TdF Analysis: Stage 6 - An unlikely winner
Category: Sports (Pro/College/HS)...
Posted Thursday, July 07, 2005 at 12:24 PM [GMT-6]

Lorenzo Bernucci is a 26-year old Italian rider who has never won a race as a professional...until today, when he got an improbable victory during the soggy-but-fast 6th stage of the Tour de France.

Bernucci managed to avoid a massive pileup of riders a few hundred meters from the finish and broke free for the victory, just ahead of Alexandre Vinokourov, who also missed the crash but had to briefly unclip from his pedals, which probably resulted in his losing the stage.

With his uncanny sixth sense for such things, Lance Armstrong had dropped back into the peloton just before the rain-slicked turn that provided the excitement and thus did not go down. He lost a couple of seconds in the overall standing, but is still more than a minute ahead of the nearest challenger.

Tomorrow's stage 7 is one of the longer legs of the race, at 228.5 km. It has two categorized climbs, one of which is a cat 3 -- the first of the race -- but overall, the stage should be another fast one. However, Lance observed after today's race that the peloton seems to be weary, presumably due to the winds, rain and fast pace of the stages up to this point.

A random observation (It's What We Do™) today's stage: The podium girls for stage 6 were, well, exceptionally beautiful, especially the two who presented Armstrong with his continuing yellow jersey. Not that that's important. But, still...

Just a reminder that your best source for live updates is the official TdF website, and your best source for analysis and extended blog coverage is TDF Blog.

Technorati tags: Tour de France