Today the Tour was back to a more standard first-week pattern. With the sprinters' teams chasing down the early break and setting it up for the fast men. What came as a bit of a surprise though was the winner. We've come to expect Mark Cavendish to win this sort of stage, but even though his team put in a load of work to get him to the line, and even though he stayed on his bike, he finished a lowly 12th. Instead of some young pup, it was crafty Alessandro Petacchi who bagged his second stage win of the race ahead of Julian Dean and Edvald Boasson Hagen. Thor Hushovd was back in 9th, but still hangs onto the points jersey, although Petacchi is closing in on green. Petacchi used to be the man to beat at the Grand Tours a few years back, but he's had some bad luck with injuries, now it seems he's back on top and giving the youngsters a run for their money.
In other news, Cancellara retained the yellow jersey, and not much else happened. We have had another crash-related withdrawl though. So it's goobye to Amets Txurruka, who has the cyclist's favourite injury, the broken collarbone.
For stage 5 tomorrow, it should be more of the same. Probably a sprint. I expect most of you will be rooting for Cav, while I will be rooting for Thor and a couple of you will be hoping for another win from Petacchi. Time will tell.
You went a bit easy on Cav didn't you? Sat up when headed, threw his bike against the team bus and his helmet out of the door. What a prick. I want to call him a cunt, but this is a blog read by all the family
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you restrained yourself Rich, i'm easily offended.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, stage 4 scores are up, get your fat lazy arse out of bed and update the league! I'm on 1285, but Cav's win today won't be helping me.
ReplyDelete