Without a doubt, the 2 biggest riders in the race are CSC's Voigt and O'Grady, both ranked in the top 25 of the ProTour standings. But they are CSC's only riders in the race, so T-Mobile or Unibet start as favourites. DFL brings Manan and we hope to grab as many CT points as possible, with no overall aspirations.
Andre Greipel took Stage 1 with Manan 6th, Greipel won Stage 2 aswell. Manan was on his way to 7th before crashing at the last corner.
High winds swept through Stage 3 threatening to tear the race apart. In theend it did just that as Greipel and Hagen put some teammates up front at a fast pace with around 20km to go and soon rode away, with their teammates dropping back. Manan has been paying attention but couldnt quite latch onto them. GLS's Morkov joined him in a chase - although it was more of a trying to gain time on peleton battle as Greipel and Hagen were long gone.
Greipel easily took his 3rd stage in a row.
Morkov had began to pull away from Manan and the malaysian couldnt pull him back completely in the sprint, but 4th is still a good result.
Stage 4 was a flat 84km course and Manan was finally well positioned in the sprint, behind Hagen and Cooke but infront of Greipel. Cooke and Greipel were too strong but Manan looked to be taking 3rd until he faded in the last few metres. Greipel won... again.
Stage 5 was the 11km time trial. Pinotti just edged out Voigt for victory, while 8th for Hagen could only peg back half of the time he needed on Greipel. Our Finnish TT Champ Matti Helminen produced a stunning time to finish 7th.
1 Marco Pinotti T-MOBILE TEAM 12'23
2 Jens Voigt TEAM CSC s.t.
3 Baden Cooke UNIBET.COM + 5
4 Bert Roesems PREDICTOR - LOTTO + 8
5 Martin Mortensen TEAM DESIGNA KOKKEN + 9
6 Frantisek Rabon T-MOBILE TEAM + 17 7 Matti Helminen DFL - CYCLINGNEWS - LITESPEED s.t.
8 Edvald Boasson Hagen TEAM MAXBO BIANCHI + 20
Dan Lloyd attacked on the final hill and rode the descent as fast as possible. He still had a gap with 3km to go but would ultimately finish 13th. A 3rd and a 4th for Wiesenhof sees the German team take the lead in the Continental standings, moving ahead of DFL.
Evan Oliphant went with the break of 5, which would eventually become 13.
Only Bouygues committed to the chase and the gap was still at 3 minutes with 20km to go. Fedrigo and Di Gregorio attacked strongly from the peleton, with other attackers - including Dan Lloyd, unable to follow. With 10km to go, the break still looked good but noone particularly wanted to work - Oliphant certainly wasnt going to waste too much energy and risk his red bar rising too early, as the Brit holds one of the worst sprint stats in the group, now down to 7.
The slow pace allowed Duclos Lasselle to rejoin the group having been dropped, but then he crashed anyway. The pace did pick up a bit and came close to splitting the group, with Oliphant amongst the strongest 4, but the other 3 hung on and with 4km to go, Fedrigo and Di Gregorio arrived at the back of the group.
Forced to lead out, Oliphant held off for as long as possible before FDJ's Auger lost patientce and finally made a move. Fedrigo came charging up the left though and into the lead, while Oliphant battled to stay in the top 5. 3rd even seemed in reach but he couldnt find his way past Nevens, but managed to hold off Di Gregorio for a brilliant 4th place. Fedrigo won.
The 24 points picked up for 4th are Oliphant's first of the season and bring us past the 1900 point mark to 1921, 410 points ahead of 3rd place Barloworld. 2nd is our only goal now, as Wiesenhof are just too strong, even without the injured Wesemann.
The final stage is hilly, and surely Manan has no chance with his 54 hill stat of keeping in the top 10 overall, where he currently lies 5th.
Having made it through most of the stage, the final, toughest hill of the day remains.
Attacks went off and a lead group of 4 formed, Cooke, Rohregger, Hagen and Greipel. Morkov and Langeveld also got away.
Manan managed to keep in the peleton so a top 10 overall looks more than likely now. Greipel has already secured his race win, but can he take his 4th stage? He led out and his sprint started slowly and Hagen came alongside him but the norwegian faded and Greipel easily took yet another stage.
Deutschland Tour
Well I got a wildcard here because I thought I would use it for Pliuschin to get back into form ahead of the Tour of Ireland. Instead, Pliuschin will be elsewhere so Im using it purely for experience points. Its a top quality field with the 2 grand tour winners, Valverde + Di Luca, plus F. Schleck, Contador, Cancellara, Freire, Petacchi, Boogerd, Sanchez, Kloden and Dekker all riding, amongst others.
Only Nolf and Meul made it in the peleton on Stage 1. Freire won, while Nolf took 31st. Stage 2 was a TTT and with our best TTers being Oliphant (64) and Nolf (65 - not in form), it would be fun yet almost certainly last. This looked the case after the first 2 checks but somehow..we didnt come last - beating Ag2r and Credit Agricole, while nearly beating Euskaltel and Lampre.
Stage 3 was simmed cause I couldnt be bothered playing a hilly stage with a poor lineup. Frantisek Rabon won, Nolf was 43rd while Contador crashed out with a broken hand.
Aleksandr Pliuschin finally gets his first taste of the mountains this season as he looks to regain his form ahead of the Tour of Ireland, a sponsor target. He and Dan Lloyd spearhead the 6-man team as they take on 2 hilly stages and then 2 mountain stages.
The route for stage 1 was mostly flat although theres a tough finish to the stage. A lot of attacks came towards the top of the climb but only Gadret got away. Well, Scholz did too but had a minimal gap. Gadret gained a minute and maintained that to the line to win.
