While Fabian Cancellara crushed the field in the opening time trial and took the first yellow jersey, methinks Alberto Contador and the Astana team seized control of the 2009 Tour de France on Saturday in Monaco.

Contador finished second to Cancellara, 18 seconds behind in the 15 kilometer TT, and he ended the talk about who would be the strongman of the stacked Astana team — him or seven-time TdF winner Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, an early leader in the stage, ended up 10th, 40 seconds behind Cancellara and 22 behind Contador. But he wasn’t even the second best on the team; Andreas Kloden finished fourth, four seconds behind Contador, and Levi Leipheimer placed sixth, 12 seconds behind A.C.

The Astana team hierarchy has been set, and the big question now will be whether the team will put two or three riders on the final podium. Seriously. The team is stacked, and it should put serious time into the rest of the contenders Tuesday in the team time trial.

Of the pre-race contenders, only Cadel Evans appears to be a serious threat to Contador and the Astana juggernaut for the overall. The two-time second-place finisher is only 5 seconds behind Contador, but his team, Silence-Lotto, could lose a big chunk of time in the TT. Same with Liquigas boys Roman Kreuzinger (14 seconds behind A.C.) and Vincenzo Nibali (19 seconds).

All of the pre-race favourites lost chunks of time to Contador that will be hard to make up, either in the team time trial (Carlos Sastre of Cervelo TestTeam, Denis Menchov of Rabobank) or in the mountains (Christian VandeVelde of Garmin-Slipstream, Mick Rogers of Columbia-HTC).

One rider to watch is Columbia-HTC’s Tony Martin, the runner-up in the Tour du Suisse. Martin finished eighth in the stage, 15 seconds behind Contador, and is on a team that won the TTT at the Giro and could beat Astana on Tuesday.

Until then, Cancellara should stay in yellow as his team, Saxo Bank, defends the race lead, and look for Columbia-HCT’s Mark Cavendish to win at least one and perhaps both of the next two stages, which suit his sprinting ability.

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