Oh No, Moreau!

On paper it looked like a day for a massive bunch sprint. 182.5 kms with nary a ripple of elevation over the last 100 km. But one thing that doesn’t show up on paper is the wind. And what a nasty cross-wind it was today. An attentive Alexandre Vinokourov took full advantage of these circumstances as he sent up his whole team to rock the peloton when the wind changed direction at a key moment. This effort split the peloton into several echelons. And when it finally came back together, there were two rather large groups separated by a few minutes. This was bad news for some of the big sprinters (Zabel, Hushovd and Bennati) who got caught in the back group. But it was absolutely devastating for Christophe Moreau, who conceded over 3 minutes today and plunged from 6th all the way to 14th place on the overall GC. So what looked like a relatively minor stage as far as the GC is concerned turned out to be fairly significant in the end. Not good for my hope of cashing in Moreau for some big GC points at the end of the race. Nigel Tufnel says time is a harsh mistress. So true. 3 minutes and 20 seconds is probably a whole lot less than Nigel had in mind, and yet it must have felt like a whallop of a kick in the groin for Moreau today. Merde! Pay attention, Christophe! You can still make it back in the top 10. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Dave Z. He missed the time cut today and is done.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement, Vino attacked again with 4km to go, causing some temporary chaos for a peloton that was getting itself set up for the sprint. It didn't work, but it was enough to show that he’s not going to lie down. And it certainly left everything in a bit of a mess for the run-up to the finish. Then, just as they were were about to get things reorganized, they came around a sweeping right hand turn was a little tighter than expected and claimed a few more riders who got themselves tangled up in the barriers. Boonen didn’t end up going down, but he got caught behind as the group of sprinters was blown to bits, missing out on the sprint. The beneficiary of all the mayhem was the honorary captain’s former teammate Robbie Hunter, who took the stage win with a long sprint and jumps up into 2nd place in the race for the green jersey, behind Boonen and ahead of Zabel. Hunter’s one of my guys, which eases the sting of Moreau’s munson today. But unfortunately he’s on Matt’s team as well. I finally got some points from Fothen and Vandevelde, though, as they both squeaked into the top 20 today after being 0-fer the Tour so far, taking 10 and 4 points, respectively. Good enough for my first stage win. Whew. I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen.

Nice to see Vino's back to being his old aggressive little bulldog self. And yet a little odd, at the same time. Kloden is clearly the leader of Astana at this point, sitting in 6th at 3.50. He’s easily the best time triallist of the top 10, so long as his fractured coccyx isn’t a problem. He could well move into the top three on Saturday. Will Vino be able to suck it up and work for him in the Pyrenees or will he go crazy with attacks and leave Kloden to his own devices in his chase after yellow? The latter would be more exciting for us, of course, but tactically-speaking it would be pretty stupid for Astana.

More from CN, VN, and Pez.

Stage 11 results:

1) Chris - 164
2) Matt - 150
3) Charlene - 93
4) James - 76
5) Hal - 50
6) Rachel - 25
7) David S - 7
8) Jonny B - 5
9) David L - 4
10) Cheryl - 4
11) Johnny S - 1
12) Jonny G - 0
13) Vic - 0

General Classification after stage 11:

1) Matt - 1705
2) Jonny G - 1103
3) Chris - 922
4) James - 900
5) David L - 872
6) Vic - 823
7) Hal - 784
8) Cheryl - 658
9) Charlene - 586
10) Rachel - 534
11) Johnny S - 459
12) Jonny B - 352
13) David S - 197

The daily Tour Communique reports that Hal and Swatty have both received penalties for whining. One stir stick each.

Speaking of 0-fers, here's a list of riders haven’t scored a single point so far, from most expensive to least.

Paolo Savoldelli - 7.00
Leif Hoste - 6.00
Cristian Moreni - 5.76
Francisco Vila - 5.45
Igor Anton Hernandez - 4.50
Thomas Lövkvist - 3.64
Johan Van Summeren - 3.00
Felix Cardenas - 2.50
Jean-Patrick Nazon - 2.00
Juan Mercado - 2.00
Pietro Caucchioli - 2.00
Sebastien Rosseler - 1.92
Axel Merckx - 1.50
Björn Leukemans - 1.50
Ivan Parra - 1.50
John Gadret - 1.50
Lilian Jegou - 1.50
Ludovic Turpin - 1.50
Maxime Iglinski - 1.50

Finally, though Swatty’s Kazakh-themed team may not be doing so well in the FGBC TdF Pool, Kazakh pride is alive and well on the roads of France, as evidenced by today’s hard effort from the Astana boys as well as this incident from a few days earlier:



OTT: The Twang, Either Way