Key moments

When he won in Brussels there had been crashes in the lead-up to the sprint but in Reims, Alessandro Petacchi had to take on all the best sprinters. He read the race perfectly, followed the right wheels and took advantage of the lead-out work by his team as well as those of his rivals. Mark Cavendish was perfectly poised to take advantage of great work by his team-mates but wasn’t able to finish off the job… he stumbled almost at the same time that Petacchi began his sprint – about 230m from the finish line. The Garmin-Transitions boys didn’t have Tyler Farrar there for the win because of an injury sustained earlier in the Tour but the US squad put two men in the top five: Dean second and Hunter fifth… but the true master of the sprint in the 2010 is Mr Petacchi.

The Progress Report
The 153.5km fourth stage of the 2010 Tour de France, from Cambrai to Reims, began at 2.00pm. There were 189 riders at the sign on with David Le Lay (ALM) and Fränk Schleck (SAX) the non-starters. The conditions for stage four were fine and warm with temperatures in the mid-20s (Celsius). The route featured only one small climb, the cat-four côte de Vadencourt (at 40.5km) and three intermediate sprints: in Walingcourt-Selvigny (12.5km), Flavigny-et-Beaurin (49.5km) and Brienne-sur-Aisne (128.5km).

Champion Sparks Up The Action
At the 1.5km mark, Dimiti Champion (ALM) attacked and quickly joined at the front of the stage by Vogondy (BTL), De Greef (OLO), Isasi (EUS) and Mayoz (FOT). The peloton offered no response, Saxo Bank remained calm at the front of the main pack and they watched the advantage grow. At the 25km mark, the quintet had a lead of 3’50”, this was the maximum gain – and then HTC-Columbia sent Sivtsov to the front to limit the gain of the escapees. At 30km, the advantage was down to 2’00”.
Txurruka (EUS) crashed at 32km, he sustained cuts on his right elbow but rejoined the peloton. The average speed for the first hour was 41.6km/h. Sivtsov remained at the head of the peloton for over an hour without reprieve. He did have the support of one Lampre rider while the RadioShack team tucked in behind this pair. The average speed for the second hour was 40.9km/h.

Toying With the Escape
The five escapees never really stood a chance of staying away as the peloton refused to give them any leeway. At the 106km mark, it was 1’00” behind… and, yes, Sivtsov was still at the front of the chase. With 30km to go, the Cervelo team moved to the head of the peloton and went about setting things up for a bunch sprint. Within one kilometer, the five escapees’ advantage dropped from a minute to 35 seconds. HTC-Columbia moved to the front of the bunch with 25km to go.

Petacchi: The 2010 Sprint Maestro
The escape was over with four kilometers to go. By then all the sprint teams were already in position for the lead-out and HTC-Columbia was the most convincing leading to the final kilometer. They had four men at the head of the peloton while Cervelo, momentarily set up a train to the right of the US-registered squad. Lampre had a good prescence and, going under the ‘flamme rouge’ Renshaw (THR) was perfectly poised for a lead-out but then things went slightly awry. Once the HTC guys regained composure, Cavendish was ready but with 200m to go, Petacchi jumped and ‘Cav’ seemed to suffer from some mishap… he was swamped by sprinters from other teams with Garmin-Transitions the best represented: Dean pushed Petacchi all the way to the line and finished second (and Hunter claimed fifth) but the Italian was too strong. He claimed his second win in the 2010 Tour.
Hushovd gained 17 points for his ninth place and is now 10 points ahead of Petacchi in the green jersey competition. Cavendish finished 12th.
Fabian Cancellara finished 26th in the same time as the winner. He will wear the yellow jersey in stage five.

At the one kilometer mark, last year’s French champion, Dimitri Champion, sped ahead of the peloton and forged an escape. He was joined by four others yet their move was doomed on a day the sprint teams kept the fugitives within sight… but he netted the red ’dossard’ for the ’Fighting Spirit’ award.

