 13 minutes, which could be enough to put him in the yellow jersey if he can hang on today at l'Alpe d'Huez.

All riders have their own ways of coping with conditions like yesterday's and Dekker's sounded the wisest. "When you were in the break it was better than being in the peloton," he said, and this is indeed the case. Fourteen men throw less spray in the eyes than 180, it is easier to skid around traffic islands and over slippery zebra crossings in a small group, and there is less danger of hitting the brakes too hard and losing control.

Yesterday, however, being in the break had one overwhelming advantage, according to the Dutchman: "It was half an hour shorter."