The Tour Day 11

The riders take most of our attention during the Tour de France but like any other event, the behind-the-scene people deserve some mention for their hard work as well.

For the photographers and Mac enthusiasts in the cycling crowd, here’s a link to “A typical day in the life of Graham Watson.” A picture of him scanning images into his G4 laptop is one of the later selections.

Did you ever wonder about the Podium Girls? Are they there merely for decoration, or do they serve a higher function? Where do they disappear to when the cheek kissing is over? Do they ever fall in love? I’m a little long in the tooth to dream about being a Podium Girl, but I’d reckon that it’s probably one of the better Tour de France jobs up for grabs.

The riders seemed to be on good form today after their day of rest, especially Filippo Simeoni of Domina Vicanze and Inigo Landaluze of Euskaltel Euskadi. They went out on an early breakaway and survived with a time gap of up to ten minutes. The peloton started reeling them back in around the 20 kilometer flag, but didn’t catch them until the last 50 meters, where the sprinters blew them away. I was rooting for the Euskaltel rider, but even I in my naiveté of the sport spotted his mistake as soon as he made it. Trying to draft the wheel of Vicanze, he lost momentum, dragged Vicanze down and the sprinters, as usual, stole the day.

A similar move happened in Sunday’s stage when Paolo Bettini of Quick Step sprinted away from the peloton and Robbie McEwen of Lotto Domo quickly took his wheel. Bettini looked over his shoulder, saw McEwen was the only rider and abandoned the sprint. The interesting part was the Bettini actually spoke to McEwen before he abandoned. As he fell back into the peloton there was a great shot of Paolo lifting his hand in frustration.

The sprinter’s teams have been doing all the hard work at the front of the peloton for the past week, riding after the breakaways so their team sprinter can have a shot at the stage win. Today Credit Agricole and Lotto Domo took turns leading the charge. At one point a Domina Vicanze rider went to the front, presumably to do his part in slowing the peloton so Vicanze might have a chance in the breakaway. One rider at the front reached over and shoved him out of the way. It was speculated by the commentators that if the race director was aware of the move, action would be taken. Even if nothing happens, it still seemed like a very unsportsman like thing to do.

Robbie McEwen added another stage win today and kept the Green points jersey. Voeckler is still in yellow, and there was no change in the GC. Four more riders retired today. Jaan Kirsipuu of AG2R abandoned during the stage. Samuel Dumoulin of AG2R didn’t start. He was the rider who crashed lated in Sunday’s stage but rode to the finish. He ended up with a broken elbow. Martin Hvastija of Alessio-Bianchi and Stefano Casagranda of Saeco were removed by the race director because of police investigations into drug use. Ten teams remain intact with all riders.

Today’s Tune to the Tour contest word is “Yellow Jersey”.

CKS/bl Tridiot Rating was calculated by taking the number of times the collective riders spit during the stage, multiplied by the number of times Landaluze looked over his shoulder in the last 500 meters, divided by the number of pedal strokes of Robbie McEwen in the same distance, plus the penalty 5% for 111.666%