Marco Pantani has claimed his first stage win of the 1998 Tour with a perfectly planned, patient push up the climb to Plateau de Beille. The 11th stage of the Tour featured four lower-ranked climbs - one cat.1, and three cat.2 - before the Hors Categorie finish at Plateau de Beille only a (strong) stone-throw from Andorra, the site of Ullrich's original overall-winning coup last year. And, as happened last year when the Tour caravan headed to the mountains around the tiny mid-Pyrenean country, Jan Ullrich has already signaled his domination of the overall prize. Pantani made the day today, while Ullrich simply marked his main contenders; making sure he lost no time to the riders who are likely to challenge him - in
the stage 20 time trial - for the yellow jersey he started the day in. But if Pantani and Ullrich reaped the rewards of the day, it was Roland Meier of the outstanding Cofidis team who earns the award for the most inspired ride today. The Swiss rider eventually finished in second place ahead of Ullrich's group of favorites. What made his ride so spectacular, however, was not that he claimed two of the mountain primes, but the fact that he scored the second after crawling up from a fall over a roadside barrier. After setting off in pursuit of the first break of the day - a doomed effort by Lylian Lebreton of the Big-Mat team - Meier joined Kelme's Jose Javier Gomez on the climb up the the Portet d'Aspet. One kilometer from the summit, he attacked Gomez to claim the points. On the way back down, however, Meier's concentration lapsed and he went over the edge of a steel road-side barrier. Unhurt, save for his pride, he then set about chasing down Gomez - yet again - leaving  him behind in his wake before the summit of the Col de la Core.He then rode solo for 85km before being caught by an inspired Pantani
mid-way up the final climb of the day. It was on this final climb that the action really heated up. First of all, it appeared that Pantani (and the rest of the favorites in his group) had left their run too late -starting the climb 3'53" behind Meier, who was riding like 10 men despite his fall and solo effort. 
The second drama of the final climb was a puncture by the yellow jersey. But, as loyal to his leader as Ullrich was to Riis in 1996, the Danish winner of the 1996 Tour waited for the young German and paced him back to the peloton (which included all the remaining big-hitters for the overall prize: Jalabert, Pantani, Leblanc, Julich,Boogerd et al).
      Then the Pirate decided his time and come and off he went. Not as rapidly as yesterday, no, but enough. He put 100m meters into the Ullrich group and lingered a little. Ullrich seem to be thinking about  chasing, but kept his cool aware that he already had a decent buffer on the Italian wizard (of 4'41" at the start of the day). Instead,Ullrich simply surged in the way in which he stole his first Tour de France yellow jersey a little over a year ago: with straight- back,seated style indicative of his role-model, Indurain. Without rising from the saddle, Ullrich sorted out the contenders from the pretenders in five kilometers of stomping. With Pantani past Meier (who was still riding a strong race, simply unable to match the inspired Italian), the
rest of the race was for second place. Ullrich led a band of five wheel followers - Escartin (Kelme), Rinero and Julich (Cofidis), Boogerd (Rabobank) and Piepoli (Saeco) - en-route to the summit. 
  At the end of the day, the top five looks like it might settle for a while, with Ullrich leading Julich, Jalabert, Pantani and Boogerd into tomorrow's rest day.