Thor Hushovd holds yellow in fierce battle at Tour de France

RUI ALBERTO COSTA has won stage eight today in a gutsy ride at the Tour de France.

Alberto Rui Costa

RUI ALBERTO COSTA has won stage eight today in a gutsy ride at the Tour de France.

But it wasn't enough to dislodge Norwegian world champion Thor Hushovd from the yellow as the race hit the mountains of central France during the 189km stage from Aigurande to Super-Besse Sancy.

Costa, not long back from having served a 12 month suspension for taking a banned substance, had fought a two man battle for the last 30kms with rookie American Tejay Van Garderen on the HTC-Highroad team, before the 24-year-old from Portugal found some inner strength to be the first over the line at the top of the Super-Besse in 4hrs. 36mins. 46 secs.

Australias’ Cadel Evans crossed the line third behind Costa and Philippe Gilbert as the Victorian's BMC team-mates covered every attack and counter-attack.

Hushovd finished with the Evans group to keep the race leader's jersey on the opening day of racing in the Massif Central mountain range.

Costa and Tejay Van Garderen on the HTC-Highroad squad, two of the survivors of an earlier five man attack, had battled each other for stage honours from the climb to the Col de la Croix Saint-Robert, only for the rookie American to stumble in the last two kilometres.

The pair were chased by a small select group of riders that included the dangerous Alexandre Vinokourov of Astana, which prompted a reaction from Evans fearing the the Kazakh, the closest to the Victorian in terms of the general classification, would take the jersey.

Costa and Van Garderen had been part of a nine man breakaway group comprising the Cofidis duo of Julien El Fares and Romain Zingle, Christophe Riblon (Ag2r), Xabier Zandio (Sky), Addy Engels (Quick Step), Alexandr Kolobnev (Katusha), and  Cyril Gautier (Europcar) who slipped off the front at around the 10km mark.

While Van Garderen, 22, is making his first race appearance at the Tour, Costa is best known for his fist fight with Carlos Barredo at the end of stage six a year ago, who started the stage as the highest classified rider in the break, 4min.02secs. and 43rd overall behind Hushovd in yellow before the start of the day.

The nine had set a cracking pace, averaging a tick over 48kph for the first 50km of the stage before they reached the first of four climbs of the day at the Cote d'Evaux les Bains.

At one point the breakaways extended their lead to more than six minutes before Evans' BMC team, with George Hincapie, now at his 16th Tour, equalling the record previously held by Joop Zoetemelk, going to the front of the race to ensure the escapees' time gap was still manageable to reel in when it got down to the business end of the stage.

Evans' squad stayed at the front until the final 40-kilometres from the finish when Vinokourov's Astana and then Garmin Cervelo, with the Scot David Millar just behind the Australian, began to share the workload at the front at the main field approached the climb to the top of the Col de la Croix Saint-Robert, at 1451m, the high point of the stage, some 175m above the actual stage finish at Super-Besse Sancy.

There was no great surprise at the start of the day when news filtered out that the American Chris Horner of Team RadioShack hadn't signed on having spent the night in hospital after crashing on the previous day's stage. While two CT scans cleared Horner of any serious injury, he was still nursing a king-sized headache and a broken nose.

As a precaution, RadioShack team boss Johan Bruyneel, erring on the side of caution, wisely pulled Horner out of the race.Horner is the second team rider to withdraw from the Tour following the loss of the Slovenian Jani Brajkovic, just one of a number of riders to withdraw following a spate of accidents that blighted the first week of racing at the 98the edition of the Tour.

It is sad for Horner, 39 - he turns 40 on October 23 - is at an age he most probably won't get another chance of racing into Paris again as this was most likely his last appearance at the Grand Boucle.

His previous best result was in finishing 10th behind Contador last year.He had come to France with solid race form in his legs, including winning the overall at the Tour of California in May.

The loss of Brajkovic and now Horner, puts a large dent in RadioShack's chances of defending the team's trophy they won a year ago in Lance Armstrong's last appearance at the Tour.

Two crashes at other decisive times of the race has seen the team's third leader, Levi Leipheimer, lose 4mins. 29secs. before the start of the day, leaving only the seasoned German Andreas Kloden, a twice runner-up in 2004 and again in 2006, still in contention for the yellow.

 Elsewhere, Bradley Wiggins, the Team Sky captain who crashed out of the race on Friday, flew back to Manchester yesterday for an operation to pin his broken left collarbone.

"Wiggo is scheduled to go under the knife on Monday," the Moree-born Team Sky coach Shane Sutton told The Australian, when contacted by phone."

His loss has meant a re-think about the team goals for the rest of the race. Bradley had been in the best form of his career and a real chance for the overall," Sutton said.

"With Geraint Thomas having also lost the white jersey, the team goals now will be to go for stage wins." As far as Wiggo goes he should be back on his bike in 10 days time and racing again as early as the Tour of Denmark in three weeks."