Stage 6 - Dinan => Lisieux

Finally, a stage of the Tour that actually went to plan!  No serious crashes, nothing dramatic and difficult in the GC, nobody penalised or disqualified - just another routine day in the biggest and most un-routine bike race in the world.

Comme d'habitude, the most exciting part of the day was the breakaway.  Five riders, including familiar names from Vacansoleil Johnney Hoogerland and Lieuwe Westra, built themselves up a 10-minute lead over the main peloton.  After yesterday's rider massacre on the roads, I think most of the riders, especially the top contenders for the general classification like Andy Schleck and Cadel Evans, were thinking of nothing more than staying safe and getting through the stage, and were happy to let the breakaway have some fun.  The scenery passing from Brittany to Normandy was beautiful too, and the number of chateaux the Tour passed was too high to recall.

 

(I just couldn't resist putting a picture in.  This is the breakaway of Adriano Malori, Leonardo Duque, Lieuwe Westra, Johnny Hoogerland and Anthony Roux passing Mont-Saint-Michel,  an island monastery off the coast of France.)

The weather put something of a constant dampener on the proceedings - literally.  Despite sunny skies at the finish line, the skies above the race were usually grey and exuding copious amounts of water, to the discomfort and danger of the riders.  Mindful of yesterday, everyone was super-careful of their surroundings, but that didn't stop Levi Leipheimer (Radioshack) skidding on a white line-marking and publicly faceplanting.  Only his dignity wounded, he was back on the bike with a potentially damaging time deficit to make up on the peloton.  He eventually finished 1:04 after the winners, possibly putting him out of GC contention and making him the second of Team Radioshack's four GC hopes to go down that path (team leader Janez Brajkovic withdrew from the race yesterday after suffering a broken collarbone in a fall).

The breakaway took the points for the King of the Mountains jersey, Lieuwe Westra taking the first one and Anthony Roux and Johnny Hoogerland each taking three between the two Category 3 climbs, which was enough to put Hoogerland in the lead for the classification and take the jersey from Cadel Evans.  With the peloton putting on the pressure soon afterwards and eating into their lead, Lieuwe Westra and Lampre youngster Adriano Malori decided to go it alone and left the rest of the breakaway behind, where they were soon swallowed up by the peloton.  Westra and Malori held a tenuous lead of only a minute or two, but they held it right up to the 20-kilometre mark, when Malori went again, leaving a resigned Westra for the peloton to find.  Though with a lead of no more than a minute, Malori managed to hold off the hungering wolves until just inside the 3-k mark, earning himself the red number of the stage's most aggressive rider for his stubbornness.

And hungering wolves they were, for the peloton could feel a bunch sprint for their fastest riders coming on.  HTC seemed to finally get their lead-out train working properly, but Mark Cavendish clearly didn't feel he had the legs today, for it was Australia's Gossie (Matthew Goss) who went for the sprint instead, coming a valiant second.  Team Sky's black jerseys were also prominent up the front, and with good reason, for it was their sprinter Edvald Boasson Hagen, just 24 years of age, who took line honours for the first time.  In a fairytale ending, his family were in Lisieux to celebrate the young Norwegian's first stage victory in the Tour de France.  Man of the week Phillipe Gilbert and huge fellow Norwegian Thor Hushovd followed Boasson Hagen across the line, meaning the God of Thunder gets to keep his yellow jersey for another day, as does Phillipe Gilbert with his green.

**In a sad but foreseen endnote, Euskaltel-Euskadi rider Ivan Velasco has indeed withdrawn from this year's Tour, after breaking his collarbone in a nasty fall in Brittany yesterday.  Velasco is the fourth rider to withdraw from the 2011 Tour.

Photograph courtesty of Cycling News at www.cyclingnews.com