Tour de France | Frank Schleck holds lead after Stage 16

JAUSIERS, France — The Tour de France cannot be won in one day, the saying goes, but it can be lost.

Two elite cyclists might have done exactly that during the 16th stage, losing crucial time on the day's final climb and a long descent to this Alpine village.

Denis Menchov, a Russian rider for Rabobank who started the day in fourth place, 38 seconds behind the race leader, Team CSC rider Frank Schleck, crossed the summit of the Bonette-Restefond pass with the top contenders. But Menchov lost 35 seconds on the 14.6-mile descent. He finished the day in fifth place overall, 1 minute, 13 seconds behind Luxembourg's Schleck, who retained the yellow jersey.

"Nothing special happened," Menchov said. "I just lost the wheel. The upper sections of the downhill were very technical and difficult. ... I didn't panic and I didn't get scared."

The results were worse for American Christian Vande Velde, a Garmin-Chipotle rider who started the day in fifth place, 39 seconds off the lead. Vande Velde fell behind the leaders' group on the climb up Bonette-Restefond and crashed on the descent. He finished the stage 2:36 behind the race leaders and dropped to sixth place, 3:15 behind Schleck.

"I just hit a tight corner and fell," Vande Velde said.

The top three places in the overall standings were unchanged, with Schleck leading Austrian Bernhard Kohl of the Gerolsteiner team by seven seconds and Australian Cadel Evans of the Silence-Lotto team by eight seconds. Carlos Sastre, Schleck's teammate, moved up to fourth, 49 seconds back. The Tour ends Sunday in Paris.

The stage, which crossed two climbs rated "beyond category" in steepness and length, was won by Cyril Dessel of the Ag2r-La Mondiale team. He became the second Frenchman to win a stage in the 95th edition of the Tour, joining Samuel Dumoulin of Cofidis, who took the third stage.

Dessel was part of a group of four riders who came down the mountain together, and he jumped ahead of his rivals in the final corner, roughly 500 yards from the finish. After the stage, Dessel said he had spotted the turn on the race map as a good place to attack when his team was plotting strategy.

Dessel's group lost a fifth member on the way down. John-Lee Augustyn, who rides for Barloworld, was the first to cross the summit of Bonette-Restefond. But after descending a couple of switchbacks, the South African went off the road and over the side of the mountain, tumbling head over handlebars and falling about 30 yards down a steep slope of loose, finely ground rock.

Augustyn was not seriously injured and finished the stage in 35th place.

Today, what often is termed the Tour's toughest stage ends with the storied, serpentine climb to L'Alpe d'Huez.

"We're going to try to make the other riders lose the Tour de France tomorrow," Schleck said.