Stage 4 of Le Tour 2010 from Cambrai to Reims was a shorty of a stage at 153.5km, and short on a few other things as well: like excitement! Sometimes the sprinter stages can be real snore-fests for the majority of the time.
With beautiful weather, a little cross/head wind and some very nice rural northern France scenery, the stage tootled off to the usual scenario with a bunch of escaping hares clearing out pretty much straight away and a peloton clearly not interested in doing any high-speed stuff today. Not overly surprising, given the pounding they experienced yesterday. Mind you, one would've thought that some of them had been subject to passage through the bowels of the earth given the moaning and complaining emanating from their persons. Fair enough, F. Schleck took a serious tumble, but Jens Voight (one of my most admired tuff guys) looked like he was gonna have a cry as he shouted to the heavens (well, the journo's actually) in self-righteous rage and horror about how the organisers had 'robbed Frankie'. ('Frankie' - hasn't he got a better handle than that?: 'Frank', 'The Frank', 'Der Frank-Meister' are all suitably more grave and grand).
With Cancellara back in yellow (impressing upon us via the scribes that karma is indeed a bitch, especially for Chavanel) the main bunch dawdled along at spectator speeds for nigh-on the entire race with little to report. Meanwhile, the initial breakaway bunch of Dmitri Champion (AG2R-La Mondiale), Iban Mayoz (Footon-Servetto), Nicolas Vogondy (Bbox-Bouygues Telecom), Francis De Greef (Omega Pharma-Lotto) and Inaki Isasi (Euskaltel-Euskadi) also took to snoozing once they gained their initial advantage, albeit at a slightly shallower level than the peloton: they still gained time even at their snail pace, up to a max of 3:13.
Perhaps snoozing was the reason little Amets Txurruka (Euskaltel - Euskadi) got a taste of asphalt - didn't see the prang, but he didn't look keen at all off his bike waiting for the team car: close ups later revealed why as he had a nice bit of skin off, and a hematoma mouse the size of an egg on his right elbow. Still, he got back in the saddle and persevered for the rest off the day, coming in last-bar-one at 4:37 down.
Once the breakaway maxed out at 3:13 ahead, the peloton began a long, slow, laborious, DULL reel-in to just over a minute out with 40 km to travel. The heli duly trotted off every minute or so during this period to intercept and circulate around yet another point-of-interest in the friggin' countryside, thus allowing Paul Sherwin to punish we the viewing audience with his travelogue-ish blather. The interest in this aspect only jumped when they circled the public hanging of a witch off one of the inumerable church spires populating the region. Oh, hang on - I imagined that to liven things up!
Then of course, having reeled in the 5 hares at 40km to within a minute, they couldn't actually make the catch (too early in the piece) so it was another eye-gougingly incremental chase right down to around 3 klicks to go: the sort of faux excitement which isn't that at all, akin to a vanilla ice cream with a surprise exactly-the-same-vanilla centre.
So, with around 3km to go (the spot they should've actually started the race - I'm sure Txurruka would agree) the sprinter's teams popped up and started riffing for position. HTC-Columbia put on their usual 'we are here now and organised so keep out the fuckin' way' show, but then a marvellous thing happened: Lampre-Farnese Vini decided to run a little interference via their rider Danilo Hondo and all of a sudden, HTC were a bit all over the place.
HTC gathered it back to a degree with just under 1 km to go, but Hondo's move seemed to give the sprinter pack a sniff of something. With the reliable Mark Renshaw again providing the slipstream for Cavendish, it looked to be Manx man for the win, but then 'Ale-Jet' Alessandro Petacchi hit the afterburners from a long way out, with Robbie McEwen (Team Katusha) in tow, and powered away for the win, followed by a fast finishing Julian Dean (Garmin - Transitions) over an also running-on Edvald Boasson Hagen (Sky) and a tiring Robbie.
Cavendish? After being swamped by the above mentioned, plus a few more, he stopped pedaling and coasted in 12th - rather a poor show I thought. Still, all that crashing can stuff a guy out...
So, Ale-Jet breathes a whole bunch of interest into the sprint comp. and also the battle for the Green jersey, currently still with Thor Hushovd. Another sprint likely coming up on Stage 5, so tune in to the last 3km...
Ride Safe!
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