Cycling Tour de France: The older Tour cyclists continually complain the race is becoming more dangerous with every passing year, and they may well have a case, as yesterday saw a groundhog-day-style repetition of last year's first-stage pile-up with the bulk of the field held up and the finish turned into a grisly charade won by the Belgian Tom Boonen. One year on from mayhem in Meaux, it was apocalypse in Angers.
Lance Armstrong had already fallen off once early in yesterday's stage to no great ill effect, and he was outraged with the organisers' decision to turn the final kilometres into a corridor some four metres wide, between two sets of crowd barriers, making the sprinters' fight for position even more intense.
"I don't know what the hell they were thinking of. They've got the barriers really tight in the road, 200 guys launched at 40 miles per hour through there."
The organisers and the riders were fortunate in one sense. The crash happened almost precisely at the one-kilometre flag, and the rule is that if riders fall within the final kilometre they are given the winner's time. Thus it was that they were all able to pick themselves up, or if they had not fallen, to wait for the road to clear, before crossing the line in dazed dribs and bloody drabs.
"We were lucky it happened 10 feet inside the last kilometre or we'd all have lost a few minutes," said Armstrong, who finished with grazes and a stiff hip after his earlier crash, which came at the 13th kilometre.
"Everyone was nervous, there was a lot of wind. A few guys fell off in front of me and there was nothing I could do. Luckily we weren't going that fast," he said.
The later fallers could not say the same. The double Giro d'Italia winner Gilberto Simoni, already out of sorts after a crash in the team time-trial, was furious after being helped in by half a dozen Saeco team-mates.
The points leader, Robbie McEwen, had a buttock cut to the raw and his bloodied shorts in ribbons and was blowing on burned fingers, which the riders consider the most painful of injuries.
Worst affected was the Austrian Rene Haselbacher, who had ripped his shorts to shreds in a dramatic crash last year at Saint Dizier. He was taken to hospital, where he discovered he had broken three ribs and his nose. He will not start today's stage.
Only some 25 escaped the crash, and they were led up the slightly rising finish by Boonen, a strapping 23-year-old Flandrian widely considered the next big thing in Belgian cycling. He has the size, and yesterday he showed some of the substance after being frustrated in the sprint finishes in his homeland by poorly adjusted gears.
The other great beneficiary was Thursday's stage winner, Stuart O'Grady, who finished second, and has taken over the points jersey from McEwen. Perhaps his Cofidis team's luck truly has turned.
When this Tour route was announced, the consensus was that the 10 days' run across Belgium, northern France and Brittany would be manna for the sprinters. McEwen might not now agree, and the organisers' gift yesterday turned to ash in the mouths of Mario Cipollini and Alessandro Petacchi, the Tour's two finest sprinters of recent years, who were unable to start the stage because of illness and injury respectively.
Petacchi, who has injured a shoulder, should return next season to add to his four stages last year, but Cipollini's rocky 12-year relationship with the Tour has probably reached a decidedly bitter end. He is 37 and is unlikely to ride the race again. After being excluded by the organisers for four Tours in a row he had come here for one final fling, hoping to take one final stage win and then retire gracefully from the sport.
Time cannot be made to stand still, even by the most charismatic cyclist of recent years. For all the buzz around his outrageously zebra-striped team bus at the stage starts, on this Tour Cipollini had had the defeated aura of an aging rock star desperately trying to match the beat of the younger generation.
He fell on the first stage and again on the cobbles on Tuesday, reopening the wound that had put him out of the Giro d'Italia, a gash to his right leg. It was patched up, but by Thursday night infection had set in.
There was outrage in Italy at the Tour organisers' failure to invite him last year, and today the mood will be sombre. "All Mario wants is to win," said his team manager, Antonio Salutini. On the evidence of yesterday's mayhem, some of his fellows simply want to win too much.
