The only one to beat the impressive achievement of Fabian Cancellara to complete today's time trial with an average speed of 49.5km/h was Stefan Schumacher. The German ended with a 21" advantage.

Contrary to the expectation of many, Carlos Sastre, leader of the general managed to hang on to his yellow jersey. He was expected to lose some of his advantage to Cadel Evans during the final time trial of the 2008 Tour de France, and although he did lose 29 seconds, he didn't lose his grip on the overall lead.

Stage 20, the last before tomorrow's final ride onto the Champs-Élysées, started at 11.18am with Bernhard Eisel. He was 42" behind Wim Vansevenant, but finished with a 1'25" advantage to the Belgium, making Vansevenant likely to end this Tour de France last for the third time in a row.

Belgian time trial champion Leif Hoste set the bar at each intermediate check, with 22’28” at 18km, 45’16” at 36km, 1h01’33” at 47.5km and 1h07’40” at the finish.

Danny Pate repeated Hoste's times and finished 56" before the Belgian.

Then it was Cancellara's turn. He stormed around the race, become the first to reach the second check with an average speed of over 50km/h. By the end of the race, his average speed had dropped to 49.5km/h, not enough to stay ahead of Schumacher, who was a surprise winner of the first time trial, but showed that was not an accident.

“In the final, after such a long time trial, you find yourself being cross-eyed from the effort. I didn’t know anything about my time when I hit the finish line so I had to ask, ‘Which place?’ And I heard first and as I’d already beaten the time of [Fabian] Cancellara I knew I had a good chance to win," Schumacher told letour.com.

“I don’t think anybody outside of the team thought that we could do a Tour like this so it’s unreal. I’ve been talking a lot with Bernhard [Kohl] and we’re always saying, ‘Hey, this isn’t just any bike race. It’s the Tour!’ And I cannot believe what we’ve done. He said that he’d be happy with fifth and now he’s third and the King of the Mountains… so it’s been an incredible adventure,” Schumacher said.