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Stars suffer stage fright
Last updated at 21:52pm on 13.07.07If the theme of this year's Tour de France continues much longer, the man wearing the leader's yellow jersey by the time the race reaches Paris in 16 days will be the rider most adept at staying in the saddle.
Another day of spills yesterday ended in disaster for race favourites and Astana team-mates Alexandre Vinokourov and Andreas Kloden, whose crashes may have cost them their opportunity of the overall crown.
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Vinokourov, the standard bearer of the Kazakh team he created, collided with a motorcycle 15 miles from the finish of Stage Five and lost vital time — he has a deficit of at least one minute, 21 seconds — on all the main contenders even before the race enters the Alps tomorrow.
At least the 33-year-old's injuries are only superficial, even if he scraped so much skin off his right buttock that it was red raw and weeping for the remainder of the run-in to Autun. Dressing the wound for tomorrow's stage from Semur-en-Auxois to Bourg-en-Bresse will be a delicate operation.
For Kloden, whose accident landed him in a ditch before he climbed back on and finished among the peloton in a sprint won by Italy's Filippo Pozzato, the injury to his lower back could rule him out of the rest of the Tour.
Anxious Astana team manager Marc Biver said: "I'm not too worried about Alexandre. He is a warrior. I'm more worried about Klodi, who has a suspected coccyx fracture."
Wounded knee: Vinokourov battles on
Yesterday saw three more abandonments. Frenchman Remy di Gregorio was forced to retire because of the broken elbow he sustained in a horrific crash on Wednesday, while Brett Lancaster of the Milram team decided two previous crashes had taken too great a toll on his body.
Cofidis rider Geoffroy Lequatre also withdrew after falling in a refreshment station midway through the stage.
Only quick reactions and neat bike handling prevented race leader Fabian Cancellara adding to the list of casualties after taking an unscheduled detour around a bend that finished just shy of a farmyard wall.
Nevertheless, the Swiss retained the yellow jersey for the sixth successive day — only the second man in 30 years to manage the feat of hanging on to it for so long after winning the prologue.
