Tour de France - Stage 8
The Sunday was the day of The Flying Chicken as stated on the Tour de France website. Yes, i am talking about Michael Rasmussen, the man who showed everyone how you should climb a mountain on a bicycle. At Cormet de Roselend he showed that he was going all the way and established a 5 minute lead back to the peloton where the yellow jersey was.
Rasmussen rode the following mountains (Montée d’Hauteville & Montée de Tignes) like they were not there and he crossed the finish line way ahead of the the second placed rider, Iban Mayo, who he himself launched an attack with in the last few kilometres, In third was Alejandro Valverde, some 3 minutes behind Rasmussen.
Finally my idol and also the person in the Tour de France i always enjoy seeing won the stage, the yellow jersey and the polka dot jersey. Erik Dekker, directeur sportif Rabobank Team, stated the following, which is a bit funny : “He’s sure to hold onto the lead for at least one day, but I think we’ll see a lot more of him in the Pyrenees too.” I’m sure that Michael Rasmussen will hold the yellow jersey and continue to also hold the polka dot jersey, which he has won before.
Sadly also on this day there were crashes involving Michael Rogers, David Arroyo, Grischa Niermann and Stuart O’Grady, who fell badly in the decent from Cormet de Roselend and was taken to hospital. There were also a few riders that abandoned the tour, either for injuries or other problems on this stage. Amongst the withdrawals were Michael Rogers and Stuart O’Grady, both with heavy falls on the Cormet de Roselend decent, others were Ivan Ramiro Parra, Romain Feillu and Mark Cavendish. However there were three riders who did not make it to the finish line in time, they were Cédric Herve, Robbie McEwen and Danilo Napolitano.
It was a very interesting day to say the least, not only by the impressive ride from Michael Rasmussen, but also for rider like Christophe Moreau, Denis Menchov, Lunus Gerdemann, Jens Voight, George Hincapie and the swede Thomas “Gotland” Lövkvist. One this is sure about the mountainstages and that is that the camera men always get the stunning scenery surrounding the riders and also the massive crowds lining the road up the mountain. Tour de France is just not only a tough race, it’s a geography lesson aswell as one of those nature films that you find on Animal Planet.
Today (16th July) it’s a rest day for the riders, but tomorrow there will be another mountainstage between Val-d’Isère and Briançon, a course of 159.5 km with three massive mountains to conqouer, Col de l’Iseran, Col du Télégraphe and Col du Galibier, so that will be an interesting stage indeed.
I’ll be back on Wednesday with my view on the 9th stage.
Tags: Cycling, Tour de France
This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 11:52 am and is filed under Passion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
