Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen
Stage 3: Ichtegem ITT
Today's weather was really bad. All day long there was heavy rain and strong winds sometimes faster than 40km/h. Anyway, the last stage of the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen, a 16 km individual time trial, had to be ridden, and the general classification was about to be changed completely.
Meier (Garmin) was the first one to set a superb time, but in the end, it was just enough for a 5th place, 49” behind the winner.
Grabsch (Columbia) was today's favourite. However, the ITT World Champion of 2008 took 20'36” for the 16 kilometers around Ichtegem, 28 more than today's winner.
Bodrogi (Katusha) didn't disappoint his team mates as he finished 2nd, 11 seconds behind the winner.
It was not our day today, and neither Reus' ones, who finished 1'45” behind the winner, which is rank 57, resulting in rank 46 in the general classification.
Danielson (Garmin) had a good day today, and ended 4th, a second before his team mate Meier.
Another Garmin-Slipstream rider, Bradley Wiggins, was the fastest today, with 20'08”. This also means, he is the new leader and thus winner of the race.
A distance of 1250 kms is waiting for the riders, as the second pro tour stage race of this year is about to start. The key stage will probably be the sixth one, finishing on top of “Ventoux Little Sister”, the Montage de Lure, after a climb of 13.8 kilometres with an average slope of 6.6%.
While the media is focussed on a possible fight for victory between Sastre and Valverde, eight riders of a young continental team have signed in as well. Of'course, that's us. It will be the first Pro Tour race for our team, and the first for some of our riders as well.
The first day of Paris-Nice will be an opening Time-Trial, making Fabian Cancellara the favourite for the first yellow yersey.
The first rider on the track was Alejandro Valverde (GCE), but he was none of today's favourites. The first rider who could make a difference today was Stijn Devolder (QuickStep), but at the end of the day he was just 7th, followed by Joost Posthuma (Rabobank), who got 8th.
Michael Rogers (Columbia), who already won the National TT of Australia, gave no good impression today, as he lost 27 seconds and finished only 24th.
Later, Fabian Cancellara (SaxoBank) set off, as expected, to take victory. He did a good job finishing 1st so far, and now he only had to wait for the other riders to come in.
Anyone left to beat him today?
First who tried was David Millar (Garmin), but he lost 8 seconds on Fabian.
Zabriskie (Garmin) did better, but still lost five seconds.
Tony Martin (Columbia) finally impressed, but came too short as well. 2nd overall, one small second behind Fabian.
For us noteworthy, five of our riders lost less than a minute on Cancellara.
Paris - Nice 2009
Stage 2: St-Brusson-sur-Loire - La Chapelle St-Ursin
Stage 2 began with a lot of attacks of which 11 riders managed to stay away from the pack forgood. There was a group of nine riders in front, followed by two single chasers, the second of them being our rider Serge Kreekels, the red lentern after yesterday's TT.
When the two mountain sprints were taken by the front group they had a lead of more than six minutes, and the pack, led by Team Saxo Bank, started to chase down the breakaway. 17 kilometres from the finish line the last of them was caught, and it looked like the race would end in a mass sprint.
Three short sprint trains were created. In best position was the duo Voigt/Breschel (Saxo Bank), on the other side of the road Roche/Clerc (AG2R), and a bit behind Drujon/Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne). Lorenzotto (Lampre) had no personal lead-out man, so he hang on to Breschel. It prooved to be a good decision, as not only had Breschel the best lead-out man of the day who created a gap to the other sprint trains, but Breschel, too, prooved to be very fast, and hold off the other trains easily.
Behind Breschel and Lorenzetto, Ballan (Lampre) overtook the other riders, and now being third and coming closer, formed the only threat for the guys in front.
Lorenzetto came dangerously close up to Breschel, but couldn't pass him, meaning Breschel took the stage win, Lorenzetto finished 2nd, and Ballan 3rd.
When Breschel celebrated his victory, Serge Kreekels, outpowered by following the breakaway, still had 18 kms to go. He crossed the finish line more than 45 minutes later. He won't be on the start tomorrow.
Cancellara keeps his yellow jersey, Ballan takes over green and the 3rd place in GC ranking, Knaven takes the jersey of the best mountain sprinter. There are no other noteworthy changes, nor exported results..
