Stage Nineteen

Moving ever closer to the deciding individual time trial, stage nineteen was made for a bunch sprint. Damiano Cunego after his crash on stage eighteen did not toe the start line.

Roanne to Montlucon 165.5km

Moving ever closer to the deciding individual time trial, stage nineteen was made for a bunch sprint. Damiano Cunego after his crash on stage eighteen did not toe the start line.

Once again, you guessed it, a breakaway of 12 riders went away from the peloton and the candidate for the most aggressive rider of the race, Stefan Schumacher was there. This guy just loves being in a breakaway. The other three riders were Egoi Martínez (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Pierrick Fédrigo (Bouygues Telecom) and Alessandro Ballan (Lampre).

The ‘heads of state’ had tomorrow’s time trial in their minds and would have liked to rest their legs as much as possible. But Liquigas were keen to chase down the break and set a fast pace. The four riders were caught with 96km to go.

Advertise Here

Immediately, the attacks began. First Phillipe Pozzato (Liquigas), then Thomas Voeckler. Both were brought back. Sylvain Chavanel was next, but still no luck. Then Popovych who hasn’t had a successful Tour. His attempt here was just as bad.

Sylvain Chavanel, who is leaving Cofidis to go to Quickstep at the end of the year, made another attack and went quite a way up the road as the peloton struggled to organise itself. He was joined by Fancaisse de Jeaux rider, Roy and the two riders were away extending their lead to just under five minutes.

Coming to the sprint, Erik Zabel made a dash from the peloton to take the two points for the third rider across. This put him only two points behind Thor Hushovd who was second in the sprint classification. Some habits are hard to break I guess.

Despite being a comparatively flat stage, many riders were caught out by the pace of the peloton and had to scramble to avoid elimination. Meanwhile, the two front riders were maintaining their five minute advantage over the peloton, right up to the base of the last big climb.

The four remaining riders of Barloworld were setting the pace with the aim of getting Robbie Hunter a stage win. But it was having little effect on the leaders. All the teams of the GC riders were content to sit and recover before the time trial so Barloworld had few friends to be interested in a chase.

With 25km to go the gap had been brought down to 4:12. Barloworld had been joined by Liquigas and Quickstep who suddenly woke up and realised if they wanted to set up a sprint, they’d better get a wriggle on.

Sylvain Chavanel, the French time trial champion was able to keep the pace up and the peloton made little headway. The time gap was coming down but very slowly. At 15km to go, the gap was still 3:10 and 2:57 with 10km to go.

Chavanel kept pumping away and with two kilometres to go they still had two minutes in hand and the tactics began. Chavanel was trying to get Roy to come around, but Roy was having none of it. Chavanel was the stronger rider and held him off to take his first Tour de France stage win after eight attempts at the race.

“It's a big relief, and so emotional as you could see at the finish, the big man said. “I thought about my best friend who passed away one year ago, last year at the start of the Vuelta. So many things came out as the pressure disappeared.

“This victory proves that if you don't give up, you can one day achieve your goal. Today was my day. I missed out several times at this Tour, and if I hadn't won today, I would have been frustrated, one more time. But I would have tried again!”

Behind, the pack was closing in. Hushovd got a good lead out from his team but Gerald Ciolek was too strong ahead of Erik Zabel and Australian rider, Heinrich Haussler.

Results