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Cav' wins stage 10
Despite rider and team concerns, race radio ban goes ahead
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Mark Cavendish (Columbia-HTC) won a leisurely, radio-free 10th stage of Tour de France on Tuesday.
It was Bastille Day, and a breakaway full of Frenchmen declared independence early on, but the home crowd would have no reason to celebrate the finale — with a little help from George Hincapie and Mark Renshaw, Cavendish won yet another drag race to the line ahead of green jersey Thor Hushovd (Cervélo TestTeam) and Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Slipstream).
"There was a slight incline in the last kilometer — we knew that was coming and we had to go early," said Cavendish after collecting his third stage win of this Tour. "We knew we just had to be in the front and we did that. I think we were the only team that kept our formation. It takes guts to do that."
It was a fast finish to an otherwise slow stage, whose average speed was just 38 kph (23.6 mph) in the first four hours of racing as a disinterested and cranky peloton took its time about retrieving the day’s escapees.
Rinaldo Nocentini (Ag2r) retained the overall lead ahead of Astana teammates Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong, but it seemed from early results that Levi Leipheimer and Bradley Wiggins (Garmin) both lost time on the day after the bunch split on the tight, narrow run into Issoudun. Leipheimer slipped from fourth to fifth overall at 54 seconds and Wiggins dropped from fifth to seventh at 1:01.
Radio silence
The 194.5km leg from Limoges to Issoudun presented little difficulty beyond three Category 4 climbs — the Côte de Salvanet at 10.7km, rising 1.8km at an average grade of 4.5 percent; the Côte de Saint-Laurent-les-Eglises at 27.5km, 2km averaging 5.3km; and the Côte de Bénévent-l'Abbaye at 58.5km, 1.8km at 3.4 percent.
More significant, perhaps, was that stage 10 was the first of two "no radio" days on this year’s Tour. The UCI’s technological experiment didn’t set well with a number of riders, and they weren’t at all shy about saying so.
“Today should be a perfect opportunity for riders to make a statement and tell the race that the ban on radios is bullshit,” Boonen told VeloNews. “But of course it’s the Tour, and everyone has different interests, and nobody knows what’s going to happen. It’s just another crazy day at the Tour.”
2009 Tour de France
- Stage 10: Limoges to Issoudun
- 194.5km (120.9 miles)
- Stage winner: Mark Cavendish (Columbia-HTC) in 4:46:43
- Stage winner's average speed: 40.7 kph (25.3 mph)
- GC leader: Rinaldo Nocentini (Ag2r)
- Points leader: Thor Hushovd (Cervelo TestTeam)
- Climbing leader: Egoi Martinez (Euskaltel-Euskadi)
- Team GC leader: Ag2r
- Best young rider: Tony Martin (Columbia-HTC)
- Stage wins/GC leaders
- Stage 1 (ITT): Fabian Cancellara/Cancellara
- Stage 2: Cavendish/Cancellara
- Stage 3: Cavendish/Cancellara
- Stage 4 (TTT): Astana/Cancellara
- Stage 5: Thomas Voeckler/Cancellara
- Stage 6: Thor Hushovd/Cancellara
- Stage 7: Brice Feillu/Rinaldo Nocentini
- Stage 8: Luis Leon Sanchez/Nocentini
- Stage 9: Pierrik Fedrigo/Nocentini
- Up Next:
- Wednesday's stage 11 is 192 km (119.3 miles) from Vatan to Saint-Fargeau. The route includes a few short steep hills but nothing steep enough to shake the sprinters.
Rabobank’s Grischa Niermann made his own statement by implanting a car radio antenna on the back of his Giro helmet, drawing scores of photographers at sign-in.
“We’ve been racing with radios for 10 or 12 years,” he told VeloNews. “Why are we going back in time now?”
The obligatory breakaway
Going forward, meanwhile, were four riders — Benoit Vaugrenard (Française des Jeux), Thierry Hupond (Skil-Shimano), Mikhail Ignatiev (Katusha) and Samuel Dumoulin (Cofidis), all well down on GC — who took off early and had a minute over the bunch by the 13km mark. By 32km their advantage had nearly quadrupled, with Ignatiev leading over the first two climbs.
By 45km, the foursome’s lead had dipped a bit, to 2:50, with Ag2r and Rabobank monitoring the pursuit for very different reasons — Ag2r in defense of Nocentini’s yellow jersey, and Rabobank in hopes of giving three-time world champion Oscar Freire a shot at winning a bunch sprint.
Thierry Hupond (Skil-Shimano) led over the final rated climb, the Côte de Bénévent-l'Abbaye, and the break held to an advantage of 2:45 at the 78km mark.
Shortening the leash
With 77km to race Columbia-HTC, Garmin-Chipotle, Liquigas and Astana were contributing to what was a very leisurely chase indeed, whittling the gap down to 90 seconds.
Columbia was confident in Cavendish — “He wants to show everyone he can make it through the climbs and still be competitive in the sprint," said general manager Bob Stapleton — but director Ralf Aldag said the team wouldn’t chase a break without assistance, no matter how good Cav’ felt.
"There are some other teams here who want to do something,” he said. “Quick Step, Rabobank or Milram will have to help us. We will put two riders — (Bernhard) Eisel and (Bert) Grabsch — on the front and pull for 20km. If no one helps, well, then the break can go away. We won't do it all ourselves anymore in the sprints."
With 50km to race the gap was holding steady at 1:30, with Ignatiev contributing little to the break and the peloton clearly in no rush to sweep up the escapees. But 20km further along the road the peloton raised its pace slightly, taking back a half-minute, as the sprinters’ teams decided it was time to clock in while the GC squads formed up around their protected riders.
Time to race
Twenty-five kilometers from the line Ignatiev had decided to participate in the break, while behind, Milram, Quick Step and Liquigas contributed riders to the pursuit, thinking of Gerard Ciolek, Boonen and Daniele Bennati.
With 20km to race the leaders clung to just 30 seconds’ advantage. They padded that advantage a bit, to 42 seconds with 15km to go, but 5km further along the gap had fallen yet again, to 30 seconds.
With 4km to go the bunch could see its quarry, and it seemed the catch was imminent. Ignatiev tried and failed to drop his companions with 3km to go; Hupond was next to try, but it was fruitless, and with less than 2km to go the break had been devoured.
The final kilometers were a bit dicey — Hincapie came to the front for a monster pull as Hushovd and Farrar shoehorned themselves into the mix 350 meters from the line. But when Cavendish hit the gas everyone else was racing for second.
Farrar confessed to hesitating slightly in one of the corners.
"We can't see the finish before,” he said. “I looked in the (road) book but the corners were all a little more technical than I thought they would be.
"Apart from that everything went really good. The fastest guy won today, and I came third."
Meanwhile, Cavendish’s lead-out man admitted to having a technical edge in the sprint. Renshaw said Columbia sent scouts to the finish and got the definitive word on the finale via telephone.
"We had some guys sitting at the finish for us so we knew we could take most corners full gas, besides one or two," said Renshaw.
A disappointing day for the French, then — but it wasn't because the riders didn't have radio. Said Dumoulin: "The fact we didn't have any radio earpieces today didn't change a thing. It was really a sprinters' stage.
"They controlled us just as they would have done anyway." — Agence France Presse contributed to this report.
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