[Tour 2005]Stage 5 - Chambord - Montargris

[tour-junkie]

Stage 5 - 
Chambord - Montargis - 183 km
Flat stage today. Despite a rise near the middle which gives the profile a
near symmetrical look, the vertical change will probably be more of an
interesting distraction than anything earth-shattering.

Commentators argue a little about whether CSC should have left the Yellow
Jersey behind in the last kilo and a half. A good pub argument, perhaps, but
it's hard to fault the specificity of Bjarne Riis' intentions in this race.
It's also easy to second guess how easy it would have been to tell a couple
riders to hang back to accompany Zabriske to the line.  They'd already lost
Giovanni Lombardi on the final climbs, and without Zabriske, CSC had 7
active riders still moving.  Since the clock stops on the fifth rider,
there's no reason to chance the ultimate goal of putting Ivan Basso on the
podium by losing time for any reason.  A chance puncture or another bit of
bike weirdness could easily drop a rider or two.  Then Riis would've been
faulted for some sort of sentimentality.

Stitches, road rash, hematoma and a general soreness hang all around David
Zabriske this morning.  He's lined up today despite a pretty good run
through the wringer.

NO clear cause of the crash - Zabriske doesn't remember.  Only working
theory that he might have hit his elbow with his knee.

Lance has been saying he might not wear the jersey, as he feels it was won
in a crash - though it doesn't seem too reasonable, given that

In other jersey news, Yaroslav Popovych of Discovery has pulled on the White
Jersey for the bes young (under 26) rider. The be

Wednesday turns out to be cold and windy as the riders move eastward across
France.

Constantino Zaballa pulled over and retired from the Tour today.  No reason
stated, but he had been languishing as the last rider in the standings.

With today's stage, a breakaway has been started by Juan Antonio Flecha of
Fassa Bortolo.  He's chisled out a gap of about 5 or 6 minutes.

Kiell Carlstrom of Liquigas-Bianchi, Salvatore Commesso of Lampre-Caffita
and Lazlo Bbodrogi both chasing him out in front of the Discovery led main
bunch. They trail Flecha by under a couple minutes, and are closing down
that gap.  The team car pulls alongside the stage leader, probably
encouraging him to wait for assistance. The three riders chasing Flecha pull
him into view in front of thickening and darkening skies, though the sun
seems to have broken through at the finish area.

The non-wearing of the Yellow Jersey is a little odd, as Armstrong decided
not to wear it at the roll out for the stage, but then pulled it on over his
Discovery jersey as the teams moved out of the neutralized section of the
racecourse. Asked by the race organizers to put it on?  Another question for
the day.

80 km under the wheels, the average speed of the _race_ is 48 km per hour,
assisted today by another tailwind.

A jazz quartet has now formed up at the front of the race, and while they
figured out how to coalesce, the gap has dropped down to three and and half
minutes.  The peleton has shown some sparks of life, with the sprinters'
teams pushing into the rotation to take the load off of Discovery.

Word is coming through that the wearing of the Yellow Jersey was pretty much
enforced by the Tour organizers - with the suggestion that they pretty much
had to threaten potential expulsion to get Armstrong to pull on the
unnumbered jersey.

Crash in the field! Just as everyone begin to reach the feed zone - cameras
find Team CSC surrounding Ivan Basso with what seems to be a minor problem
with his rear wheel. A slight discoloration on his left leg suggests that he
skipped along the pavement a bit. It looks like T-Mobile's

After Kurt-Asle Arvesen gets a feed bag wedged in his rear wheel and
chainstay, further adding to the mystique of the CSC curse today.

Sylvain Calzati gets his right legged scrubbed up - by tomorrow, it will
possibly bandaged up to match his left leg by tomorrow.  Officially, he's
suffering a bit of tendonitis, perhaps overenthused during his breakaway of
a a couple days ago.

For some reason Flecha has dropped away from Bodrogi and Carlstrom, and for
some odd reason Commesso stays attached to the Fassa Bortolo rider.

72km to go - gap at 3:15

A brace of umbrellas coming out at the finish area, which features a bit of
a nasty little bend before the line.

Back in the leaders bunch, Commesso decides that the gap has dropped enough
to warrant some individual heroics, and he drops back for the gap, then
fires ahead to gain points at the sprint point in the city of Gien - roughly
46 kilometers to go.  The main bunch pushes along only about a minute and
half behind now.

