And, even worse, Rubiera was unable to respond when the Basque Haimar Zubeldia, a distant threat overall, charged up the road. Instead, while Armstrong was forced to respond to that challenge in person, the next, by Kazakh Alexandre Vinokourov was too much for the American.Maintaining a steady pace, Ullrich sensed the moment had come to strike a definitive blow for the yellow jersey – which he last held back in 1998, the year after he had taken the Tour. Tearing past the Kazakh, Ullrich then ploughed onwards and upwards towards the finish, rapidly passing a floundering Mercado, and gaining a 12-second bonus for second place on the line.”I am more than satisfied with this result,” said Ullrich. “I never thought Armstrong would show any weakness.”After breaking his collarbone in two places 12 days ago, Massachusetts-born Tyler Hamilton found the going too tough shortly before his fellow-American Armstrong cracked, sliding to fifth place.Furthermore, if the margin between the first three overall is a mere minute – remarkably close after more than 2,200km of racing – the fourth-placed rider, Haimar Zubeldia, is now more than four minutes back and no longer a real threat.The opportunities for Ullrich to claw back yet more time on Armstrong and perhaps overtake him even before next Saturday’s decisive final time-trial are numerous.Today’s 191.5km stage between Saint Girons and Loudenvielle is just the first, taking the riders over no less than seven classified climbs. Then on Monday comes the hardest Pyrenean stage of them all – the 11km ascent to Luz Ardiden.Alasdair Fotheringham writes for ‘Cycling Weekly’. Fish can’t smile.

(Except, that is, in my now famous book Catch More Shark, which features savage porbeagles, makos and great whites grinning away in possibly the worst drawings to appear in a book by anyone over five.)

Fish can’t smile. Trout are fine monitors of pollution; if a water’s polluted, they die. And few places have been more maltreated than this 11-mile Thames tributary.This is a big week for the Wandle On 26 July 1803, the Surrey Iron Railway started. Running from Wandsworth to Croydon, it was the world’s first public railway There were no trains, however.

Horses pulled the wagons, which carried a variety of goods from the busiest area of London.It was such an important area that more people commuted to the Wandle valley than lived there. In medieval times, Merton Abbey was bigger than West-minster or Canterbury, and kings were crowned there.Good news for property developers, bad news for trout Pollution from dozens of mills washed into the river. Among the worst offenders was William Morris (who actually produced a Wandle print). Much of his design work and manufacturing was done at Merton Abbey.

Yet for a while, the trout (and other fish) survived Morris’s mess, thanks to the little river’s pace.Despite increased pollution, people paid handsomely to fish there. The angling editor of The Field at the time, Francis Francis, grumbled: “Rents upon some parts of the Wandle almost amount to £1 a yard.” But the fishing was good. Trout of 2lb-3lb were common in the first part of the 19th century, and Charles Hudson, after whom a special Wandle fly was named, caught 400 brace in just four months.In the end, pollution won Pretty well everything disappeared. In the 1950s, the Thames itself was so polluted that even eels couldn’t live there. But some sterling work by the Environment Agency has improved things markedly.Barbel to 13lb, 4lb perch, big roach, chub and dace are being caught there. A salmon was captured recently at Beddington sewage works, having negotiated six weirs and a culvert several hundred feet long.