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The decisive individual time trial of the 2006 Tour de France over 57 km took place on the 19th stage. The entire stage was quite undulating and selective. It was in contrast to the first individual time trial on the 7th stage, which had a flat profile. Before the start of the race, the three best in the overall classification, Óscar Pereiro, Carlos Sastre and Floyd Landis, were close together. Sastre was twelve seconds behind Pereiro, Landis was a further 18 seconds behind. Andreas Klöden, the captain of the T-Mobile team, followed 2:29 minutes behind the leader and thus still had a chance of a place on the podium of the top three on the final day in Paris.