Flecks of rain begin to hit camera lenses as the break folks grab
waterbottles and nibble some food, mentally clicking how long it will take
the bunch to close down the time. Not raining properly yet, and maybe the
riders won't have to negotiate the finish under leaking skies.

Armstrong's 67th Yellow Jersey (even if forced to be on his shoulders today)
does not put him on the top of the heap - Eddy Merckx wore the jersey for
115 days during his career, while Bernard Hinault had 85. While he should
draw closer to Hinault's tally, Armstrong is third in this instance.

Wet roads under the wheels of the peleton, though it looks like the storm
has passed through in advance of the riders. A Lotto/Quick-Step/Ag2R combine
keeps slicing seconds out of leading group.

Today's finish has made Paul a little nervous for the finish.  As we get
some detailed images of the narrow ninety degree right hand turn with 500
meters to go, the phrase which comes to mind is Lurch's famous utterance,
"..unnnhhhhhhhhhhhh."

A 43 second gap remains as the main bunch just hasn't taken the bait.  Maybe
they decided to wait until the roads narrowed a bit more.

The peleton stretches out for real now, and the bulk of the vehicles have
been pulled from the gap.

The devil scoots by at the edge of the camera with 12 km to go.

Just as the 10 km banner slips past, the gap dissolves to nothing, and the
four are reabsorbed.  Commesso waves "buh-bye" and they become a complete
group again.  

Both Roberto Heras and Jan Ullrich position themselves near the front of
events - having had the 7 meter width of the upcoing town roads related to
them by their team directors.  Armstrong sits in the hip pocket of Popovych
with the rest of his team surrounding him.

A quick left/right chicane puts 5 or six riders into the left side hay bales
as they cannot make the second part of the turn.  Doesn't seem to be any
damage other than a dumped chain for Cofidis' Janek Tombak, but the race has
moved well up the roadway in the time it took to bounce off the mule food.
  
The lead bunch howls under the 3 km to go banner, with Quick-Step on the
front and a host of FDJ.com riders trying to get Baden Cooke to the finish
line.  Robbie McEwen cannot be seen, but must be hidden in there somewhere,
while Tom Boonen sits back about a dozen riders in his Green Jersey.

Cofidis rider Matt White strings things out, but he's leading four FDJ.com
riders rather than Stuart O'Grady.  White pulls off as the riders sweep
under the 1km to go banner, putting a phalanx of riders in front of
FDJ.com's Brad McGee.  Suddenly, everyone moves easily through the nasty
turn at 500 meters to go.  The road rises slightly toward the finish line,
and Boonen begins to shriek up to speed.  Cooke and his leadout man get
sloppy and then just as quickly become an afterthought as the big Belgian
puts them in his widening wake.

But McEwen sits right behind Boonen, biding his time, looking like he's
velcroed to the Quick-Step rider's shorts.  Behind him looms the big frame
of Credit Agricole's Thor Hushovd.  But Hushovd has timed it just a touch
late, and runs out of roadway as McEwen moves up the left side of Boonen.
At the line, Robbie holds a wheel on Boonen and wins!

Stage 5 Results - 
1 - Robbie McEwen - Davitamon-Lotto - 3:46:00
2 - Tom Boonen - Quick-Step
3 - Thor Hushovd - Credit Agricole
4 - Stuart O'Grady - Cofidis
5 - Angelo Furlan - Domina Vacanze

All riders same time


GC -
MJ - Lance Armstrong - Discovery Channel - 13:45:12
2 - George Hincapie - Discovery - +:55
3 - Jens Voigt - CSC - +1:04
4 - Bobby Julich - CSC - +1:07
5 - Jose Luis Rubiera - Discovery - +1:14
6 - Yaroslav Popovych - Discovery - +1:16
7 - Alexandre Vinokourov - T-Mobile - +1:21
8 - Benjamin Noval - Discovery - +1:26
9 - David Zabriske - CSC - +1:26
10 - Ivan Basso - CSC - +1:26


Tomorrow's Stage - 
Stage 6 - 
Troyes - Nancy - 199 km
Nothing flat today.  No huge climbs, but a continually changing topography
could let a determined break get out of view and out of mind.  There's
actually four Cat4 climbs on the day as well, so an energetic rider with a
well-timed attack could propel themselves to the finish alone.


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