Contador vs Schleck

Lore & Background

By the summer of 2010, Andy Schleck had announced himself as one of the Tour's most dangerous climbers. A young Luxembourgish with a rider's build and an almost reckless attacking style, he had already shown flashes of brilliance. In the 2010 Tour, he seized the yellow jersey in the Alps and carried it into the final mountain stages, with his brother Fränk Schleck also in the top group. The Schleck name was suddenly everywhere in the cycling world.

Alberto Contador, by contrast, was the established giant. A three-time Tour winner by 2015, a Giro and Vuelta champion, and a rider whose Grand Tour consistency was unmatched in his era, Contador entered 2010 as a strong contender but not the outright favourite. He was in third, watching the Schleck brothers battle ahead of him. What followed on the penultimate mountain stage—Andy Schleck's devastating crash, the loss of the yellow jersey, and Contador's quiet, relentless climb to the summit—became one of the most replayed and debated moments in Tour history.

The 2011 Tour offered a brief sequel: Contador won again, and Andy Schleck finished second, a respectable but bittersweet result for a rider whose confidence had been shattered the year before. By 2013, Schleck had retired, his career effectively ended by the injuries and the psychological weight of that 2010 crash. Contador, meanwhile, continued to collect Grand Tour victories, but the rivalry's shadow lingered—a reminder that in the Tour, one bad day on one mountain can erase years of work.

In Their Own Story

The road was wet. Not rain-wet, but that cold, damp Alpine slick that makes the tarmac feel like black ice under the pedals. Andy Schleck was in the break, or had just been reeled in, and the peloton was a long, snaking line of carbon and sweat threading up the switchbacks. Contador was there, a few seconds back, eyes fixed on the road ahead, hands wrapped around the drops. Then the corner came—the one everyone knew was coming, the one the radio had been warning about for three kilometres. The bike went sideways. The sound was not a crash. It was a thud, a scrape, a long metallic shriek of frame on rock. Andy was on the ground. The yellow jersey was in the dust. Contador did not slow. He could not slow. The race was still running, the clock was still ticking, and somewhere behind him, in the motorhome, the numbers were already shifting. He crossed the summit with his arms still locked in the drops, jaw set, and did not look back. He did not need to. The yellow jersey was already his.

Reader's Guide

Two riders, two nations, one mountain road. Alberto Contador, the Spanish grandmaster, and Andy Schleck, the young Luxembourgish climber, were natural opponents: Contador for his ice-cold Grand Tour consistency and tactical patience, Schleck for his explosive, all-or-nothing attacking style. Where Contador managed a race like a chess match, Schleck played each stage like a street fight.

In 2010, the Tour delivered its cruel script. Schleck took the yellow jersey in the Alps, carried it into the final week, and seemed poised for a historic victory. Then came the mountain stage—Stage 17—and a corner that ended everything. The crash was not a tangle of wheels; it was a solo, high-speed departure from the road. Schleck hit the ground hard, the yellow jersey scattering, and the race's trajectory shifted in a single breath. Contador, in third, did not need to attack. He simply kept his pace, and the summit came to him.

The 2011 Tour offered a quieter reprise: Contador won again, Schleck finished second, and the rivalry closed like a book already written. What it left behind was a lesson the Tour has repeated since: in the mountains, the race is not won by the strongest rider on the day, but by the one still standing when the road turns.

The rivalry shaped the sport's narrative more than its statistics. It became shorthand for the Tour's cruelty, the fragility of a lead, and the way a single moment can define a career. Fans still argue about it—about the crash, about the timing, about what might have been. That argument is the rivalry's true legacy.

Did You Know?

• Andy Schleck's brother, Fränk Schleck, was also a professional cyclist and was in the top group during the 2010 Tour, making the Schleck name a dominant force in that race.
• Contador's 2010 victory came without him ever wearing the yellow jersey for an extended period in the final week—he inherited it from the chaos of Schleck's crash rather than through a decisive attack.
• Andy Schleck retired from professional cycling in 2013, just three years after the 2010 crash that is widely considered the turning point of his career.
• The 2010 Schleck crash occurred on a mountain stage in the final week of the Tour, meaning the race was already in its decisive phase when the yellow jersey changed hands.