TVM's Jeroen Blijlevens put the frustration of two second places behind him to finally sprint to success on stage five of the Tour de France after another late-but hectic finish, this one in the Vosges town of Besancon.
While Blijlevens celebrated his second Tour stage win, following on from his victory in Dunkerque in last year's race, his chief sprint rivals Jan Svorada of Panaria (suffering as a result of his stage four crash) and Saeco's Mario Cipollini (thinking of rest and the coming Olympics) dropped out of the race. "My team worked hard in the first stages in Holland, but today I told them to leave me to it," said Blijlevens after the finish. "Everybody expected me to win in Holland, but, of course, without Cipo and Svorada, today's finish was a little more open."
In Cipollini's case, retreat from the Tour's stresses had been long planned although the "Lion King" felt obliged to talk vaguely of fatigue and a slight fever. Svorada, on the other hand, who had appeared a strong contender for the points competition, was feeling the deep muscle trauma from the previous day's heavy fall at Lac de Madine. The pair's absence left the remaining sprinters with a final opportunity to snatch a stage win before the first real climbs of this year's race on tomorrow's stage to Aix les Bains. Their cause was no doubt helped by the continuing bad weather, which left most of the field reluctant to race for much of the stage.
With strong head winds and heavy showers yet again plaguing the "route du Tour" there was a marked lack of enthusiasm among the 186 starters in the start village at Lac De Madine. Out on the course, continuing heavy rain saw Svorada abandon and both Telekom's Bjarne Riis and ONCE's Alex Zulle suffer mid-race falls, although both quickly remounted. Moments later, TV cameras at the back of the race caught Motorola's Lance Armstrong and Gilles Bouvard of Lotto arguing heatedly with arms raised, after the Texan stopped to help fallen teammate Laurent Madouas.
"It was nothing - I'm fine," said Armstrong coyly at the finish, before admitting that he had momentarily lost his cool. "That guy was out of order, and it was about time somebody told him so." Meanwhile, Gewiss' climber Ivan Gotti, fifth at last year's Tour de France and in this spring's Giro d'Italia, abandoned with a muscle tear in his right calf. Gotti's absence is sure to prove a handicap to Gewiss leader Evgeni Berzin in the high mountains, where the Russian is considerably less sure of himself. It took an attack from Agrigel/La Creuse's Jacky Durand after no fewer than 160 kilometers to liven up proceedings, and the former French champion briefly took seven riders clear of the bunch, including Mapei/GB's Belgian champion, Johan Museeuw.
But it was Cipollini's teammate Guiseppe Calcaterra who slipped away alone, with some conviction, 54 km from the finish. With his lead peaking at 2:10, some 27 km from the finish, Calcaterra's attack finally drew the field's sting, and he was reeled in 11 km from Besancon.
With the bunch all together, it was time for the sprinters' teams to move forward, and Telekom, GAN, Rabobank and Gewiss promptly obliged. Seven kilometers from the line, Rabobank's Erik Dekker soloed clear only to be picked up by the field, but he was then imitated by his team leader Slava Ekimov. It was the Russian's third such attempt in as many days, but as before it proved futile as the sprinters swallowed him up in the final kilometer.
With Telekom, and, bizarrely, Bjarne Riis, still pulling hard at the front, it looked perfectly set up for a second win for the German team's star sprinter Erik Zabel. But it was GAN's Frederic Moncassin who led out, with just 500 meters remaining, as Zabel and Blijlevens fought to take his wheel. Perhaps Cipollini or Svorada would have made life more difficult for the 24-year-old Dutchman, but in any case his clean rapid finish in the middle of the road was far too strong for the others, and he came across the line, arms raised, to bring TVM its first major success of the year.
RESULTS
1. Jeroen Blijleven (Hol) TVM 242 km in 6:55:53
2. Frederic Moncassin (Fra) GAN at s.t.
3. Erik Zabel (Ger) Telekom at s.t.
4. Mario Traversoni (Ita) Carrera at s.t.
5. Djamolidin Abdujaparov (Uzbek) Refin at s.t.
Non starters:
Mario Cipollini (Ita) Saeco
Servais Knaven (Hol) TVM
Abandons:
Ivan Gotti (Ita) Gewiss
Jan Svorada (Czech) Panaria
Michel Vermote (Bel) Agrigel/La Creuse
General Classification
1. Stephane Heulot (Fra) GAN in 29:49:48
2. Mariano Piccoli (Ita) Brescialat at 0:20
3. Cyril Saugrain (Fra) Aubervilliers at 0:34
4. Rolf Jaermann (Switz) MG Technogym at 0:34
5. Danny Nelissen (Hol) Rabobank at 1:35
Points classification: Frederic Moncassin (Fra) GAN
Mountains Classification: Danny Nelissen (Hol) Rabobank
Le Tour plants a tree: In tribute to the warm welcome received by the Tour in Holland, race director Jean Marie Leblanc and Bernard Hinault, head of public relations, have planted a sapling tree in the town center of s'Hertegenbosch, site of this year's prologue.
History favors Heulot: GAN's Stephane Heulot is not the first Frenchman to wear the yellow jersey of Tour leadership while also holding the French road race champion's title. In fact, the 25-year-old from Rennes in Brittany follows in the illustrious footsteps of two legendary French Tour winners. The last rider to wear the maillot jaune while French champion was Laurent Fignon in 1984, the year that the Parisien took his second Tour victory. Before that five-time winner Bernard Hinault had won the Tour in 1978 while also holding the red, white and blue French Champion's colors.
New teams on the horizon: Two new French teams, Cofidis, to be managed by the legendary Cyrille Guimard, and La Francaise des Jeux, put together by retired double Paris-Roubaix winner Marc Madiot, have set the rumor mill runnning on the French scene. While Guimard, team manager in the 1980s to the likes of Greg LeMond, Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon, is roundly expected to build a team of young French riders and old favorites, speculation surrounds the make-up of Madiot's squad.
Linked with the charismatic Madiot to date have been Laurent Jalabert of ONCE, Motorola's Lance Armstrong, GAN's Stephane Heulot and MG's Pascal Richard. While all the above are thought unlikely to join the French lottery sponsored team, Madiot has stated clearly that La Francaise des Jeux wants to be one of the top teams.
"We want to be a division one team, automatically selected for the Tour de France, competitive in all the World Cup races, and a good advert for French professionalism," he said. To achieve that, Madiot needs to obtain the signatures of as many highly ranked riders as possible - so far, no significant moves have been announced, but further news can be expected towards the end of the Tour.