THE RACE LIVE

The film of the stage

Weening Surprise

The race for overall honours in the 92nd Tour de France really began today. Although the time trials of stage one and four gave us a hint of who the champion may be, the first day in the mountains offered a preview of what is yet to come. And the T-Mobile team immediately delivered on their promise of taking the race to the main favourite for the title, Lance Armstrong.
Amidst the bout of action from the predictable protagonists on the final climb, however, there was one surprise name.
Pieter Weening robbed Andreas Kloden of the stage victory with a late surge. Only 0.0002 of a second separated first from second place – a margin to small that it was not visible to the naked eye, not even with the benefit of the photo finish equipment.
The 24-year-old Rabobank rider spent some energy by putting himself in an escape group of seven riders on the approach to the Col de la Schlucht, the first category-two mountain of this year’s race. As the gradient increased he wasted immediately attacked his companions. At the base of the ascent in the Vosges region his advantage over an elite field of climbing specialists was 2’45”.
Weening isn’t a name many of us are familiar with but his fighting spirit was put on display in a fine way today. Behind him riders like Alexandre Vinokourov, Alejandro Valverde and Brad McGee were driving the pace of the chase. What Weening had to do was maintain his focus and arrive at the summit ahead of his rivals. He just missed out on first-place points when Andreas Kloden swooped past him in final meters but he got his revenge 15.5km later when he passed the German right on the finish line.
At the top of the 1,139 Schlucht climb Kloden and Weening had a lead of just 17 seconds.
"When I heard what our margin at the top was I was sure we’d be caught," said the Dutchman. But together with a committed Kloden, the pair increased the advantage.
Mickael Rasmussen claimed third on the Col de la Schlucht leading Santiago Botero, Jan Ullrich, Bobby Julich and Cadel Evans over the top. Armstrong was also present but in an atypical situation. He had no team-mates with him.
“We will have to analyse things tonight,” said Armstrong after an hour to reflect on his 20th place in the stage. “I don’t understand what happened today. There were 35 riders in my group and I was the only one from my team.
“It was a peculiar climb. It wasn’t particularly steep and the speed was up around 40km/h all the way up. It wasn’t exactly something that we’re used to… I had to concentrate on who was attacking and make sure I picked the right wheels to follow.”
Armstrong maintained his lead in the general classification but the top order was shuffled significantly because of the final climb. When asked to summarise his thoughts on the stage, Armstrong laughed and stated: “Un jour de merde.” He still has his humour but he must be anxious about the days which lay ahead.
“We’ve had one the fastest weeks of racing in the history of the Tour and I think everyone’s really tired,” said Armstrong.
Could it be that the T-Mobile boys are just warming up? Instead of having to set things up for the sprint stages as they’ve done for Erik Zabel since 1995 Ullrich, Kloden, ‘Vino’ and the other magenta-clad crew have been relatively subdued until today. And when the opportunity to attack the yellow jersey came, they had plenty of firepower. The first surge came from Vinokourov. Armstrong responded without hesitation. Then came a series of sorties; first Christophe Moreau, then Alejandro Valverde who was nursed to the base of the climb by his committed Illes Balears colleagues. The yellow jersey ignored these moves. And when Kloden’s turn came, Armstrong was focused on Ullrich’s wheel.
“You can only chase so many attacks,” concluded Armstrong. “You’ve got to make sure you follow the important ones.”
Neither Weening nor Kloden are in the top 10 overall after eight stages. Clearly Lance marked only the men he fears most. Vinokourov and Ullrich must be at the top of his list for he twitched each time they moved. He can be grateful that Ivan Basso and his CSC pals didn’t launch any bold attacks for the team was well represented. Jens Voigt is now second overall, Julich fourth and Basso fifth.
We saw today that Armstrong has the legs but not the team support of recent years. We also witnessed the willingness of T-Mobile’s heroes to cooperate with a common goal. What we’re yet to experience, however, is CSC’s collective lashing out on the climbs. While stage eight concluded with Weening the surprise winner, the biggest shock of the day was the collapse of Armstrong’s normally-reliable colleagues. Much bigger mountains await the Tour’s arrival in the coming fortnight and the race is far from over.

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