Monday, July 04, 2005

Stage 3 of Le Tour


erikdekker
Originally uploaded by terpkristin.
In today's stage we saw Erik Dekker (Netherlands, pictured at right), of team Rabobank, take the lead in the King of the Mountains competition by a point. He will wear the polka-dotted climber's jersey in tomorrow's Stage 4. Dekker showed a lot of heart, taking the lead with 27 km to go and pressing as hard as he could to retain that lead, especially in the last 5 km, when his lead was only 5-10 seconds. Inside of 2 km, he was caught by the peloton, though. All said and done, though, he put forth an amazing effort.

After an insane and incredible sprint finish, Boonen takes his second stage of this year's TdF. David Zabriskie finished in the main pack, as did Lance Armstrong, so Zabriskie retains the yellow jersey, while Lance remains in second. Lance's other main competitors also finished in the lead pack, so leading into tomorrow's Team Time Trial Stage 4, the general classification remains mostly unchanged.

Because of some rough actions in the final sprint, Robbie McEwen, who technically finished 3rd in the stage, was stripped of his 3rd place finish, and instead Stuart O'Grady was given the 3rd place.

Stage 3 top 3 finishers:
1. Tom Boonen (BEL), Quick-Step
2. Peter Wrolich (AUT), Gerolsteiner
3. Stuart O'Grady (AUS), Cofidis

General Classification after Stage 3:
1. David Zabriskie (USA), CSC, 8:48:31
2. Lance Amstrong (USA), Discovery Channel, +00:02
3. Laszlo Bodrogi (HUN), Credit Agricole +00:47
4. Alexandre Vinokourov (KAZ), T-Mobile +00:53
5. George Hincapie (USA), Discovery Channel +00:57

(Image from http://www.rabobank.nl/info/execute/node?node_id=262607&tab=4)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because of some rough actions in the final sprint,

How do you have rough actions in a bike race?

kristin said...

Well, what happened was that in the final stretch (literally probably the last hundred meters or so), Robbie McEwen tried to "fend off" his opponent by trying to nudge him. That is, while racing, Robbie was tring to either knock his opponent off his bike or at least to put him off balance by pushing him with his head. Because of those actions, which were completely unnecessary, McEwen was penalized.