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Hushovd storms to prologue win
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A year after finishing the Tour de France in the sprinters’ green jersey, Thor Hushovd will start the opening road stage of the 2006 rendition in yellow. The burly Norwegian earned initial possession of the maillot jaune Saturday, taking victory in the 7.1km prologue that kicked off this year’s race in Strasbourg.
On a steamy day in the Alsace region of eastern France, Hushovd (Crédit Agricole) blistered the flat, lollipop shaped course, posting a finish time of 8:17. That was just enough to eclipse American George Hincapie, the last of 176 riders to start the 93rd Tour de France. Hincapie (Discovery Channel) was credited with the same time, recording a time just 0.73 seconds slower than Hushovd’s. Fellow American, and 2005 Tour de France stage 1 time trial winner, David Zabriskie (CSC) was third, four seconds back.
“To win the prologue I have to be in good form and I am,” said Hushovd the day after the race was rocked by the ejections of race co-favorites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, plus seven others, while the remaining four men on the Astaná-Würth team could not to start as they did not meet the six-rider minimum.
“I’ve been really confident the last few weeks, even the last month,” added Hushovd, “because I knew the form was there, as well the experience from the other years. I’m quite sure that this is my best form ever.”
With the yellow jersey on his shoulders and six days of sprinter-friendly racing ahead, Hushovd and Crédit Agricole now have a chance for an extended stay in the spotlight. It’s an opportunity the Norwegian doesn’t intend to pass up.
“For the team as well as for me it’s really important to keep this jersey as long as possible,” said Hushovd, who has shown well in previous Tour prologues, taking fifth at the similar 2004 opener in Liège, Belgium. “We will try to defend it as many days as we can. Tomorrow it would be perfect to let a few guys go away and then hopefully have the other sprint teams help us bring it back together. Then the big fight between the sprinters like me and Boonen will start and we can see who is the fastest.”
Indeed, while the tanned Hushovd looked good in yellow, defending the green jersey title he won a year ago is his primary priority in ’06. That battle will also feature reigning world champion Tom Boonen (Quick Step-Innergetic) and Aussie speedster Robbie McEwen (Davitamon-Lotto).
“This is the first time I will be able to sprint against Boonen this year,” added Hushovd, who earned 15 green-jersey points for the prologue win while Boonen and McEwen were shut out. “I am very confident. When I was preparing for the Tour de France I did a lot of sprint training and I think I will be able to go very well.”
In the race for the Tour’s biggest crown, all of the “new” top favorites fared fine in Strasbourg, a city of 427,000 that’s just minutes from the German border. In fact were it not for some pre-race drama, American Floyd Landis might well have taken the opening day win. Instead the Phonak rider ended up ninth at nine seconds back, after a slice in his tire caused him to arrive late for his starting time.
“You can’t take the risk to go,” explained Phonak team director John Lelangue who ordered his star rider’s wheel changed before he started the prologue. “If you explode in a curve you lose the Tour de France. You don’t take this kind of risk. If you are a time trialist and this is your big focus, maybe, but if not, you don’t take the risk. I think it was easier for everybody to not take the risk. Of course it was a big stress for Floyd just before the start, but he did really good and was able to concentrate after that. After one kilometer he was fine.”
Following the stage, Landis spent 10 minutes cooling down in the team bus, then pulled a white T-shirt over his jersey and darted away on a bike without talking to reporters. But Landis’s personal trainer Allan Lim was pleased with his No. 1 client’s effort.
“There’s no doubt he’s riding really well,” said Lim. “A prologue of this distance isn’t a great distance for Floyd. He’s a better long time trial trialist. Today was a technical course with some hard corners where you really had to put down some fast accelerations. That can be difficult for a guy like Floyd who has a bigger, more steady-state engine.”
Other notable GC finishers included Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Épargne-Illes Balears), fifth at four seconds; Paolo Savoldelli (Discovery Channel), eighth at eight seconds; Cadel Evans (Davitamon-Lotto), 14th at 13 seconds; Yaroslav Popovych (Discovery Channel), 32nd at 20 seconds; and Levi Leipheimer (Gerolsteiner), 36th at 21 seconds.
Gerolsteiner boss Christian Henn expressed little concern over the lackluster showing of Leipheimer, his team’s top prospect. “Where Levi finished was normal for him,” Henn said. “He’ll do better in the long time trials, and it’s in the mountains that really count.”
Over at the Discovery bus, Hincapie had clearly earned himself a small leg-up in the chase to lead his team in the first Tour of the post-Lance Armstrong era. But with Savoldelli, Popovych and José Azevedo also in the mix, a final decision is still a ways off.
“I think it will not be until after the first two stages in the Pyrénées [stages 10 and 11] that we will know within our team who is stronger than who,” said team manager Johan Bruyneel. “Somebody could do a good [stage 7] time trial but fail in the first mountain stage or the opposite. We’ll just play it day by day. We feel comfortable about it. I don’t feel the pressure. I don’t feel the obligation to win. We had it in the past and it’s difficult to deal with and I know how difficult it is. I would definitely prefer that other riders in other teams have to deal with that pressure.”
For now that pressure belongs to Hushovd and Crédit Agricole. They will be looked at to control Sunday’s stage 1, a 184.5km loop that starts and ends in Strasbourg. In between lies the Tour’s first rated climb, the category 4 Cote de Heiligenstein and a brief excursion into Germany.
Asked about the doping scandal that has dominated this year’s Tour headlines thus far, Hushovd said, “I think it’s very sad for cycling, but maybe also it’s a good thing to clean things. With what has happened it’s not easy to forget, but everyone also must think about the riders that are still here. We worked really hard to be selected for the Tour. Cycling is our life and we love our sport. I hope that the public will keep supporting us.”
1. Hushovd (Nor), Credit Agricole, 8:17
2. Hincapie (USA), Discovery Channel, 8:17
3. David Zabriskie (USA), CSC, 8:21
4. Lang (G), Gerolsteiner, 8:21
5. Valverde (Sp), Caisse d'Epargne-I.B., 8:21
6. O’grady (Aus), CSC, 8:21
7. Rogers (Aus), T-Mobile, 8:23
8. Savoldelli (I), Discovery Channel, 08:25
9. Landis (USA), Phonak, 8:26
10. Karpets (Rus), Caisse d'Epargne-I.B., 8:27
Full Results
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