2011 TDF Tour de Crash

CEBU, Philippines - I hope that the Tour de France have realized what a huge mistake they have made when they stretched the mountain stages into the middle of the 3-week race.

Another batch of top contenders, Alexander Vinokourov (Kazakhstan, Astana) and Jurgen van den Broeck (Belgium, OmegaPharma-Lotto) who were 11th (@32sec) and 12th (@39sec) respectively, had to go home early after another huge pile-up. The Kazak had a broken kneecap while the Belgian had a fractured pelvis. A very valuable domestique for team Garmin, Dave Zabriskie, had to abandon after a broken wrist in the same crash.

I know that the weather played a big part in these crashes but it’s a scandal to see riders and teams, who based their whole season on the Tour, see their chances disappear in the mist after a silly crash after crash. Remember that the first 11 stages in this year’s race are just “transitional” stages, meaning, it’s meaningless for the Tour contenders, that is until you crash.

Even the motor vehicles that follow the Tour have become a hazard themselves. In stage 5, a motorbike hit Nikki Sorensen (Denmark, Saxo Bank) throwing him off and dragging his bike for 200m yesterday, it was French TV car that cut into Juan Antonio Flecha and Johnny Hoogerland (Netherlands, Vacansoleil). Flecha hit the road hard while Hoogerland was thrown off into a barbed wire fence. What made it more painful was that they were with a 5-man break that went on to win the stage!

From 198 riders, it’s down to 180. Tomorrow is the first rest day and the mountains are still on 3 days away. Hopefully, all the remaining contenders will be safe.

Tommy Voeckler (Eurocar) is a very popular rider in France. He smiles a lot and he is always near the front and always watching for an opportunity to get into a breakaway. For a rider like Voeckler, breakaways are likely to fail in 49 out of 50 attempts. He didn’t win stage 9 but he grabbed the yellow jersey instead. No bad! He first figured in a long breakaway back in 2004 netting him the yellow jersey for 11 days and God knows how many times he tried after that. He is not expected to hold on to the yellow jersey for long but it’s always a joy to see an aggressive rider from a small team doing what some riders from bigger team cannot and will not do. (FREEMAN)