“We knew pretty quickly that it would be very difficult to follow through. So we essentially decided to work on the move but also to preserve our energy for the coming days. It would not have been practical for give us 100 per cent. So we rode tempo and then, in the last 30 kilometers, we accelerated figuring that something could always happen – a fall or some other event that disrupts the proceedings. But I think out little group has been doomed even early in the stages… still we played our cards and did what we could.”

In Brussels he won the first stage of the 2010 Tour de France in exceptional circumstances and Alessandro Petacchi insisted that he would still have beaten all the other sprinters if they hadn’t been caught up in crashes. In Reims he confirmed this…

“Today I proved I could win in all circumstances. I’ve heard more or less some comments saying that the victory was that of Brussels ’old man’, but this time I have received no advantage because of crashes of my rivals..
“I want to thank my team because it is through them that I participate again in races at this level. Now, with two wins, I could very well go home and consider that my job is finished. Two wins on the Tour de France is already exceptional. Besides, after the first, I was talking with Oscar Freire and he told me that I could already taste my Tour, that everything else is a bonus. But I do not quite see things this way. I’m here to win stages, and I’ll keep trying to do just that.
“The questions about my lead-out train is important, and I’m not the same as at the time of the Fassa Bortolo. But already in those years, I sometimes found myself alone and had to adapt to the situation. In the last two hundred meters I had to do sprints, I gained a lot of experience. So now I know how to ride this way. Today, I put myself in the Cavendish train. But it is true that my team must work to enrich the train to win more races. And that is what Mr Saronni intends to do in the future, because in this field, other teams are at very high level.”

The last few kilometers of the lead-out was a battle between the HTC-Columbia team and Cervelo but the best of these squads in the sprint was Thor Hushovd in ninth place. He is still in green but admits he didn’t have the speed to take on Petacchi in Reims.

“I don’t know what happened at the finish today I just had nothing in the legs when I started to sprint. I just felt tired and I couldn’t go in the last couple of hundred meters. Yesterday and the day before I went really deep and I think I’m paying for it now.
“I still have a lead in the green jersey competition but you saw today that I lost a lot of points to Petacchi and McEwen and, like I’ve always said, I need to stay focused and take it day by day.
“It was a fast and nervous sprint today and in the last corner I was too far back. [Brett] Lancaster brought me to the front and I think I spent too much energy to fight with Cavendish and, when Petacchi went on the left, I just couldn’t sprint.
“Petacchi is a threat to the green jersey. He seems really strong now and, if he wants to, he come make it all the way to Paris. I’m surprised by how well Alessandro is going. I know he’s a good, strong rider but to come back to the Tour de France like he has is impressive.”

No day at the Tour de France is easy for the riders but the leader of the general classification hinted that the fourth stage was a bit of a remedy for the stress and strain of the opening days of the 2010 edition….

“The last few days have been tough and, in a way, I was trying more to recover and spend as little energy as possible because those days were hard. In a way, it’s enjoyable but still it’s important to focus and I enjoy it more when I’m outside of the race and I’m in the hotel getting a massage or having nice food on the table. Those things give me something special but it’s always amazing to have the yellow jersey.
“The only thing we can do after losing Fränk yesterday is to look forward. We’ve been in a situation before when we’ve lost riders – perhaps not as important as Fränk – and it’s part of the game. You never know what will happen… people can get sick or crash and then you straightaway have one less. We will deal with that and make the best out of it.
“It’s always hard but we’re still being very positive about the next few weeks. We want to be on the podium in Paris and we want Andy to be on the top.
“Yesterday was really hectic and while I won’t say I was surprised, to get the yellow back is amazing. Today, I was happy. My team was happy and I think many other teams were pleased. We needed something like this after tough, hard, nervous, and stressful opening stages. We’ve spent a lot of energy and we need to recover a bit because soon we’ll get to the Alps and that’s when another sort of music will play.”