T-Mobile's Guerini wins in yet another long breakaway for the Tour. With a mile to go he sprinted away from the other three riders in his break, who were all frozen in indecision as to who would give chase. Guerini's victory looked easy.
Tomorrow will be the big individual time trial. No more long breakaways to predict. We've had the opportunity to see who is strong this year, and tomorrorw should be the Lance Armstrong show. Ullrich has looked good enough to put in a strong performance, but Armstrong will get to start behind him and find out all of his splits. It won't be as embarassing as stage 1, where Armstrong passed Ullrich in the short time trial, and sadly there will be no Zabriskie to light up the course, but the performances should be fun to watch as we try to figure out what a Lance-less Tour will look like.
- Stage 19 Photo Gallery (Graham Watson)
- Stage 19 Summary (VeloNews)
- Stage 19 Results (CyclingNews)
- Stage 19 Live Report (Daily Peloton)
Stage profile and my stage log in the extended.
TiVo-delayed Stage Log
Prediction: not too many predictions left to make. This is the last open stage for people to get a win and I don't think I have a chance of picking this one. I'm going to pick Popovych in the spirit that Team Disco is going to keep steamrolling this one, but we could also see O'Grady or a CSC rider like Arvesen or even Basso. I really don't know.
There's two breakaways on the road. Guerini, Pereiro, Pellizotti and Casar are in the lead break. Azevedo, Arvesen, Commesso, Da Cruz and others are in the chase. The lead is only 3 minutes or so.
Breakaway has built up to almost 9 minutes with 50k to go. Illes Beleares has taken over the head of the peloton from Team Disco.
Commesso is trying to whittle down the chase group and get closer to the break.
33.9k to go. 1:49 to the chase group, seven minutes to the peloton. The chase group is losing ground and the peloton is gaining on both.
Commesso attacks again and they're going to let him go. Wait, now they're trying to bring him back. Chavanal looks like he'll catch up first.
7k to go and someone in one of these breaks is going to win. At this point it looks like it will be a Pereiro repeat. The peloton is still five and a half minutes back. The chase is over two minutes back.
With 1 mile to go Guerini explodes away from the break. He looks like he's going ot make it. No one is responding. This is just easy for him at this point. The other riders in the break were frozen, perhaps trying to figure out who was going to give chase.
Guerini wins as his fellow breakaway riders cross the line shaking their heads.
In the chase group, Commesso pulls a Guerini and sprints away from his group to take 5th place.
McEwen beats out Hushovd for 14th place for a single point difference in the green jersey competition.
