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Date Posted: 18:57:30 07/12/07 Thu
Author: Alex
Subject: Chris Carmichael on Vino's Crash (Stage 5)

C. Carmichael has been writing daily reports on the Tour. I found this one particularly interesting, if (as a Vinofan, discouraging). --Alex

BICYCLING
Stunned Astana Costs Vinokourov Valuable Time
By Chris Carmichael

Even if a rider from the Astana team manages to win the 2007 Tour de France, Stage 5 is going to be a day they'd all like to forget. Their man in second place overall, Andreas Kloden, fell into a ditch and had to chase back to the pack. But his crash paled in comparison to Alexander Vinokourov's, which was both more severe and at a more unfortunate point in the race. And perhaps worst of all, the attempt to get Vinokourov back into the peloton exploded the Astana squad and left Vino isolated and unable to rejoin the peloton. As has been said many times, you may not be able to win the Tour in the first week, but you sure can lose it.
Watching the wound on Vinokourov's right hip grow and redden as he tried in vain to chase back to the peloton, you could tell that he crashed pretty hard and that he came down on the road itself. Kloden at least landed in a grassy ditch. And though there's no good way to fall off a bike at high speed, how you land determines which parts of your body take the brunt of the injuries. Unfortunately, how you crash and how you land are largely out of your control. Still, heavy falls onto a hip, a knee, or your back are the ones that cause the greatest concern during stage races.
The scrapes are the least of the problem. If you crash and break something, you're obviously out of the race, but hard impacts to the knees, hips, and back lead to deep bruising and changes in the way you sit on the bike and pedal. Muscle damage and subtle changes in your pedal stroke due to soreness, swelling, or reduced range of motion often lead to a reduction in your power output. You can put a bandage over road rash and the pain is annoying but road rash doesn't typically slow you down. It's the deep wounds from hard impacts -- and Vinokourov's hip bears all the signs of such an impact -- that keep you from riding at your best for days.
As much as I hope Vinokorouv's injuries are minor, the damage done to his Astana team today may be a more major problem. Six teammates together weren't strong enough to chase back to the back of the peloton, nor were they strong enough to keep up with their banged up team leader. It's understandable that two or maybe three teammates would work so hard in the chase that they'd be dropped, but it's not encouraging that after chasing for about 10 kilometers, none of the six were still with Vino and he was still more than a minute behind the peloton.
Of course, there may be another side to that story. The final six kilometers of the stage were downhill, so to finish with the front group Vino realistically had to be back with the peloton by the top of the final climb. And chasing back on a short climb can be very difficult because there's a lot of traffic to get through -- groups of dropped riders, cars and motorbikes all over the place, and all on a small road made even narrower by enthusiastic fans. Knowing that, Astana may have bet all their chips on getting Vino back to the peloton by the early slopes of the climb, since after that point it would get exponentially more difficult. Whether it was a plan that didn't work or the team just lacked the horsepower to get their leader back into the fray, the end result is the same -- Vinokorouv lost 1:20 to the other yellow jersey favorites before the big mountains or the first long time trial. He's not out of the running yet, by any means, but now he has to dig himself out of a pretty big hole if he wants to wear the yellow jersey.

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