Category: Older stuff

Another flat stage, another bunch sprint. Tom Boonen might have enjoyed the day in yellow, but he sure isn’t sprinting like a guy who thought he was going to win the green jersey this year.

Boonen’s team controlled the peleton most of the day and reeled back the break-away with 2km to go. But they didn’t get organized to do a proper lead-out. Two days ago, Thor Hushovd pulled his foot off the pedal in the sprint – today his lead-out man Dean did the same and crashed with 400 metres to go. But by that time, McEwan’s “new” lead-out man Stegmans had delivered McEwan to the front, and Robbie did the rest, winning by a convincing margin.

Hushovd got 4th, Boonen 5th. McEwen is back in green for tomorrow, Boonen retains yellow.

Tomorrow is another relatively flat course with a few 4th category hills. Expect another bunch sprint, and not much change in GC. Boonen better get it together and show some of the talent that he showed this spring or he’s going to go home empty handed.

Yesterday, the TV showed a former sprint champion Stuart O’Grady peddling very slowly off the top of the Cauberg long after the rest had finished. Today they’re saying that he cracked a vertebrae and is still in intense pain – but he rode today and finished in the peleton. The difference between a race horse and a bike racer is a horse race has a vet to say “no, racing this horse would be too cruel” and the horse doesn’t talk back.

Today the big stories were flat tires and broken collar bones. I think both the flat tires and the crashes were caused by the high heat and long tiring stage, since they mostly happened on flat straight bits.

Out of the race with broken collarbones:

• Freddy Rodriguez, Robbie McEwan’s lead-out man
• Erik Dekker, Rabobank’s team leader
• Alejandro Valverde, a man several commentators though might win overall.

There was the usual long break away that splintered and the last guy got caught just on the base of the last climb, the Cauberg just 2km from the finish. The Cauberg is a feature in the Amstel Gold Classic in the spring, but it was a lot hotter today. Matthais Kessler, the same guy who got caught about 100 metres from the finish yesterday, took off about half way up the Cauberg and managed to hold them off this time, finishing 5 seconds ahead of the rest.

The Cauberg managed to fracture the peleton and some of the top sprinters ended up behind the first major group, including Hushovd and McEwen – but not of course the GC contenders like Hincapie and Landis, whose teams made sure they were kept near the front of the peleton for just such an eventuality.

World Champion Tom Boonen hasn’t been having a great Tour so far, but he was the best sprinter in the front group. cyclingnews.com says he had a slow leak on the Cauberg and finished on a flat tire, so he wasn’t successful sprinting for second place. He had to content himself with 4th on the day, and ending up in both the yellow and green jerseys (green will be worn by Bennati) for tomorrows start in his home country of Belgium.

Tomorrow will be a flat and long stage. Look for Boonen, Hushovd and McEwen to fight it out for a sprint finish. McEwen will miss Rodriguez a lot, though, and Boonen and his team will have to contend with the pressure of being in yellow, which means setting tempo on the peleton and bringing back the break-aways.

Well, I thought the small hills at the end might lead to a successful break-away. Several tried, but the last lone break-away, Max Kessler from T-Mobile was caught about 100-150 metres from the finish. Ouch. There was a major crash 2km from the finish which gave the sprinters some room to maneuver. Robbie McEwen once again came out of no where, sprinted, and won.

Thor Hushovd, riding with a huge bandage over the stitches in his arm, sprinted for some intermediate sprint time bonuses to put himself ahead of Hincapie in GC. He was very well placed in the final sprint, but he was too tight into McEwen and when McEwen drifted towards him, Hushovd jinked hard and his foot came off the pedal. He had to settle for third, and regaining the Malliot Jaune. Not bad for a guy who lost a lot of blood yesterday.

BTW: The race organizers have banned those stupid foam hands from the last 2km of the race. I had a good look at them in the earlier parts of the race – they aren’t the big fat ones you can put your hand in like you see at USian spectator sports, they’re quite thin. It’s easy to imagine getting a paper cut from one of those – especially if it slaps across you at 70km/hr.

Tomorrow sees Hushovd in yellow, McEwan in green. Tomorrow is going to be another “lumpy” stage with some small category 3 and 4 climbs. It crosses through Belgium over the same territory as the Liege-Bastogne-Liege spring classic, and finishes in the Netherlands up the same hills that the Amstel Gold spring classic finishes up, so maybe one of the Dutch riders will go for it. But more likely it will end up with another mass sprint, with McEwan, Hushovd and Boonen battling it out.

Today was a flat stage, favouring the bunch sprinters. True to form, a break away formed, stayed out front for most of the day, but got caught in time for the sprinters teams to try to get lead-outs organized. I find these types of stages pretty unexciting except for the last 10 minutes or so. Today there were two highlights:

• George Hincape saw a chance when most of the break had been caught leaving only one guy up ahead, and sprinted for the last intermediate sprint point. Somebody from AG2R saw him go and beat him to the line, but George ended up with a 2 second time bonus for being third to that line. He was gambling that Thor Hushovd and the others within a few seconds of him in GC would end up out of the time bonuses at the finish, and he was right – his quick thinking and quick peddling landed him in the Malliot Jaune for the first time in 11 years of riding the Tour.
• None of the sprinters teams got really organized for the final sprint, and Tom Boonen made a really bad mistake, but Thor Hushovd got caught without a good line, so he tried to push along the barricades. Evidently one of those green foam hands that one of the sponsors were handing out to all the spectators caught him edge on and slashed his arm open. He crossed the finish looking fine but then collapsed with blood all over him. It looked awful.

I don’t expect Hincape to keep the yellow for very long – one of the sprinters will get some time bonuses and push past him. The GC never starts to sort out until the first individual time trail, and doesn’t get decided until the mountains. The biggest hills and the last TT are in the last week, so it might be a tense race towards the end.

They’re saying that Hushovd’s cut isn’t that bad and he’ll be fine to ride tomorrow. Hope that’s right.

Tomorrow’s stage might bring some surprises. There are a few small hills towards the end, and that might help a small break away escape and not be caught up at the end by the sprinter’s teams like happens on the flatter stages. I expect the break away will feature “also-ran” teams that don’t have a good GC contender or a good sprint contender. We’ll see.

With so many of the big names out, I would put Floyd Landis as one of the favourites. But not if he has bad luck like he did today in the prologue. The prologue is a timed start, and you get used to seeing riders in the start house while you hear “bleep bleep bleep bloop” and the rider starts off. But when it was Landis’ time, you heard “bleep bleep bleep bloop”, with no Landis. A few seconds later he rides up into the start house, looks around, and finally realizes he’s supposed to have started and rides off. The announcers figure he lost 7-9 seconds. And then ended up finishing 8 seconds behind the leader. That 8 seconds isn’t going to be significant for the GC. After the race they announced the reason he was late is because he got a flat tire riding to the start house. Bad luck.

The winner of the prologue is Thor Hushovd, the Norwegian sprinter, former green jersey winner and one of my two favourites to win the green again this year (with Tom Boonen).

Second place by 0.73 seconds was Discovery’s George Hincapie, who rode with Lance Armstrong for most of Armstrong’s career.

George is a sentimental favourite, he deserves to win for all the work he’s done for Armstrong, but I didn’t think he’s really got the talent for it. Maybe this Prologue is a sign that I’ve underestimated him.