After the first day in the mountains, T-Mobile riders sit at the very top and the very bottom of the 2007 Tour de France general classification. In between 24-year-old stage winner Linus Gerdemann and 22-year-old lanterne rouge Mark Cavendish sits team captain Michael Rogers, who at 27 is aiming to climb on the podium in Paris.

Rogers and teammate Kim Kirchen finished stage 7 in the selective main front group of 35, which came in 3:38 behind Gerdemann.

Immediately after Gerdemann’s win — which also saw the team overtake CSC for the lead in the team competition — the T-Mobile camp hadn’t yet solidified its plan on how aggressively it would defend the jersey.

Team press officer Christian Frommert said that while the stage win, yellow jersey and best-young-rider’s white jersey were fantastic prizes for a day’s work by Gerdemann, the German team would likely not ride for him on the 165km march further into the Alps on stage 8.

“No, I don’t think so,” Frommert said. “Michael is the captain. He has the white jersey. And this is a big success for us.”

Rogers, however, wasn’t so quick to write off his young teammate.

“We’ll try to keep the yellow jersey,” said Rogers, a three-time world time-trial champion. “The longer Linus can keep it the better. If he can hold it 10 days or one day or two days, it doesn’t matter. I can still stay protected. We’ve got a good team. I think we’ll ride on the front tomorrow to get through a tough day and hold onto the yellow jersey for another night.”

Despite being best known for his three world time-trial titles, Rogers has become a formidable grand-tour contender in recent year. He won the Tour of Germany in 2003, took second in the 2005 Tour of Switzerland and finished last year’s Tour in 10th overall despite riding for Andréas Klöden, who finished third overall.

This year T-Mobile came to London, the start of this year’s Tour, with Rogers as the squad’s stated leader with Klöden at Astana. But knee problems threatened to derail his bid in the weeks leading up to the event. After taking second overall at the Tour of Catalonia in May, a recurring knee injury flared up at the late-June Tour of Switzerland.

Seven days into the Tour, however, Rogers reports no problems.

“It was good,” he said in Le Grand-Bornand after completing the race’s first Cat. 1 climb. “It was real hard, of course, but I didn’t have any trouble. I mean, it wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t too bad.”

Rogers expressed confidence in the team retaining both the yellow and white jerseys, especially with a rest day coming up Monday after the second day in the Alps.

“Tomorrow is a big day,” he said. “We’ll see if Linus gets through. Today was hard, but it’s not a true mountain day. There was only one really hard climb whereas tomorrow there are a few big climbs.”

In his second year as a professional, Gerdemann has a reputation for being confident, but Rogers said the young rider isn’t overly cocky.

“It’s his first Tour de France; of course he’s a little bit nervous,” Rogers said. “And he’s going to be a little bit more nervous tonight with the weight of world cycling on his shoulders.”