Watching and writing about the Tour de France is becoming almost as arduous as riding the Tour de France. Not really, of course, but after eight days of hauling out of bed at six friggin’ thirty in the morning this blogger is starting to feel the burn. So far I’ve avoided any accidents like crashing into my husband on the way to the bathroom during commercials, or falling off the couch reaching for my coffee. Hopefully I’ll be up for a schmengefest when the riders reach the mountains.
The pros called today’s stage predictable. It was another relatively flat course with the inevitable breakaway and one minor crash. Sadly, Sven Montgomery of Gerolsteiner was forced to retire because of the crash. It was reported that he has started four tours and had to abandon them all. The aerial shot of him weeping in disappointment brought tears to my own eyes.
As much as I enjoy the drama of the sprint finishes and breakaway catches, I don’t think the race really becomes competitive until the mountains stages. The younger riders have been excelling in these flat stages and it will be interesting to see how the newcomers stack up to the veterans in the mountains. This year there are eleven flat stages and six mountain stages, and we won’t see any serious climbing until next Wednesday.
Erik Dekker of Team Rabobank and Thierry Marichal of Team Lotto-Domo were the only two riders in the early break away from today’s peloton. They led the race for 120 km with an average lead of five minutes, but were swept up at about the 20 km mark. Team CSC pushed hard at the front during the only spot of rain and managed to split the peloton to no avail. All the strong contenders were still in the main group and the peloton eventually came together before the end of the race. A breakaway of seven riders at five kilometers was no threat to the yellow jersey or any of the top ten so they let them go. My money was on Paolo Bettini of Team Quick Step-Davitamon but he fell behind to come in seventh. Bettini is wearing the King of the Mountains jersey that we’re used to seeing on his team leader Richard Virenque.
Filippo Pozzato of Team Fassa Bortolo took today’s stage win. This makes two wins for Fassa Bortolo with Fabian Cancellara’s prologue win. I guess the team is trying to make up for Alessandro Petacchi’s poor showing in this year’s Tour. (As you know, Alessandro took his ball and went home. Bye Alessandro, thanks for playing!) Another gut wrenching moment in today’s race was the look on the face of second place finisher Iker Flores of Iban Mayo’s Euskatel Euskadi team. Euskatel Euskadi started with only eight riders. This team can only recruit members from the Basque region of Spain. They are an interesting team and I can’t help but to cheer them on.
There was no change in the top ten GC standings today. Stuart O’Grady kept the green points jersey and even though there was one minor challenge, Paolo Bettini retains King of the Mountain. We don’t expect Bettini to retain this jersey and will probably happily relenquish it to his team leader, if Virenque can prove himself as he has done the past five years.
Thanks to all who have written, I welcome your emails. If anyone is interested in posting to a forum about the tour, there’s an open forum area here at mymac.com, just click the forum link above and get it started. Forum threads are a bit easier to follow than the comments section at the end of each blog. I’d love to hear other’s impressions and comments about this year’s tour.
Today’s Tune to the Tour contest word is “Heras”.
CKS/bl TRIDIOT RATING was specially transmitted directly to the iBook today from the transponder attached to the frame of Isidro Nozal’s bike. Imagine my surprise when it came in at 101.0101%
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