Tour de France 2008

I'm confused, schleck looked like he had the legs on evans and yet never really put in the really fierce attack to try and break him, team orders? is castres good enough to beat evans in the time trial?

better for CSC to have: sastre a minute and a half in front of evans
than:
sastre 40 seconds and schleck 30 seconds in front of evans. if schleck attacked and dragged evans along then it would limit sastre's gains. so the Schlecks were almost certainly ordered not to attack.

still two stages in which it is entirely possible to put time for either schleck or sastre to put time into evans.

Plus a real race on the Champs could happen.

Wrong.

No way can Sastre ride away from Evans + teammates on a flat stage, and there is ABSOLUTELY no way they would attack the yellow jersey on the final stage. apart from the shame of it, no single team has the power to ride away from a peloton hell-bent on getting their sprinters to the line.

It's all about the time trial, simple as that.