Friday, July 11, 2008

Stage Seven: Brioude to Aurillac

A big group of 61 riders crossed the line today at 21:53 after the stage-winning rider. Lanterne Rouge Wim Vansevenant of Silence-Lotto crossed the line just before them at 20:16, not far behind teammate Johan Van Summeren (who crashed on a descent).

It was a bad day for several riders - Manuel Beltran of Liquigas was pulled from the race for a positive EPO "A" test from stage one after finishing 33rd for the stage (26th overall), and there were four abandons:

166 JEGOU Lilian (FRA) FRANCAISE DES JEUX withdrawal
121 MOREAU Christophe (FRA) AGRITUBEL withdrawal
106 GADRET John (FRA) AG2R-LA MONDIALE withdrawal
95 FACCI Mauro (ITA) QUICK STEP withdrawal

According to the Cyclingnews coverage: Moreau attacked and was dropped on one of the first climbs at about 85 km into the stage, and abandoned at 96 km (but had not crashed). Facci abandoned at some point before that. Gadret abandoned at about 110 km in the stage/49 km to go.

Former Lanterne Rouge (2006, stage 4) Magnus Backstedt of Garmin-Chipotle was eliminated for finishing outside the time limit for the stage.

The last four riders in the standings (with 170 riders left in the race) remain mostly the same - although Nicki Sorensen of CSC-Saxo has moved up to 141st overall, and the margin between the last two riders has decreased to 33 seconds:

167. HAUSSLER Heinrich 114 GEROLSTEINER 29h 14' 29" + 50' 49"
168. KUSCHYNSKI Aleksandr 66 LIQUIGAS 29h 15' 51" + 52' 11"
169. AUGE Stéphane 182 COFIDIS CREDIT PAR TELEPHONE 29h 16' 38" + 52' 58"
170. SPRICK Matthieu 146 BOUYGUES TELECOM 29h 20' 52" + 57' 12"
171. VANSEVENANT Wim 9 SILENCE - LOTTO 29h 21' 25" + 57' 45"

Note: Apologies to my regular readers, but I'm going out of town tomorrow to a race and may not be able to update this blog for a few days.

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Comments:
Have fun in your race; I don't know whether to encourage you to go for the lanterne rouge or not.

My cutoff time calculator failed miserably in this stage -- the actual cutoff time was reportedly
4:20:50, and Sanchez finished in 3:52:53, so it appears the actual percentage was about 11. This makes no particular sense -- if the stage was category 1, the winning speed of about 41 kph should have given a percentage of about 8, while if it was category 2, the percentage should have been 16 or 17. I have a feeling that there's a lot of latitude for the whims of the judges.

Oh, well.
 
Maggy...NOOOOO!

While I was under no grand delusions he would finish- but not get past the first week? Crap.
 
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