My least favourite stage - a flat one. Give me a good old mountain climb anyday, or a nice gripping time trial so I can count the seconds. But a flat stage? Nothing - on a good day nothing - happens until the very end, and then only for a few seconds! Oh, to be in the Alps already!
But the flat stages are still important, even for the GC riders. On a stage like today's, the challenge for the GC riders is to stay up the front and stay safe, a task that Cadel Evans says is enormously difficult when you don't have a team to help you as he does now. With the sprinters jostling for position and the other GC riders trying to stay near the front, simply staying on your bike all stage can be the hardest thing you do.
Would it surprise anyone if I said there was a breakaway? Very early on one of FDJ's favourite breakaway riders, Mickael Delage, bolted for it, followed by four others including the Tour's youngest rider, Anthony Delaplace. The peloton were unconcerned, happy to let the other riders have a play while they concentrated on staying out of trouble for yet another stage.
They couldn't be too complacent, though, and after a while two of Cav's teammates came up to do the pace-making and hold the escapees at an acheivable distance of three minutes. This also placed them in a good position to help Cav take top points available at the intermediate sprint point afterthe breakaway of five had gone through with Delage taking maximum points. Philippe Gilbert and Jose Joaquin Rojas also followed Cav across the line, keeping themselves right up with the Manxman in the green jersery competition. After this HTC continued to keep up the pace, with Leopard Trek and BMC rendering assistance in the interests of their GC riders as well.
The breakaway was holding its own until Katusha's Mikhail Ignatiev shot off the front at 22 kilometres to go to try and make it on his own. Niki Terpstra of Quickstep decided to join him and indeed, soon left Ignatiev for dead and went on his own at 6.5 kilometres to go, but if there's anything the Tour has taught us this year, it's that a breakaway that fights within itself and doesn't work together has no hope of staying a breakaway until the stage's end. Predictably enough the peloton caught Ignatiev and the three others and brought Terpstra back to within 12 seconds by the five kilometre mark.
Then with both Terpstra and the finish line in sight, Gilbert decided it was a nice day for a ride and brought Terpstra back into the fold as he went for the victory, followed by Anthony Roux (FDJ) and Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil). But a determined Team HTC with a hot-shot Cavendish just raring for a race had already called dibs on this stage, and Gilbert and entourage were quickly outpaced as the Highroad train steamed into the town of Montpellier and very neatly delivered their green man to the finish line, well clear of Garmin-Cervelo's Tyler Farrar and Lampre sprinter Alessandro Petacchi. Another victory on a platter for Manx missile Mark Cavendish.
They couldn't be too complacent, though, and after a while two of Cav's teammates came up to do the pace-making and hold the escapees at an acheivable distance of three minutes. This also placed them in a good position to help Cav take top points available at the intermediate sprint point afterthe breakaway of five had gone through with Delage taking maximum points. Philippe Gilbert and Jose Joaquin Rojas also followed Cav across the line, keeping themselves right up with the Manxman in the green jersery competition. After this HTC continued to keep up the pace, with Leopard Trek and BMC rendering assistance in the interests of their GC riders as well.
The breakaway was holding its own until Katusha's Mikhail Ignatiev shot off the front at 22 kilometres to go to try and make it on his own. Niki Terpstra of Quickstep decided to join him and indeed, soon left Ignatiev for dead and went on his own at 6.5 kilometres to go, but if there's anything the Tour has taught us this year, it's that a breakaway that fights within itself and doesn't work together has no hope of staying a breakaway until the stage's end. Predictably enough the peloton caught Ignatiev and the three others and brought Terpstra back to within 12 seconds by the five kilometre mark.
Then with both Terpstra and the finish line in sight, Gilbert decided it was a nice day for a ride and brought Terpstra back into the fold as he went for the victory, followed by Anthony Roux (FDJ) and Marco Marcato (Vacansoleil). But a determined Team HTC with a hot-shot Cavendish just raring for a race had already called dibs on this stage, and Gilbert and entourage were quickly outpaced as the Highroad train steamed into the town of Montpellier and very neatly delivered their green man to the finish line, well clear of Garmin-Cervelo's Tyler Farrar and Lampre sprinter Alessandro Petacchi. Another victory on a platter for Manx missile Mark Cavendish.
No comments:
Post a Comment