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 Saturday 29 October 2005 |
| stage 4Petit-Bale (Sabou) > Koudougou - 121.5 km |
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| Sawadogo, the return |
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Like an answer to a part of his compatriots who thought he was out of shape, Abdul Wahab Sawadogo captured the stage going to Koudougou and its famous final part on a 25km dirt track. The title holder built his first success this season in this “red hell” of dust and stones that finished by exhausting the pack. In the overall standing, he moves up to sixth position but still has a deficit of close to three minutes on Cameroon’s Martinien Tega. The captain of the Stallions, Saïdou Rouamba, is on the other hand only one second behind the race leader.
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Good operation for Rouamba
As expected the real key moment of the day’s stage was to come in the last 25 kilometres and that obviously calmed down all early attempts. Gunter Cuylits (BEL) however gave it a go after such one kilometre but stopped his effort at kilometre 5. The first intermediate sprint was staged in Boromo, one kilometre later. Saïdou Rouamba (BUR) wasn’t really interested by the pink jersey for the point’s classification but knew that every single bonus second had its importance. By taking second spot of the sprint behind Marien, he was now just a second adrift of the overall leader Martinien Tega (CAM). A precious second that at least the Cameroon riders won’t have!
Attacks in vain
While Gunter Cuylits and Mahamadi Sawadogo (BUR), the two fighters in the pack tried again to break away in the following ten kilometres, one has to wait for the 30th kilometre to see a group enjoy a 30” lead. Fofana and Kouamé (CIV), Nkiema and I.Ouedraogo (BUR), alongside Agbefu (TOG), were the main actors of this break. They were to be joined by Sanfo, Tall (BUR), Ali Thiam (SEN) and Bouba (CAM), with whom they carried on their efforts and saw their advantage grow to 45’’ before being eventually caught by the pack at km 40. Another attack by a group of around ten riders proved to be just as vain before the 60-kilometre mark.
Thiam hits the dirt truck
Moving closer to the entrance of the dirt track, quite a few riders were keen on attacking to avoid “eating” too much dust. The Sawadogo brothers, Keita and A.Thiam (SEN), Kaboré (BUR), Verdonck (BEL), Tekou Foukou (CAM) and Kagambega (BUR) looked well decided to break clear but were caught back with five kilometres remaining before the main difficulty of the day. While Thiam tried to insist and possibly win his bet of leading the race at the exit of Sabou, he was rapidly caught and dropped by the pack. He was therefore forced to deal with the dust.
Sawadogo plays it smart
Former yellow jersey holder Joseph Sanda (CAM) tried to break away immediately after followed by Schilliger (SUI). But the pack bunched up again with 20 kilometres to go, the exact mark that Abdul Wahab Sawadogo chose to start his performance. Followed by the winner of the previous stage Jean-Noël Wolf, who could count on the fact that he is an excellent mountain-bike rider, the two riders would never be caught by their followers. Decided to clinch the day’s victory Sawadogo stopped riding in front of his escapee companion from Alsace, and eventually took off in the final kilometre. This strategy proved to pay with Sawadogo also overtaking Wolf in the overall standing.
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Welcome to flat land
“Today the heroes of the Tour du Faso take on a historical stage. For the first time, we are going to visit the Gaoua area for a stage made for strong riders where only the best will be known on the hilly roads of the Southwestern part of the country, and where all the other riders could lose everything. It’ll be the Pyrenees and the Alps of Burkina!", insisted an enthusiastic Sofiane Coulibaly, the official race speaker, at the start of stage 2.
Slightly overexcited, the man from Burkina made quite a presentation of this 2005 innovation. Never had the Tour explored these areas close to Ghana and the Ivory Coast, known to be hillier than the remaining part of the country. The recent repairs on the road allowed the organisers to add to the race this succession of difficulties for this edition. “But let’s stay serious, they aren’t however classified hills, or we would have to create a new category”, added race director Laurent Bezault…
Indeed the climbs covered by the pack of the Tour du Faso haven’t a lot to do with the famous Col du Galibier or Col de la Madeleine. The truth is that it’s more of a succession of bumps on which the riders burned their legs. If the more ambitious like young Malick Thiam, who finished second of a race finishing at the top of the Alpe d’Huez this year, wasn’t able to show his climbing talents, the little hills of stages 2 and 3 did prove to be decisive. “They still hurt. These hills aren’t very high but they were ever-present all day. All these efforts added to the heat and the length of the stage made our day difficult”, explained Brittany’s Philippe Hamache when finishing in Gaoua.
The day’s winner, Michaël Schnell, confirmed what most of the riders thought of this stage: “All these efforts were tough to cope with. I actually had cramps in the last kilometres. It was demanding. One really had to be courageous”. The next day, on the same road but in the other direction, the damage done on the bodies were clear. Although he believes the climbs weren’t that difficult, it wasn’t surprising if Stefan Wolf, a former mountain-biker, finished in the best shape in Pa. “Being a natural climber, I wasn’t too annoyed by these little climbs. But one still had to be able to clear them with power”, smiled the winning rider from Alsace who allowed his team to manage the “double”.
Hilly or not, these stages heading to Gaoua have however created serious gaps in the overall: after 3 stages, the 15th rider was already over 5 minutes adrift.
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