The third stage of Paris-Nice will probably end in a mass sprint flat as it is, but it's three short mountain sprints raises our interest to get into the break again, and maybe grab some points for a jersey, before we will enter serious climbs in the remainder of the tour.
In the first break of the day we had Jetse Bol. The break was made up of up to 16 riders, but the team of Rabobank was not amused and caught them all back. We approached the first intermediate sprint, and after that, Jamie Snijders managed to get away from the pack on his own.
He got a gap of just above 3 minutes, which was enough to pass the first two mountain sprints ranked first, making him already virtual leader of the climbers ranking.
Later, with 70 kms left to go, Rabobank, Liquigas, and AG2r set a high pace in front of the peloton, and Jamie Snijders worked hard to get some points at the third mountain sprint as well.
Five kms before the summit his lead was still 2 minutes, when Lastras (Caisse d'Epargne) and Nuyens (Rabobank) attacked soon. Lastras passed Snijders, Nuyens didn't, and the jersey was save, if Jamie just makes it to the finish in time.
Those riders in front were reeled in, and besides a short lasting breakaway of Goubert (AG2r) there was not much happening the next 40 kms...
That was, when the final sprint was prepared, with one train full of top sprinters behind Burghardt/Eisel (Columbia), and a few solo riders who tried to get on front, among them Cancellara (Saxo Bank) and Chris Froome (from our team). The AG2r riders still kept up the speed just by chasing, which led to an unexpected sprint. The favourites train fell back, Nocentini (AG2r) sprinted in front of team mate Dion, and Cancellara, wearer of the yellow jersey, moved towards the front.
Froome tried to get behind Cancellara, who now formed a real threat for Dion, who had passed his lead out man in between and was about to win the stage.
But AG2r got disappointed as Cancellara built up such a high speed that he finished first with a wheels length, just in front of three AG2r riders, and Chris Froome, who finished at a remarkably fifth place.
Jamie Snijders was tired when he crossed the finish line, loosing some time in the GC, but he was allowed to take over the dotted jersey of the best climber. Sure, he's no climber, and chances are very low that he will continue to wear the jersey after tomorrow's stage, where we will hit some more serious climbs. Also, no mass sprint is expected for tomorrow's stage, with the last summit just six kilometres from the finish line.
Today we will face some higher hills than yesterday, but a large part of the stage is still flat. Jamie Snijders is back on his legs, motivated to fight for some climber points, and defeat his jersey. That's why he tried to get into the breakaway that was formed early in the race, together with Knees (Milram) and Nuyens (Rabobank), and some other riders.
However, Nuyens and Snijders were caught by the pack, while Knees and five other riders were allowed to stay away, even before the first mountain sprint.
Later, Carlstrom (Liquigas) and Jetse Bol broke away from the pack, that had slowed down, and tried to close the gap to the front. Carlstrom managed to do so, but Jetse didn't. The race situation now was a group of seven in front, three minutes ahead of Jetse Bol, and about seven minutes ahead of the pack.
First, Saxo Bank controlled the pace, later Columbia took over. With 74 km to go Bol was caught, the gap was down to four minutes to the front, but was reduced steadily when the peloton approached the final hill of today's stage.
Just before the street went up, Tjallingi (Rabobank) and Zabriskie (Garmin) attacked, followed by Rohregger (Milram), Lloyd (Redwood), and Nocentini (AG2r). Zabriski was caught quickly, as was Lloyd, Tjallingi passed the front group and was on his own, and Kirchen (Columbia) placed a counterattack.
Valverde and other big guys stayed calm in the pack, when the mountain sprint was done and the riders were heading downhill to the finish line, for a short six kilometres.
Tjallingi had a small gap to a chasing group of seven riders with Kirchen on front, and the pack not far behind. But as they were going downhill, noone was able to catch up to Tjallingi, who took the stage win, looked back and saw Kim Kirchen, who got second.
Froome and Lloyd (Redwood) were sitting save in the pack, while some fifty riders were dropped behind. The pack crossed the line 55 seconds later than Tjallingi, loosing time on the front group riders, and Cancellara loosing his jersey to Kirchen.
