McEwen finally takes a stage win, getting revenge for his stage 3 relegation. I switched my sprint pick from McEwen to Boonen today, so just my luck McEwen finally beats Boonen to the line. Boonen is still in the green jersey lead, but at least it looks like there's going to be some good battling to the line in the sprint stages to come. McEwen is still griping about his relegation and loss of sprint points, but he's still going to battle it out for the stage victories. \
Zabriskie raced today with some bandages but otherwise okay. Armstrong tried to honor him and the yellow jersey by not wearing the jersey at the start -- following in the tradition set by Merckx and Lemond that the jersey should not be taken by a crash -- but he was told by the race officials, "If you don't start with that jersey you're not starting tomorrow at all," so Armstrong raced with a hastily pulled on yellow jersey.
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Prediction: I'm giving up on McEwen and going with two-stage winner Boonen, who will hopefully get the hat trick today.
A 183km, but mostly flat stage means possibly some early breakaways, with Boonen's QuickStep team and Baden Cooke's FD Jeux team reeling them in for a bunch finish.
There's a new theory from Bjarne Riis as to Zabriskie's crash (DZ doesn't know what happened). Riis believes that DZ's knee hit his elbow and clocked his handlebars around. DZ's injury tally: road rash, hematoma on the knee, stitches on the elbow, sore ribs.
DZ: "Yeah I'll take the start."
Armstrong is honoring Zabriskie and Tour history by refusing to start in the yellow jersey -- no leader has taken the jersey from a crash. Armstrong is wearing the jersey now over his blue Disco jersey, and his number is not on the jersey, so it may be the case that race organizers required him to.
Bodrogi, Flecha, Carlstrom, and other are in a breakaway.
About all of CSC was in a minor crash as riders are going throught he feed zone but is now riding back up to the peloton. They made it back easily but now one of the CSC riders got a musette bag caught in his rear tire. Not a good feed station for them.
Bodrogi takes the KoM climb, but there's a strange split in the breakaway with Commesso and Flecha.
Amazing fact: Armstrong has never had a flat in his six Tours. That's incredible.
It's raining now on the breakaway.
QuickStep and Lotto are donig the work on the front to reel in the break.
17.5k to go, 13k to go. 0'22". 12k to go. 0'18" lead. Disco's got a separate line going at the front to protect Armstrong. And the catch
Crash! Some of the leadout cut the turn wide and some of the leadout group went into the barrier. they look ok.
Boonen goes but McEwen is on his wheel. McEwen wins! Boonen is second.
I pick McEwen two days in a row and finally switch to Boonen, and McEwen finally wins.
Comments (2)
It was cool to hear Armstrong's sportsmanship in the little interview at the end. It's really nice to watch a pro sport that still respects that aspect of things at the highest levels.
Posted by glynn | July 6, 2005 9:50 AM
Unfortunately the organization/sponsors didn't appreciate the gesture as much... but yeah, it's one of the things that I like about cycling, the fact that you try to beat your opponent at their best, not their worst.
Posted by kwc | July 6, 2005 10:07 AM