JUAN Soler Hernandez, of Colombia, has won stage nine of the Tour de France, over 159.5 kilometres between Val d’Isere and Briancon.

The Barloworld rider won by 37 seconds from Spain’s Alejandro Valverde and Australia’s Cadel Evans, who took 12 and eight bonus seconds respectively from the yellow jersey, Michael Rasmussen.

The bonus seconds helped Valverde leapfrog his compatriot Iban Mayo into second place in the overall standings.

Rasmussen, who crossed the line in the same group as both Valverde and Evans, retains the overall lead and gained almost three minutes on the former race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov, who struggled over the monstruous 2,645-metre climb of the Col du Galibier.

Vinokourov at least had a better day than Marcus Burghardt of the luckless T-Mobile team. On Sunday Burghardt lost his team leader, Michael Rogers, who crashed and dislocated his collar bone.

On Tuesday he himself crashed when a labrador was let loose by a spectator on a descent, running into the peloton and bringing Burghardt down.

The dog and the rider were unharmed, but the latter was forced to change his bike.