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Voeckler wins stage 5 in Perpignan
Cancellara's crew tries to break things up in the crosswinds; Rabobank's Gesink crashes and loses big time.
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Frenchman Thomas Voeckler scored a popular stage victory Wednesday in the fifth stage of the 96th Tour de France, a 196.5-kilometer (122-mile) race from Le Cap d’Agde to Perpignan.
Voeckler (BBox Bouygues Telecom) was away in a six-man break for more than 180 kilometers, attacking the other five with about five kilometers to go and riding into Perpignan alone, with the chasing peloton in sight behind him at the finish line.
Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank) maintained his overall lead as all the GC favorites finished together. Cancellara's team and Astana tried to break up the peloton on a windy coastal section of the stage, but succeeded only in preventing young GC hope Robert Gesink (Rabobank) from rejoining the pack after a tumble.
The Big Boys' tactical riding along the coast may also have given Voeckler's break the extra gap it needed to stay away until the end.
"I've been chasing this victory for so long!" said Voeckler, who is only just finding real form having broke his collarbone at Paris-Nice in March.
"I crashed and broke my collarbone 10 days before Armstrong did. We were both racing at the Giro d'Italia but it was hard race for me.
"This is really the proof that if you work hard and stick to it, the victories will come."
It was a moderately flat stage in Southern France, starting on the Mediterranean, heading inland and hitting a few hills (including two fourth-category climbs), then returning to the coast for about 30 kilometers of crepe-flat terrain coming into Perpignan.
The day was warm and windy, and, after the critical crosswind split in Sunday's stage 2, teams were attentive for any separation.
2009 Tour de France
- Stage 5: Le Cap d'Agde to Perpignan
- 196.5km (122.1 miles)
- Stage winner: Thomas Voeckler (BBox Bouygues Telecom) in 4:29:35
- Stage winner's average speed: 43.7 kph (27.2 mph)
- GC leader: Fabian Cancellara (Saxo Bank)
- Points leader: Mark Cavendish (Columbia HTC)
- Climbing leader: Jussi Veikkanen (FdJ)
- Team GC leader: Team Astana
- Best young rider: Tony Martin (Columbia-HTC)
- Previous stage wins/GC leaders
- Stage 1:(ITT) Cancellara/Cancellara
- Stage 2: Cavendish/Cancellara
- Stage 3: Cavendish/Cancellara
- Stage 4: (TTT) Astana/Cancellara
- Up Next:
- Stage 6 enters Spain, with a 181.5 km (112.8 mile) stage from Girona to Barcelona. The stage includes five categorized climbs (none harder than category 3) and finishes with a tough uphill in Barcelona's Montjuich Park.
The requisite early break
Two groups of three men each scampered off the front in the first 20 kilometers. The six came together before the 30k mark, and settled in for a long, hot, windy day in the office.
The six were Voekler, Anthony Geslin (FdJ), Marcin Sapa (Lampre), Albert Timmer (Skil-Shimano), Mikhail Ignatiev (Katusha) and Yauheni Hutarovich (FdJ).
The best-placed GC rider in the break was Ignatiev, the 34-year-old Russian best known for winning the 2004 Olympic points race. He was 3:02 behind Cancellara and Astana's Lance Armstrong.
Fifty kilometers into the race, the six had nearly an eight minute's lead, but soon after, Astana's workmen spent some time at the front and trimmed the gap to about five minutes by the 60k mark. As the leading six were buffeted by crosswinds reported at 40kph (25mph) the peloton continued to chew away at the break's lead, reducing the gap to around four minutes at the 80k mark.
Astana, Garmin-Slipstream and Columbia-HTC were doing most of the chase in the mid-part of the stage.
Over the hills, Geslin protected the mountains jersey worn by his teammate Jussi Veikkanen by snagging the first-place points on offer at the top of the Col de Feuilla, 112 km into the stage, and then atop the Côte de Treilles, four kilometers later. By that point, however, the six led by only three minutes and the peloton was on high alert approaching the turn onto the coast and the resulting change in wind direction.
As the peloton came over the climb, Cancellara's yellow kit was prominent at the very front, staying out of danger on the descent and positioning himself for any hullaballoo when the course made the turn.
Less attentive, perhaps, was Gesink, who crashed on the descent and got up slowly, favoring his left arm as he tried to return to the peloton with the help of two teammates.
Coastal charge
But Gesink chose the wrong time to lose the pack, because when the field hit the coast, Cancellara and his Saxo mates put the hammer down, with the race leader himself powering the front and forcing the field into several echelons, each contending with a stiff wind from the riders' right.
Within a few kilometers of the throwdown, the course gained some shelter from the wind and the Saxo riders looked around to find themselves in a front group of about 60 riders. Most of the GC favorites were present and accounted for. But Tom Boonen, Denis Menchov, Oscar Freire and Gesink were among the stars who missed the separation, and were chasing in small echelons scattered in the wake of the front group.
Boonen, Freire and Menchov made it back, but Gesink, who repeatedly faded back to the caravan to get treatment for his crash injuries, never made contact, eventually finishing more than nine minutes back. (Gesink later withdrew from the Tour after x-rays revealed he had broken his wrist.)
As the peloton entered another exposed piece of road approaching a big U-turn heading inland, Astana saw an opportunity to shed some more contenders and threw in another acceleration, to little effect.
The final chase
The yellow-jersey group had been riding tactically, sprinting and then slowing along the coast as Saxo and Astana tried to break things up. Meanwhile, the six men at the front had been riding steadily. As a result, the sextet entered the last 10km with more than a minute's lead, giving them some hope of staying away as Garmin, Columbia and Agritubel took over the chase.
Starting to feel confident of staying away, Ignatiev began a series of attacks with 7km to go, marked by Voeckler. The Frenchman who threw in his own decisive attack at 5km to go, shedding the two FdJ riders as Timmer and Ignatiev chased.
Voeckler, who wore the yellow jersey for ten days in the 2004 Tour, held off Ignatiev and Timmer and scored his first career stage victory. The pack rolled in less than a minute later, sucking up the remnants of the breakaway.
Ignatiev (later awarded the 'Most Aggressive' title for the day) was the only other break member to hold off the pack. He finished second, seven seconds ahead of Columbia's Mark Cavendish, who led in the pack for third. American Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Slipstream) was fourth.
Armstrong and Cancellara finished in the main pack and remain essentially tied on GC, with Cancellara ahead by a 22/100th of a second. Cancellara said he was thrilled to retain the jersey another day.
"Whether we'll keep it tomorrow or the day after is another story but to
wear the yellow jersey every day like this in France makes me happy, and very
proud," the Swissman said.
Thursday's stage is hilly, with a difficult uphill sprint. Friday, the Tour has its first real mountainous stage, finishing at the top of a Hors Categorie climb in Andorra.
An early French win
French riders have settled into a pattern of winning one stage in each of the Tours since 2000:
French stage wins:
2000: Christophe Agnolutto (7th stage)
2001: Christophe Moreau (prologue)
2002: Patrice Halgand (10th stage)
2003: Richard Virenque (7th stage)
2004: Jean-Patrick Nazon (3rd stage)
2005: David Moncoutié (12th stage)
2006: Jimmy Casper (1st stage)
2007: Cédric Vasseur (10th stage)
2008: Samuel Dumoulin (3rd stage), Cyril Dessel (16th stage)
2009: Thomas Voeckler (5th stage)
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