Spaniard Oscar Freire of Rabobank won the fifth stage of the Tour de France held over 225km between Beauvais and Caen on Thursday.
Belgium’s Tom Boonen, who finished second on the stage ahead of Spain’s Inaki Isasi in third, retained the race leader’s yellow jersey by 13 seconds from Australian Michael Rogers ahead of Friday’s 189km stage between Lisieux and Vitre.
With the real fight for the yellow jersey not set to begin until after Saturday’s first big test — the 52km time trial around Rennes — this day focused on the points competition’s green jersey.
Having come into the race declaring that stage wins would come ahead of his green jersey ambitions, Davitamon’s Robbie McEwen finally showed he is ready to bid for what would be a hat-trick of green jerseys.
An early breakaway formed, which ultimately left two riders — Frenchman Samuel Dumoulin and German Bjorn Schroder — heading up towards the coast on their own.
They worked together to build the race’s biggest margin so far, which reached almost 13 minutes before the peloton decided to up the pace.
As with most of the stages this week, a bunch sprint was anticipated and the main protagonists — McEwen, Boonen and Norway’s Thor Hushovd — sent their teams to the front of the chasing bunch to set the tempo.
That had the effect of closing the gap significantly. Having held a lead of 12min 50sec with 140km to race, Dumoulin and race debutant Schroder held only three minutes on the chasing bunch with 25km to the finish.
That virtually sealed their fate, and with Hushovd missing out on crucial points for the green jersey after his disqualification the previous day, a bunch sprint at the finish was virtually guaranteed.
McEwen, meanwhile, added to Hushovd’s harsh disqualification, for a sprint infringement, by sending his Davitamon teammate Johan Vansummeren up the road to claim the third remaining place and relevant points in each of the three intermediate sprints.
In the race for the Tour’s other main jersey, the best climber’s polka dot jersey, Jerome Pineau was just as active, claiming all of the points that had not been eaten up by the two stage leaders.
As the peloton chased them down in the last 15km, Discovery Channel rider Egoi Martinez gave his team a scare when he crashed and was lucky to avoid a more serious injury. — AFP