Behind him, Lloyd had drunk his last bottle with 4km to go just before the slight upward section to the line in order to give himself some blue bar and attacked with 3.5km to go. He didnt get away as such but with 1km to go as the sprint began, he was right at the front of the peleton. He came past Scholz in the sprint and took an unexpected 2nd place.
Deutschland Tour - Linus Gerdemann takes Breakthrough Victory
Starting where we left off, Stage 4 saw Bjorn Schroder take a massive solo victory of over 9 minutes. Gerdemann hinted at his form with 2nd as Boogerd took over the leaders jersey.
Coming into the queen stage we have Boogerd in the race lead, Kloden and Valverde are the favourites though as the likes of Di Luca and Leipheimer are out of form but when the steep Rettenbachferner came it was Linus Gerdemann who outshone everyone. His attack was stronger than the rest and emnded up with a minutes gap over Kloden and Valverde - a gap which grew to 2 minutes by the end of the stage.
GC:
1 Linus Gerdemann T-MOBILE TEAM 19h03'17
2 Alejandro Valverde CAISSE D'EPARGNE + 2'07
3 Andreas Klöden TEAM ASTANA + 2'08
4 Michael Boogerd RABOBANK + 3'33
5 Samuel Sánchez EUSKALTEL - EUSKADI + 6'33
6 Vladimir Gusev DISCOVERY CHANNEL + 7'55
7 Óscar Pereiro CAISSE D'EPARGNE + 8'18
8 Fränk Schleck TEAM CSC + 8'20
9 Levi Leipheimer DISCOVERY CHANNEL + 8'53
10 Thomas Dekker RABOBANK + 9'26
Gerdemann's race lead lasted all of 1 day though. An 8 man breakaway beat the peleton by nearly 4 minutes - and it included Michael Boogerd who steals the race lead by 14 seconds.
1 Anthony Geslin BOUYGUES TÉLÉCOM 3h56'53
2 Cyril Dessel AG2R PRÉVOYANCE s.t.
3 Sebastian Lang GEROLSTEINER s.t.
4 Fränk Schleck TEAM CSC s.t.
5 Michael Boogerd RABOBANK s.t.
6 Rik Verbrugghe COFIDIS, LE CRÉDIT PAR TÉLÉPHONE s.t.
7 Torsten Schmidt TEAM WIESENHOF FELT s.t.
8 Nicolas Roche CRÉDIT AGRICOLE s.t.
9 Óscar Freire RABOBANK + 3'47
10 Fran Ventoso SAUNIER DUVAL - PRODIR s.t.
After a sprint stage came the TT. Dekker beat Gerdemann by less than a second, with Kloden 1 second back in 3rd. Boogerd lost over 2 minutes so Gerdemann retook the race lead which he would keep on the final sprint stage.
After a slow start to the season, Gerdemann began to hit form in July with 3rd in the German championships. 10th Overall in the Tour de France despite only 1 top 10 stage finish brought him to the Deutschland Tour where he surprised everyone by taking a victory in such a high quality field.
With 5 of my 6 Belgians racing in the Deutschland Tour, only Nico Mattan would represent us in the Belgian Championships. Mattan is out of form having focused entirely on the spring cobbled season and finished 36th out of 99.
Stage 2
Stage 2 is the 2nd hilly stage and only Dan Lloyd would make it to the finish in the peleton, everyone else - including Pliuschin - would lose time.
Gadret got a little gap on the final hill and it was enough for him to not worry about a sprint finish. He took victory while in a tight battle behind him, Lloyd had to settle for 9th.
Stage 3 is the queen stage of the tour with the long, steep Le Grand Colombier climb. Neither Lloyd nor Pliuschin were able to keep up with the favourites' attacks so the dya was all about damage limitation, and Pliuschin did his best to limit the gaps by leading the peleton at 99% for as long as possible. Halgand outsprinted Gadret for the stage.
Stage 4
Classified as a mountain stage but today is shorter in distance and the climbs are shorter and not as steep which suited Dan Lloyd much better and sure enough, after the final classified climb of the day, Lloyd was in the lead group of the favourites, closing in on the breakaway. With him are Halgand, Barredo, Gadret and Van Goolen.
They caught the rest of the early break, which had included Aleksandr Pliuschin - who had ran out of energy due to the effort put in. Infact, the only breakaway rider not to run out of energy and therefore able to hang on to the lead group was Lars Boom.
Lloyd had good cooperation with Barredo in trying to increase the gap, while Gadret and Halgand werent quite as helpful. Van Goolen was just trying to hang on, as was Boom.
It remained a group of 6 for the sprint to the line, and Barredo took victory ahead of Van Goolen, with Lloyd in 3rd.
Despite being out of energy for the last 15km, Pliuschin still finished 29th, ahead of the likes of Bettini and Rebellin.
Pliuschin countered an attack with around 75km to go and they had caught the early break within 10km.
Pozzato, Nocentini, Celestino, Del Nero, Leukemans and Burghardt are with Pliuschin and they soon drop the early breakaway and look to create and sustain a gap over the peleton. With 45km to go, and the gap at 2 minutes, Pliuschin almost loses contact but he digs deep and stays in the group almost all the way - its not until the top of the final climb of the Waseberg with 15km to go that he does gets gapped, with nearly 3 red bars.
As he falls back to the peleton, he is passed by the dangerous Quick Step trio of Bettini, Boonen and De Jongh who are closing in on the lead group. The trio splits but manage to catch the front group anyway, Bettini catches them with 5km to go, Boonen with 3.5km to go and De Jongh with 2.5km to go.
De Jongh doesnt sprint but Bettini and Boonen do and they take a Quick Step 1-2.
If only Pliuschin had been in better form, a top 10 finish would have been within his reach.
