Tour de France - Stage 13
What a day and what a time-trial around the city of Albi on a 54km course. Alexandre Vinokourov demonstrated how crashes couldn’t quell his desire to win. He beat Cadel Evans in the 54km time trial by 1 minute 14 seconds but the Australian also savored success in this first long individual test by moving up to within 1 minute of the yellow jersey – he also broke up what would otherwise have been an Astana hat trick.
Both Andreas Klöden and Andrey Kashechkin crashed on a day when the weather played a big role in the outcome. Pouring rain in the middle of the stage hindered the hopes of many but the sun shined for the finale. Bradley Wiggins appeared in control of the stage but the Brit had to settle for fifth place.
Michael Rasmussen probably made the time-trial of his life yesterday, since he is know to be the crash king of time trials, but this time he really put the hammer down and made a clean run in the Albi time-trial. I guess the yellow jersey has magical powers when it comes to man against clock. One could really see the pace that Rasmussen had when he, like a freight train just powered past Alejandro Valverde with less the 2 kilometers to go.
I was sort of surprised to see that Alexandre Vinokourov went all out in the time trial, due to his run in with the pavement earlier in the tour and had to have 30+ stitches all over his body. I’m also surprised to see Rasmussen do so well in a time trial, a discipline that he have had many problems before, but i guess he had trained for it. In a interview after the race he told the reporters that he probably surprised everyone including himself, by his run.
Now the Tour de France is moving into the Pyrenees and returning to Rasmussen’s favorite terrain. The last week of the tour will be very exciting.
I’ll be back tomorrow with my view on the 14th stage of the Tour de France.
Tags: Cycling, Tour de France
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 1:08 pm 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.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:41 am
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