"Every day we can work to get Vincenzo higher on General Classification is a good day. Today in the Alps was a pretty good day."

Those were the words of Astana's Tanel Kangert after stage seventeen at the Tour de France. Kangert rode into a large breakaway on the first day in the Alps, building more than 10 minutes advantage on the peloton over four categorized climbs in a group of 27 riders.

On the final descent after the breakaway had splintered into pieces, Kangert rode easily ahead of an elite group of leaders coming from behind, including teammate Vincenzo Nibali . With strong teamwork and solid preparation, Kangert and Nibali joined forces on the final climb into Pra Loup in front of tens of thousands of fans and executed their tactics with great success.

Nibali finished 7:31 behind stage winner Simon Geschke of Germany, who is 46 minutes behind overall leader Chris Froome of Great Britain. More importantly, thanks to Kangert, Michele Scarponi, Jakob Fuglsang and the entire Astana Pro Team squad, Nibali moved up from 8th to 7th overall in General Classification, and moved to within 30 seconds of 6th.

Asked about Chris Froome's performance in this first alpine stage, Vincenzo Nibali said he had been impressed.

"He was really good. He managed to control things. We attacked him several times, me, Quintana, Valverde. He came back on his own or with the help of his team-mates. It was really hard to beat him. We could not do any better. Today my legs responded well and my team worked well. We tried to launch attacks. We still have two hard stages ahead of us. We'll have to play it day by day."