Lance Armstrong showed he deserves a sixth Tour victory today when he won the 17th stage of the Tour de France (making it 4 stages this year). US Postal set a fast pace, and the only ones that could keep up were Jan Ullrich, his teamate Andréas Klöden, Ivan Basso, currently in 2nd place behind Lance, and Lance himself led by Floyd Landis. The stage ended with Andréas Klöden sprinting away at 1 km to go, and everyone followed, and Lance sprinted out and came out right ahead of him. Jan Ullrich probably wasn't too happy about Klöden because he took the 2nd place time bonus (12 second), leaving Jan with just the 3rd place bonus (8 seconds), putting him at 8:08 back, in 4th place, with Klöden in 3rd, at 5:11. Ullrich has never been worse in the Tour than 2nd place.
There were some early breakaways for the King of the Mountains competition and to be the first person to be at the highest point of the Tour, the 2000-meter Col de la Madeleine, which is rewarded with a 5000-Euro bonus (6000 dollars), which Gilbeto Simoni got, just edging out Richard Virenque, with the Armstrong group behind.
Good post Daniel (aka Dance). That finish was a thrilling 1,000 meters.
ReplyDeleteI put that picture on because I could not get over how funny it is.
ReplyDeleteI think that is the best picture of a finish that I have seen. It makes me smile whenever I look at it.
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