Tour de Lance STAGE 7

[PTRON]

Pozzato scrambles for Tour win; Voeckler gets another day in yellow
By Rupert Guinness
Special to VeloNews
This report filed July 10, 2004

Pozzatto pulls off a last-minute win in his debut at the Tour

Filippo Pozzato did for his Fassa Bortolo teammates Saturday what their celebrated-yet-absent leader Alessandro Petacchi could not: Win a stage at this year's Tour de France.

With Petacchi back at home nursing injuries from a crash in the fifth stage to Chartres, Pozzato's stage 7 victory gave the Fassas much cause for needed cheer going into week two of the Tour

"I didn't think it would be my day, but I was hoping to win the stage.

After Alessandro left the race yesterday it kind of gave us the freedom to go out there and do our own thing," explained Pozzato, who joins prologue winner Fabian Cancellara in handing his team a stage victory.

Pozzato, 22, won the 204.5km stage across Brittany from Châteaubriant to Saint-Brieuc by outsprinting Spaniards Iker Flores (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Francisco Mancebo (Illes Balears-Banesto).

The three were part of a last-minute group of seven that escaped off the front of the peloton in the closing kilometers. Indeed, the margin was so tight that some of the escapees were caught just on the line by a hard-charging peloton led by Norway's Thor Hushovd (Crédit Agricole).

Ensconced safely in the peloton were all the main overall contenders - Lance Armstrong (U.S. Postal), Tyler Hamilton (Phonak), Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile) and Levi Leipheimer (Rabobank) - and, of course, the yellow jersey, Frenchman Thomas Voeckler (Brioches La Boulangere), who still has the biggest smile of anyone in the race.

For Pozzato, it was his first Tour stage wins and biggest since he graduated from the old Mapei team's Under-23 program to the Fassa Bortolo elite line-up last year.

He quickly made his mark there last year, winning five races, including Tirreno-Adriatico; but Saturday's win will certainly raise expectations for his future objectives.

By winning Saturday's stage, Pozzato vindicated his boss's decision to not race him in the Giro d'Italia where Petacchi won nine stages, opting instead to save him for his Tour de France debut.

The decisive break formed with four kilometers to go. In it were Pozzato, Flores and Mancebo, Frenchmen Laurent Brochard (AG2R) and Breton Sebastian Hinault (Crédit Agricole), and Italy's Michele Scarponi (Domina Vacanze) and Paolo Bettini (Quickstep).

Pozzato, Flores and Mancebo got their jump after they chased down a furious attack by Brochard and surged ahead with a five-second lead with one kilometer to go. But that was no easy kilometer, since it included a hard 600-meter rise to before hitting a false-flat run to the finish line.

It was Mancebo who braved the first chance for a win by leading out the sprint with 250 meters to go, but Pozzato was too fast and charged past the Spaniard from 50 meters out.

The outcome was something of a surprise, considering a bunch sprint was forecast, but many in the battle weary peloton, still carrying wounds from the previous day's mass pile-up near the finish, may have been happy to see a small group get away.

Judging by the sentiment of Hamilton (Phonak) who fell and hurt his back at Angers on Friday, a bunch sprint was something he and most did not want to be a part of Saturday.

Hamilton has proposed to Tour race director Jean-Marie Leblanc that for stages with bunch finishes, times should be taken with two or three kilometers to go to allow the non-sprinters' teams to avoid dangers like what the peloton experienced at the stage six finish at Angers.

But Saturday did not pass without incident. There were several crashes, the worst at 127km with three riders, including Swiss Sven Montgomery (Gerolsteiner) who broke his right shoulder.

Thirty kilometers later, at least one GC contender - Crédit Agricole's Christophe Moreau - was caught off guard when the CSC team surged to the front of the peloton in anticipation of a major wind shift as the day's route ran along s