CYCLING/Tour de France:It is nine years since a pure grimpeur led the Tour de France and yesterday the stick-thin Dane Michael Rasmussen made a classic long-range mountain man's move through the Alps to succeed the last pure climber to wear the yellow jersey, the Italian Marco Pantani - although given the Pirate's disgrace and untimely demise it is not certain if that is an honour or not.
Rasmussen, nicknamed "Chicken" because of his barely muscled legs, has won the polka-dot King of the Mountains jersey in the last two Tours, and a hat-trick was on his mind when he set off approaching the first of yesterday's three mountain climbs, the Cormet de Roselend, in pursuit of an early escape including Britain's David Millar. Leading the race over each climb has given him a healthy lead in the climbers' rankings but that is not all.
With the young German Linus Gerdemann, in yellow after his heroic win in Saturday's stage, unable to hold the pace on the climb to the finish here as the chase hotted up behind Rasmussen, the Dane has an overall lead of 43 seconds. Third overall, two minutes 39 seconds behind the leader, is the Spaniard Iban Mayo, whose searing attack from the main group earned him second place yesterday.
With the Galibier to come tomorrow, followed by three tough Pyrenean stages in the final week, "Chicken" was optimistic yesterday that he can carve out a more substantial lead. The Rabobank rider would not be drawn on whether he could gain a sufficient margin to compensate for a notorious lack of time-trialling ability that lost him overall third place in 2005 amid a spate of crashes and punctures in the final contre la montre.
Nine fancied outsiders are closely grouped within another minute of Mayo: the Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, France's national champion Christophe Moreau - who "dynamited" the race, as the French put it, in the final miles yesterday and looks in scintillating form - and last year's l'Alpe d'Huez winner Frank Schleck of Luxembourg, along with the solid Australian Cadel Evans, Alexandr Vinokourov's Kazakh sidekick Andrei Kashechkin, Denis Menchov of Russia, the Paris-Nice winner Alberto Contador and Spain's Carlos Sastre, last year's fourth finisher. If yesterday is any guide, one of these 10 should win the Tour.
There should have been another man in the mix. Gerdemann had taken the yellow jersey after an epic escape to the ski resort of Le Grand-Bornand but there was always the risk the young German would be unable to recover in time for yesterday's mountain triptych. To cover every base, his T-Mobile team launched their leader, the Australian Michael Rogers, in the early escape and when he crossed the Cormet de Roselend with the leaders, five minutes ahead of Gerdemann, this classic piece of team tactics looked to have paid off. Fate intervened, however. Rogers fell, and damage to his wrist and knee were enough to force him to quit in tears.
Vinokourov survived Saturday's opening mountain stage in spite of the injuries sustained in his crash last Thursday. As his co-leader at Astana, Andreas Kloden, set a searing pace in an attempt to reel in Moreau and company, the Kazakh was unable to hang on. Together with "Klodi", who looked remarkably strong for a man who is carrying a hairline fracture of the coccyx, he crossed the finish line over a minute behind Moreau's group and his deficit totals four minutes 29 seconds.
The rider who won last Sunday's stage in Canterbury, the Australian Robbie McEwen, was eliminated after finishing outside the day's time cut.
Guardian Service
