Stage One: Valsain to La Granja de San Ildefonso, ITT, 9.7km/6.0mi
- by Cathy Mehl / photos by Graham Watson

For the second day in a row Team Astana placed a rider on the top step of the podium, securing the 7th team win of the season. Following yesterday's victory by Tomas Vaitkus in the Netherlands, today's stage in the 23rd Castilla y Leon stage race saw none other than 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador taking the win by four seconds over teammate Levi Leipheimer in an individual time trial. After Alberto accepted his flowers and received all of the jerseys for the various competitions, he carefully laid them aside and pointed over and over to the name "Astana" emblazoned on his jersey, making sure cycling promoters worldwide are taking note what team he is riding for and what team is consistently winning so far this season.

This is who AC rides for - any questions?

Today's stage was a quick zip over rolling terrain, with riders taking off at one-minute intervals to race against the clock under cloudy skies and temperatures around 12C (54F). Early fast times belonged to American rider Jason McCartney (Team CSC) with 11.54 and Thomas Dekker (Rabobank) just ahead of him with 11.51. Leipheimer beat both of them with 11.43 and looked good for a win by taking a full eight seconds out of Dekker. But soon enough teammate Contador stole the day with a winning time of 11.39.

As defending champion of the race, Contador was last on course and did not disappoint. Riding well within himself and showing that hard work on his time trialing position is beginning to pay off, the race-favorite stormed the course and took the stage win as well as race lead after stage one. Leipheimer took second on both, with Dekker rounding out the podium and general classification for third place.

Other Team Astana notables were Andreas Klöden in 12th, Chris Horner in 13th and Daniel Navarro in 15th. With a Grand Tour-quality team backing Alberto in his effort to repeat last year's victory, the boys will once again be racing to prove that Team Astana deserve to be invited to the world's best races and serve notice that other teams might already be vying for second place.

In other team racing news, the 93rd Rund um Köln in Germany was canceled today due to snowy conditions. Ekimov and crew will now prepare for Dwars door Vlaanderent in Belgium on Wednesday.

Levi on his way to a solid 2nd place

Stage One results
1 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana 11.39 (49.957 km/h)
2 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Astana 0.04
3 Thomas Dekker (Ned) Rabobank 0.13
4 Jason McCartney (USA) Team CSC 0.15
5 Samuel Sanchez Gonzalez (Spa) Euskaltel - Euskadi 0.19
6 Christian Vande Velde (USA) Slipstream Chipotle
7 Steven Cozza (USA) Slipstream Chipotle 0.25
8 Moises Duenas Nevado (Spa) Barloworld 0.28
9 Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank
10 Mauricio Soler (Col) Barloworld

Team Astana
12 Andreas Klöden (Ger) .30
13 Chris Horner (USA) 0.32
15 Daniel Navarro Garcia (Spa) 0.35
31 Benjamin Noval Gonzalez (Spa) .44
43 Sergio Miguel Moreira Paulinho (Por) 0.54
52 José Luis Rubiera Vigil (Spa) .57

Results provided by www.cyclingnews.com