Cadel Evans stays upright

A weird, intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfying stage. Crashes late on separated the bunch, leading to significant time gaps and abandons. Half the peloton decking it isn’t the way you want to see the general classification take shape really.

Broken bones

It was nasty stuff. Moving at pace in the wet, merely touching the brakes appeared to be enough to topple a rider and then when one guy went over, everyone else started braking in a bid to avoid him creating an exponentially growing melée of limbs and bike frames. It was bloody awful stuff and there were multiple incidents.

They say that the key to staying safe is being strong enough to ride at the front, but on this stage ‘the front’ meant just the first eight riders. Everyone behind that was affected to some extent. Of the main contenders, Joaquim Rodriguez had the worst of it. With several broken ribs affecting his breathing and a broken thumb for good measure, he’s sadly had to abandon the race.

Time gaps

Rigoberto Uran, Domenico Pozzovivo and Ryder Hesjedal all lost 49 seconds. Nicolas Roche lost almost 16 minutes. In fact all the main contenders suffered, bar one – Cadel Evans.

Evans had a couple of team-mates up at the front following the decimation of the peloton. They pressed on, towing current race leader Michael Matthews with them as well. Matthews can sprint and took the opportunity to do so at the finish to take the win. However, he’ll be shedding that leader’s jersey as hastily as a fat British man on the first sunny day of the year come the mountains. Evans is the man in control here.

Stage seven

Pretty sprinty, I’d say. Nothing too serious along the way. Hopefully the weather improves.


Comments

2 responses to “Cadel Evans stays upright”

  1. Habib avatar

    Must say that I agree that it was unsatisfying. Although rationally i agree that Evans couldn’t wait for the others by that point in the race -it would’ve been a neutralisation – my gut didn’t feel that way at the time. Not sure how much of this feeling is just because i’m not keen on aussies, i’m gagging for a proper hill top finish, or any real injustice.

    1. People are debating the rights and wrongs of it, but realistically they weren’t going to stop racing at that point and one guy can’t decide such a thing on his own.

      I think the gut feeling can be explained as dissatisfaction with the way things were panning out. That doesn’t necessarily have to come with any blame attached to it.

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