Chasing Le Tour: Cavendish opens his account
It took him a few days longer than he might have liked but after five stages of the 2013 Tour de France, Mark Cavendish has joined the winners list. And despite a series of crashes in the final kilometres of stage 5, Orica-GreenEDGE’s Simon Gerrans stayed out of trouble and will be in the yellow jersey again on stage 6.
Before today’s stage I spoke with Orica-GreenEDGE general manager Shayne Bannan to get a sense of the team’s ambitions now that Gerrans is in yellow. Bannan said it’s realistic for Gerrans to lead the general classification until the end of stage 7, “if all goes our way”.
Stage 8 features the race’s first hors categorie climb (the 15.3km-long Col de Paiheres) and the race’s first summit finish — the 7.8km Ax 3 Domaines climb. Gerrans is no slouch in the hills but he’s unlikely to be strong enough to stay with the likes of Froome, Evans and Contador.
Gerrans himself stepped off the team bus this morning to the cheers of a waiting crowd of Australians, before doing a couple of interviews and heading to the sign-in podium. Gerrans would ride the stage in yellow knicks, to match his maillot jaune, about which Orica-GreenEDGE sports director Matt White said: “We came prepared … but I’m sure all the teams do.” It’s just a shame that preparation didn’t include a yellow bike as well.
Earlier in the morning we spent a bit of time at the Cannondale bus listening to Ted King talk about his exclusion from the race after missing the time cut in the stage 4 TTT. Cannondale launched a protest with the race jury overnight and waiting for a response led to a sleepless night for King.
The American described yesterday’s #LetTedRide Twitter campaign as “heartwarming” and “tear-jerking” but in the end, even the support of fellow riders could do nothing to overturn the jury’s decision. King was out of his first Tour de France after four stages.
On the bus to the finish now. Sum it up in 140 characters? Emotionally exhausted. Thanks to all for the support. Means everything right now.
— Ted King (@iamtedking) July 3, 2013
Until next time, thanks for reading and be sure to check out our photos from stage 5 below.
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- A disappointed but measured Ted King this morning. His parents came all the way to France to watch his first Tour. Now he’ll take a little break in Nice and spend some time with them he said. Click here to read a good interview on VeloNews with jury president Vicente Tortajada on the decision to cut King from the race.
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- Simon Gerrans before the start of the race.
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- Matthew Goss before the start. It’s been a tough Tour for Goss so far.
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- Cadel Evans having a chat with Marieke Vervoort, gold medalist in the London 2012 Paralympics and her dog ‘Zenn’.
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- Orica-GreenEDGE started in Simon Gerrans in the yellow jersey and with all their riders wearing yellow helmets to signify their lead in the teams classification. The Orica-GreenEDGE team car is also numbered ‘1’ meaning they get first position in the convoy.
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- The French bank, Crédit Lyonnais, has sponsored the maillot jaune since 1987 and gives out le lion en peluche to stage winners.
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- The race started just outside Nice in a small town called Cagnes-sur-Mer.
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- Peter Sagan and Philippe Gilbert.
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- The breakaway of the day formed shortly after the start with Anthony Delaplace (Sojasun), Romain Sicard (Euskaltel), Yukiya Arashiro (Europcar), Kevin Reza (Europcar), Thomas De Gendt (Vacansoleil), and Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) building up a lead of nearly 13 minutes. The gap was still more than five minutes with 40km to go and the responsibility was on Orica-GreenEDGE to lead the chase as Arashiro was only 3:42 back from Gerrans and had the virtual race lead.
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- A large crash with 16km remaining brough down Marcel Kittel, Pierre Rolland, Christian Vande Velde, and many others.
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- Christian Vandevelde injured on the side of the road. In the official medical report it had him listed as having a “cervical contusion”.
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- This is the first we’ve seen of Didi this Tour!
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- Orica-GreenEDGE were active at the front much of the day.
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- Shimano-Argos takes to the front
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- The race was halted by another crash at about 200m to go.
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- Jurgen Van den Broeck went down hard in the final straight. He said after the race, “In front of me Bouhanni was one of the riders that crashed and before I realised I was on the ground. The pain is mainly situated on my knee which was seriously hit. For the rest the damage is not too bad; some minimal abrasions but that heals fast. I’m curious to see how I will get up tomorrow. After three days on Corsica you’re happy that you can start the rest of the Tour in one piece, but as I told several times something can happen here every day.”
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- Niki Terpstra celebrates with Mark Cavendish after the Manxman’s win.
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- Gerro still in yellow.
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- Philippe Gilbert was held up at the crash in the finish but didn’t go down. He is, however, quite bandaged up after a fall a few days ago.
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- Yukiya Arashiro (Europcar) was the virtual race leader for much of the stage.
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- Tom Danielson went down at the finish but was not seriously injured. He sits in 18th position on the GC.
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- Mark Cavendish started the day in 15th position in the points classification. After today’s win he’s now up to 2nd with 76 points. Peter Sagan still leads the classification and is now on 111 points.
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