Tally's Tour de Lance  Stage 5

5:15am - I'm getting up before the alarm now, so I guess I am over my
self-inflicted jet lag sans jet! Just reading online since TV coverage
doesn't start until 5:30am, and things are a bit confusing.... they're
saying over at sportsline.com that the start was delayed because Lance
was refusing to wear the yellow jersey to acknowledge fellow American
Dave Zabriskie who fell in the last 1.5k yesterday, and who was
originally 2" ahead of Armstrong. Without the fall, they would have
been tied, and would have had to go to milliseconds to see who would
have been in the jersey had he not fallen. Lance wants to earn the
jersey not take it on someone else's misfortune. They're saying that
after a conference with race organization, Lance agreed to wear it.
Gotta love the ethics! Too bad we don't have that in our GOVERNMENT!

I found this tidbit at velonews.com:
" A look back over the past 100 years shows that the yellow jersey has
given its wearer equal parts joy and pain. To a certain extent, it has
given the race leader the inspiration to defy the agony of the race.
But the setbacks to the yellow jersey holder have always been crueler.
Bolts of lightning cast misfortune on Luis Ocaña in 1971, who crashed
while wearing the jersey on a mountain descent covered in mud from
torrential rain. In a battle with the legendary Eddy Merckx, a
one-on-one combat of pride and prestige, Ocaña held the golden
advantage, but under a Pyrenean deluge, fate shattered his unfinished
dream. The Castilian was left lying on the roadside after sliding out
on a switchback near the foot of the Col de Menté, moaning in pain.

Merckx, in a chivalrous gesture, refused to don the tainted garment the
morning after Ocaña was forced to quit the Tour. Similarly, Ferdi
Kubler declined to wear the yellow jersey the day after race leader
Fiorenzi Magni and the Italian team abandoned the Tour in 1950. You
just don't steal the maillot jaune." So, there's HISTORY here.

5:55am - OLN just aired a pre-race interview with Lance, and he
explained why he wasn't going to wear the yellow jersey - I LOVE THIS
GUY! He said that after they watched the footage of the crash there was
a lot of questions on who would have been in yellow if Dave had not
crashed. He said that no one has EVER won the yellow because of a
crash, and he didn't want to be the first. "That wouldn't be fair."

Awesome. He's wearing it, over his Discovery jersey, but he doesn't
look happy about it. Word is that they might have threatened to pull
him from the race had he not put it on. Juan Antonio Flecha of Spain,
from team Fassa-Bortolo has attacked and is now 1'18" in front of a
3-man breakaway chase 3'10" in front of the peleton. Flecha won a stage
in the 2003 tour. He began the stage 3'19" behind Lance in the overall GC.

Today's stage mostly flat runs 183 km from Chambord to Montargis, and
should be dominated by Tom Boonan and the sprinters. Weather is
scattered rain and wind.

6:15am - the breakaway of three has caught up with Flecha, and now the
four are 3'30" ahead of the peleton.

6:30am - big crash in the feeding zone, and almost the entire CSC team
was down. They are back into the peleton after a bit of a chase. Looks
as though a feeding bag got caught in the chain of one of the bikes.

7:00am - reports of a rider crashing with one of the camera motorbikes
- yikes! I'm actually surprised there aren't more of these incidents
actually. There are so many vehicles other than bikes, between the team
cars, the Gendarmerie, and the various motorbikes from camera bikes to
time bikes.... I'm surprised there route isn't strewn with bloody
severed limbs.

7:30am - The peleton is going over wet roads as they've just missed a
downpour ahead of them.

40k - Constantino Zaballa (ESP) from team Saunier Duval, is the first
rider to withdraw from the Tour. No word as to why at this point.
(Maybe he was in the crash with the motorbike? Don't know.)
They've just been showing that inside the final 1k of the race there is
a very sharp right turn - on a narrowish street. That looks like a
sprint disaster waiting to happen.

7:55am - the four breakaway have been caught.

8:00am - YIKES! 3k to go there is a crash on a series of quick turns
and several riders smack into the hay bails on the sidelines. However
the last right hand sharp turn is disaster free - freakin miracle!
Robbie McEwen, after knocking O'Grady at the end of stage three and
getting penalized for it, has taken the stage, narrowly beating out Tom
Boonen. No change in the overall GC, even with the crash. Apparently
they've changed the rules again this year, and if there's a crash
within the 3k mark on a normal, non-TT (time trial) stage, they get the
same time as the main peleton. Lance keeps the yellow. I'd love to see
him stay in it, but I'm not sure he wants to defend it this early
before the mountain stages - although there's not long to wait as they
get into the Alps on Sunday.

This is Lance's 68th yellow jersey. He is third in most days in yellow
- behind Bernard Hinault who has 78 days, and Eddy Merckx with 96.

After the race Lance confirmed that he was told by the Tour director
that if he didn't wear the yellow today, he wouldn't start tomorrow.
Lance said he understood, that the sponsors have paid a lot of money
for someone to wear it, and there are many fans who may have driven
three hours and want to see SOMEONE wearing the yellow jersey go by...
he just felt really bad and wanted to make a sporting gesture since
without the crash Dave might probably be in the yellow jersey. Lance
has got so much class.

Tomorrow is another flat sprint stage with rain predicted.......


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