The Isle of Man rider then set a furious pace up the final 7.8km ascent to Ax 3 Domaines - so furious that he ran out of energy and was forced to drop away with around 6km remaining.
But after seven days of fraught but indecisive racing, Saturday, with two major Pyrenean ascents, the Col de Pailheres and the final summit finish at Ax-3-Domaines, the favourites' cards will be truly face-up on the table.
Late Mozart -- the final piano concerto, lissomely played by Emmanuel Ax, and the "Magic Flute" overture -- was juxtaposed with early Shostakovich: his ferociously precocious first symphony had its premiere when he was 20.
The Briton sprinted away from his main rivals, including Alberto Contador, on the final climb to the summit finish at Ax 3 Domaines in the Pyrenees.
AX and WW conceived the project and drafted the final manuscript.
Like Johnson and Sims, he was set to enter the final year of his contract, making him vulnerable to the salary cap ax.
Axing all of London's PCSOs would be the final nail in the coffin for neighbourhood policing and mean far fewer officers on the beat in our communities acting as the eyes and ears of the Met".
Madrid was the top vote-getter in Round 2, but it got the ax in Round 3. London edged out Paris, 54 50, in the final vote.
But unlike previous corporate spats on Capitol Hill, voters would quickly see the impact of the year's final congressional action if the government uses it to give their favorite websites the ax.
Yet it was in the final Appassionata Sonata, Op 57 in F minor, with its combination of brooding passion and powerful resonance that Ax came into his own.
