Recap, Stage 1 Tour de France 2010, Crash Testing Without Dummies

For most people, driving a car for 223.5 kilometers (about 139 miles) is a long day.  One usually does some planning for such a road trip and counts on a long day behind the wheel.  For the elite professional riders in this, the biggest show in cycling, the Tour de France, they made the stage look like a ride in the park.  Even in sunny, warm weather, this very flat stage looked like nothing more than a training ride for most of the peloton.   That is, until the crashing started.

This first actual stage of the TDF (some call yesterday’s prologue ‘Stage Zero’) started in Rotterdam where it finished yesterday.  The rabid fans once again lined the course several deep showing their enthusiasm for the sport and their appreciation for having it come to their city.  Yesterday’s rain cleared out and the sky could not have been bluer for Cancellara, and the rest of the “Jerseys” to lead the riders through a leisurely loop through the city before they got to the official starting line at the foot of the Erasmus bridge, which was a virtual ocean of humanity craning necks to get a glimpse of their heroes cruising by.

The smart money billed the stage as a certain bet for a big bunch sprint finish, even though some thought the winds coming off the sea in the Netherlands had the possibility for splitting up the field unpredictably like it did in the recent de Giro.   All eyes were on the Mark Renshaw-Mark Cavendish freight train to bulldoze their way to victory passed the likes of Tyler Farrar or Thor Hoshovd or any other sprinter with eyes on the green jersey prize.  Turned out not to be the wind that split the field and wrote a different ending to today’s events as the peloton road into the Brussels, Belgium finish – it was wheel clashing, elbow tangling, head-over-heels pavement thumping that upset most everyone’s predictions for the day.  Oh yeah, and throw in an off-leash dog early on to get it all started.

The first of the day’s crashes started after about 56 kilometers when a free roaming dog decided that the police were only stopping humans from crossing the road.  The Green Jersey and the reigning champion of the Giro de Italia went down.  Both David Millar of Garmin-Transitions and Liquigas’ Ivan Basso were able to get back up and reestablish contact with the field and both seemed not too worse for wear.

Then some real chaos started – not my word, this was how Fabian Cancellara described the end of the stage in a post-race interview; “the end was madness, chaos.”   Mayhem was another good word used.  Lance Armstrong was noted to have said:  “It was total mayhem, especially in the finish, but actually all day.”

Within the final few kilometers after the field had caught a small breakaway group Mark Cavendish seemed to have lost his line a bit on a relatively tight turn and he and Oscar Freire of Rabobank got tangled up.  Freire went down along with another rider and Cavendish was able to stay up and keep going, but at this point he had lost contact with his teammates and would not be a factor in contesting the finish.  No doubt this will fuel some of the current peloton resentment aimed at the Manx Missile’s seeming devil-may-care style when he smells a finish line.

Then there was a massive crash with 1 kilometer to go that completely split the field and caught everyone back, and then, inexplicably there was another crash and another.

Most of the contenders were caught back, and held up.  A relatively easy victory was had by 36-year old Alessandro Petacchi of now riding for Lampre-Farnese Vini.  He was lucky enough to be in front of the melee along with some 20 other riders, which included HTC-Columbia’s Mark Renshaw, Cervélo’s Thor Hushovd, and Katusha’s Robbie McEwen.  Those were the first 4 riders to finish today’s crash test.

Of all the scrapes, bumps, bruises and road rash incidents on the day it appears that Adam Hansen of HTC-Columbia may have suffered the worst of it with a possible broken collarbone.   On other injury news, current world road race champion Cadel Evans of BMC continues his tough luck team-support problems with the loss of climber Mathais Frank who had to abandon after a really hard high-speed crash in yesterday’s prologue which broke his right thumb, tore a left thigh muscle and badly split his lip.  He would have provided Evans good support in the difficult mountain stages to come.

So after all the pavement thumping today, the key race results remain the same.
1. Fabian Cancellara, Saxo Bank, is in yellow,
2. Tony Martin, HTC-Columbia, is in second place 10 seconds back in white,
3. David Millar, Garmin-Transitions, is a bit bruised but still 20 seconds back, and
4. Lance Armstrong who refused to participate in any pavement bouncing today is still holding down 4th place just 22 dangerous seconds behind the lead.
Petacchi got the green jersey today but is in 48 seconds back in 38th place.

As was pointed out here yesterday, Lance is right now in the catbird seat!  The three TT specialists that barely beat him in the prologue can’t win this race.  Of all the serious contenders, Lance Armstrong IS leading this race!  Who are the serious contenders?  Here’s as good a list as any in order of how far back they are from the highest place rider right now that really counts, Lance Armstrong.  In other words, here’s the real race:
2. Alberto Contador, Astana, 5 seconds behind LA
3. Levi Leipheimer, RadioShack, 6 seconds behind LA
4. Janez Brajkovic, Team RadioShack 13 seconds behind LA
5. Andreas Klöden, Team RadioShack, 14 seconds behind LA
6. Cadel Evans, BMC Racing, 17 seconds behind LA
7. Carlos Sastre, Cervélo Test Team, 22 seconds behind LA
8. Ivan Basso, Liquigas-Doimo, 23 seconds behind LA
9. Bradley Wiggins, Sky, 24 seconds behind LA
10. Chris Horner, Team RadioShack, 30 seconds behind LA
11. Denis Menchov, Rabobank, 34 seconds behind LA
12. Samuel Sanchez, Euskaltel-Euskadi, 34 seconds behind LA
13. Frank Schleck, Saxo Bank, 35 seconds behind LA
14. Christian Vande Velde, Garmin-Transitions, 38 seconds behind LA
15. Andy Schleck, Saxo Bank, 47 seconds behind LA
16. Damiano Cunego, Lampre-Farnese Vini, 51 seconds behind LA

You can bet the rest of the peloton is taking note that there are 4 RadioShack riders on the ‘Danger Rider’ List.

More stage 1 results

By George Hurst, staff writer
4 July 2010  Rotterdam/Brussels