CyclingRevealed's First Impressions '05

Stage 13 - Miramas to Montpellier, 173.5 km

Bold, Brave, Stupid

On a scorching hot day five riders made a bold move to escape from the bunch just 15 km into the stage. They stayed out there for most of the race traversing the flat Camargue plains setting an incredible speed and suffering under the searing sun.

In a pre-race interview Robbie McEwen said that he expected a break to get away but now, because he was no longer in contention for the Green jersey, he would not ask his team to spend hours chasing down the break as they did in vain yesterday. Nobody believed what he was saying, not least of all Robbie himself.

Mercilessly Robbie sent his poor domestiques to the front when the break reached about 9 minutes. Again for hours the poor lads flogged themselves at the front. Meanwhile Credit Agricole (for Green Jersey holder Thor Hushovd) and Cofidis (for Stuart O'Grady) happily cruised along in the Davitamon.Lotto slipstream.

On the run in to Montpellier the bold five, Carlos Da Cruz (Francaise des Jeux), Chris Horner (Saunier Duval), Thomas Voeckler (Bouygues Telecom), Ludovic Turpin (Ag2R-Prévoyance) and Juan Antonio Flecha (Fassa Bortolo), were reeled in to just under one minute. At that point Sylvain Chavanel exploded from the bunch and quickly bridged across to the break.

Chavanel then attacked again. Bravely Horner chased him down. Somehow the two managed to gain 25 seconds coming into the last km. Behind them the bunch was cranking it up to warp speed. At this point the leading duo should have put their heads down but instead they started playing cat and mouse. One can understand that Horner having been in the break for about 170 km was running on empty but Chavanel demonstrated extreme stupidity as he sat and watched Robbie McEwen and the bunch come past with 200 meters to go.

An interesting note, Robbie was clocked at 73 km/h (45 mph) on the line!

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