The Tour Day 7

“The Tour de France is won in bed.” Paul Sherwen

By Paul Sherwen’s calculation, every day Lance is not wearing yellow can mean an extra hour in bed. The yellow jersey wearer in each day’s stage is obligated to extra press conferences and team meetings. No one, including Johan Bruyneel and the Postie Boys worries this early in the race about the laurels of yellow as someone else’s crown. Seven days out of yellow means seven extra hours of sleep for Armstrong and his team.

My huge dissapointment came today with the announcement that both Petacchi and Cippolini retired after yesterday’s stage. Neither had won a stage in this year’s Tour, even though every stage so far (except the prologue and team time trial) has been a sprinter’s dream. News was that Petacchi was pretty banged-up in one of the many crashes in stage 5. Who knows what Cippolini’s reasoning was. In last year’s Vuelta, his team was invited to race with the condition that Cippolini start. He did. He rode about five miles and then retired. That’s show biz, I guess.

There were no heavy crosswinds today and only a brief moment of rain, still the peleton managed to crash at kilometer 13. Armstrong was taken down but fortunately neither he or any other riders were hurt. Landis dropped back to lead Armstrong back into the peleton and they rode comfortably near the front throughout the stage.

A well organized breakaway of six riders happend around the eighteenth kilometer and they managed to stay between four and five minutes ahead until the five mile kilometer banner, where all but Flecha of Fasso Bortolo were swept up. Team BLB protected their yellow jersey Voeckler and set the pace for the peleton. They weren’t too worried about catching the breakaway as none of those riders were placed well enough to take the yellow jersey.

Flecha was caught by the sprinter’s teams just before the one kilometer banner. In the confusion of riders jockeying for position a huge pile up occured. All the strong sprinters save Robbie McEwen got through. Because the crash occured inside the one kilometer mark, every rider today was given the same time as the stage winner, even though some riders, including McEwen, came limping in up to five minutes later.

Voeckler keeps the yellow jersey for one more day. Tom Boonen of Quick Step-Davitamon took the stage win with Stuart O’Grady, yesterday’s stage winner a close second. They were followed by Eric Zabel of T Mobile, Danilo Hondo of Gerolsteiner and Baden Cooke of FDjeux.com. Stuart O’Grady took the green points jersey from Robbie McEwen.

Correction time, or maybe not. There is a lot of information available about this year’s Tour, and sometimes this blogger reports something that has been said one day and corrected later. Phil Liggett now reports in this article (scroll down for the 07-08-04 report) that Bradley McGee was “rather stupidly” planting olive trees, not moving furniture. Whatever it was, it was enough to retire him from the race. Also discovered today, David Millar, official team doper of Cofidis, was scheduled to start in this year’s tour before the doping incident was discovered. Yesterday’s report incorrectly stated he was not. Pre-race host Al’s last name is Trautwig, not Trautwein as reported earlier. Mea culpa.

If you could ask Lance Armstrong one question, what would it be? I’d like to know who he thinks might have the potential to be the next Lance Armstrong.

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

cks/bl TrIdIoT RaTIiNg is calculated today by counting the spectators lining the road in the final 100 meters of the race, multiplied by the number of times Robbie McEwen stopped in today’s stage for a “nature break”, then divided by the collective passengers in the team cars for a 95.2380% result.