Alexander Vinokourov, the Kazazk rider who many considered to be the favorite in this year's Tour de France, crashed heavily about 15 miles from the end of the hilly, 113-mile fifth stage and lost more than a minute of time to most of the other top riders.
One of the bigger problems now for Vino is that he is about 90 seconds down on his teammate Kloden too. It will be complicated for him to get that time back - he'll either have to smoke Kloden in the time trials (not very likely) or Kloden will have to crack in the mountains (not very likely). Or, of course, he can breech cycling etiquette and attack Kloden. Watching two Astana guys go at it would be fun to watch.
Didn't see the stage yet (I'll catch it tonight). Does anyone know if CSC gunned it after Vino went down?
2 comments:
The stage was a little difficult to follow on TV.
CSC said that it was going to concede the yellow jersey today, and it didn't do much pace-setting (but Cancellara still managed to keep the jersey).
With that said, I did notice that some CSC guys were at the front of the pack toward the end of the stage, but it was difficult to tell from the coverage whether they were exploiting Vino's fall.
He fell soon after the peloton decided to finally catch the break, so it was tough for him to get back in the race. That part of the race was great to watch: All but 2 of the Astana guys rode back to him and each one cracked getting him back.
Two things are clear: 1) nobody slowed down after Vino fell and 2) the Astana team car paced him back into the race after his teammates cracked.
The final sprint was fantastic.
BTW, Kloeden fell as well and may have factured his coccyx.
I was wrong. Apparently, CSC decided to defend the jersey and started chasing before Vino went down.
They claimed that they didn't know that he fell. I'm sure that something like that wouldn't have been broadcast on race radio.
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