Peleton suffers badly from wind

More crashes and splits today, with a lot of riders losing a lot of time, as strong winds made the gaps hard to close. Vino was the man who managed to stay out of trouble the best, and slipped on the pink jersey at the end of the stage, before slipping off to the team bus to get his blood changed. Race leader going into the stage, Cadel Evans was caught behind a crash and despite a plucky chase, lost some 45 seconds on the lead group.

Bile Beans sprinter Andre Griepel was in the lead group at the finish with plenty of HTC team-mates to lead him out, but didn't have the legs at all and finished a lowly 6th to Wouter Weylandt. Apparently he wasn't best pleased with Weylandt's riding and after the finish called him a 'dumb ass' and threatened to fill him in. Maybe Mark Cavendish was right when he was slagging off Griepel the other day, ‘me on bad form is still better than him’.

Christian Vandevelde was the biggest casualty of the day as he broke his collarbone and withdrew. The poor lad crashed out in stage 3 of the Giro last year too, so he doesn't have the best of luck. Also down in the same crash was Marzio Bruseghin who was on the Bile Beans shortlist, but luckily didn't make the final squad. He lost time and dignity as he became another member of the torn shorts club.



Bad news too, for Bile Beans climbing hope, Domenico Pozzovivo, he lost nearly 8 minutes and finished in the same group as Pozzato. And there was another groundward trip for Bradley Wiggins. His shorts remained intact, but his top had plenty of holes. Apparently a Sky Team jersey costs £70, so I hope they don't take it out of his wages. Despite most of the Sky team waiting to pace him back to the front, Bradley ended up losing just shy of 4 minutes on the leaders and lost all hope of a high GC position.


It's a rest day tomorrow, as the race will be transferring from Amsterdam down to Italy. It seems that ash cloud is not bad enough to stop them flying, so at least they won't have to drive the whole way. Usually the riders complain about the long transfers, but after all the crashes they'll probably be glad of the rest before the race starts again with a team time trial on Thursday. Hopefully the rest day will also see some Velogames scores appear, and maybe Drew will pull his finger out and sign up to the minileague.

It seems my favourite blogger, BikeSnobNYC has a GDI blog over at Universal Sports -Universal is the TV home of the GDI in the USA. The commentators Chad and Steve get overly excited at any opportunity, oh how I miss the calm tones of Sean Kelly over on Eurosport. Anyway, Bikesnob's observations are obviously much better than mine, the articulate bastard.