Three of cycling’s biggest names made the big, 10-man breakaway Saturday in the Amgen Tour of California, but in the end, none of them ended up contending for the Stage 7 victory.

Instead, three others — Rinaldo Nocentini of AG2R, Hayden Roulston of the Cervélo TestTeam and Pieter Weening of Rabobank — escaped from the escapees on the finishing circuits in Pasadena, with Nocentini nosing out Roulston at the finishing line.

The three big names — Big George Hincapie of Columbia-High Road, Christian VandeVelde of Garmin-Slipstream and Frank Schleck of Saxo Bank — finished among the remants of the breakaway, seven seconds back, with Hincapie’s bid for a repeat of last year’s stage victory dashed.

Hincapie tried to escape from the group, which also included Markus Zberg of BMC, Chris Baldwin of Rock Racing, Addy Engels of Quick Step and Martin Elmiger of AG2R, but the group wouldn’t let him get away on the five finishing circuits.

Meanwhile, back in the peloton, Astana was forced to chase the breakaway as all of the sprinters’ teams — and hence potential helpers — were represented in the breakaway, with no impetus to chase. The gap reached about 4 1/2 minutes at one point, but Astana had pulled it to 2:16 minutes by the end, thus comfortably preserving the yellow jersey for Levi Leipheimer.

Leipheimer, the two-time defending champ, leads Garmin’s David Zabriskie by 36 seconds and Columbia-High Road’s Michael Rogers by 46 seconds. Among the breakaway riders, Schleck and Hincapie were the closest to Leipheimer in the overall, with Schleck 6:22 behind entering the stage and Hincapie 6:35.

Thus, Leipheimer is poised for a three-peat today when the race ends with stage from Rancho Bernado into Escondido.

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