196 km from Bonneval to Angers
LEADING PLACINGS 1. Tom Boonen (Bel) Quick Step-Davitamon 4:33.41 2. Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis 3. Erik Zabel (Ger) T-Mobile 4. Danilo Hondo (Ger) Gerolsteiner 5. Baden Cooke (Au) FDJeux.com 6. Sergio Marinangeli (Ita) Domina Vacanze 7. Jerome Pineau (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 8. Julian Dean (NZ) Credit Agricole 9. Janek Tombak (Est) Cofidis 10. Samuel Dumoulin (Fra) AG2R 11. Filippo Pozzato (Ita) Fassa Bortolo 12. Karsten Kroon (Net) Rabobank 13. Massimiliano Mori (Ita) Domina Vacanze 14. Massimo Giunti (Ita) Domina Vacanze 15. Laurent Brochard (Fra) AG2R 16. Magnus Backstedt (Swe) Alessio-Bianchi 17. Martin Hvastija (Slo) Alessio-Bianchi 18. Christophe Mengin (Fra) FDJeux.com 19. Daniel Becke (Ger) Illes Balears 20. Sergei Ivanov (Rus) T-Mobile 21. Sylvain Calzati (Fra) RAGT Semences 22. Fabian Cancellara (Swi) Fassa Bortolo 23. Andreas Klvden (Ger) T-Mobile 24. Georg Totschnig (Aus) Gerolsteiner 25. Jaan Kirsipuu (Est) AG2R 26. Jan Ullrich (Ger) T-Mobile 27. Michele Bartoli (Ita) Team CSC 28. Francisco Mancebo Perez (Spa) Illes Balears 29. Kim Kirchen (Lux) Fassa Bortolo 30. Matteo Tosatto (Ita) Fassa Bortolo 48. Mark Scanlon (Irl) AG2R (all same time)
OVERALL STANDINGS (yellow jersey) 1. Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 24:37.30 2. Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis 3.01 behind 3. Sandy Casar (Fra) FDJeux.com 4.06 4. Magnus Backstedt (Swe) Alessio-Bianchi 6.06 5. Jakob Piil (Den) Team CSC 6.58 6. Lance Armstrong (US) US Postal 9.35 7. George Hincapie (US) US Postal 9.45 8. Floyd Landis (US) US Postal 9.51 9. Jose Azevedo (Por) US Postal 9.57 10. Jose Luis Rubiera (Spa) US Postal 9.59. 53. Mark Scanlon (Irl) AG2R 12.05.
KING OF THE MOUNTAINS STANDINGS (polka-dot jersey) 1. Paolo Bettini (Ita) Quick Step-Davitamon 19 points 2. Janek Tombak (Est) Cofidis 14 3. Jens Voigt (Ger) Team CSC 9 4. Bram de Groot (Net) Rabobank 7 5. Sandy Casar (Fra) FDJeux.com 3 6. Jerome Pineau (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 3 7. Franck Renier (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 3 8. Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 2 9. Jakob Piil (Den) Team CSC 2 10. Bernhard Eisel (Aust) FdJeux.com 2
OVERALL POINTS STANDINGS (green jersey) 1. Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis 115 2. Robbie McEwen (Aus) Lotto-Domo 113 3. Danilo Hondo (Ger) Gerolsteiner 111 4. Erik Zabel (Ger) T-Mobile 107 5. Jean-Patrick Nazon (Fra) AG2R 101 6. Jaan Kirsipuu (Est) AG2R 89 7. Thor Hushovd (No) Credit Agricole 88 8. Tom Boonen (Bel) Quick Step-Davitamon 75 9. Baden Cooke (Bel) FDJeux.com 53 10. Magnus Backstedt (Swe) Alessio-Bianchi 50 63. Mark Scanlon 6
LEADING TEAM STANDINGS 1. Team CSC 71:46.54 2. Alessio-Bianchi 2.04 behind 3. Brioches La Boulangere 3.16 4. FDJeux.com 6.12 5. US Postal 10.41 6. Phonak 11.54 7. Cofidis 12.01 8. T-Mobile 12.25 9. Illes Balears 12.35 10. Rabobank 12.55 13. AG2R 15.21
LEADING YOUNG RIDER (UNDER-25) STANDINGS (white jersey) 1. Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 24.37.30 2. Sandy Casar (Fra) FDJeux.com 4.06 behind 3. Matthias Kessler (Ger) T-Mobile 10.49 4. Tom Boonen (Bel) Quick Step-Davitamon 11.17 5. Fabian Cancellara (Swi) Fassa Bortolo 12.00 6. Mark Scanlon 12.05 7. Mikel Astarloza Chaurreau (Spa) AG2R 12.14 8. Jerome Pineau (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere same time 9. Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 12.20 10. Michele Scarponi (Italy) Domina Vacanze 12.22
