Team Katusha’s Tour So Far
Russian-based Team Katusha stands in 19th place in the team classification in the 2010 Tour de France, but one contender is still riding a good Tour despite the team’s misfortune. Joaquin Rodriguez took the victory in Stage 12 on Friday, and the Spaniard is now in the running for a good finish in overall classification. He is currently in 8th place overall, 5:45 behind leader Alberto Contador, and only 20 seconds behind the 7th place RadioShack rider Levi Leipheimer.
Aside from Rodriguez, Katusha has had to deal with the loss of Vladimir Karpets, who couldn’t start the 9th Stage after a palm injury he had suffered since Stage 2 finally got the better of him. Pre-Tour hopeful Robbie McEwen has also suffered from injuries after he collided with a photographer after the 4th Stage finish line.
“Everybody's hurting in these stages and the body isn't co-operating but during these stages the mind takes over,” said McEwen. “After my big leg injury I had only one goal, and that was this Tour de France. I'm not going to give it up just like that.”
Serge Parsani, team director of Katusha, acknowledged that Rodriguez was weak on the longer climbs, preferring steep intermediate climbs. The long uphill stretches of the Pyrenees haven’t been benefitting the Katusha team leader, but he hasn’t been losing any ground against the other top ten contenders either. The director regrets that Karpets, a general classification contender, has had to abandon the Tour, but he hasn’t totally written Rodriguez out of the top five.
“We have Rodriguez who's well ranked in the general classification,” said Parsani to Cyclingnews. “It would be good to place him in the top-five. We already won a stage… Afterwards there's the stage to Bordeaux for the sprinters. McEwen was unlucky with his crash early on in the Tour. He's keen on doing a couple more sprints in the Tour. There are two chances left: in Bordeaux and Paris. We will try.”
Katusha’s Australian sprinter McEwen has been sticking to the back of the peloton through the mountains, along with the other injured and the weak climbers. With five top 5 finishes in the flat stages of this year’s Tour, the 38 year-old contender was doing very well before his collision, and has since been feeling his injuries more and more every day, citing pain in his back and elbow. He was expected to drop out in the days after the crash, but remains in the Tour to this day, albeit close to the back of the pack.
“I'm still not going well,” McEwen told Cyclingnews. “My lower back is still bruised, my elbow is hurting too. I'm not sitting straight up my bike and because of that my knee starts hurting. I've caught bronchitis too. It feels like I'm hopping from one sore to the other. I'm not thinking about the possible sprint stages ahead. I look at things day-by-day, so right now I'm only thinking about making it through this stage.”
McEwen admits the pain, admits the poor performance, but remains proud and will consider it a victory if he finishes the Tour de France, and with only one mountain stage remaining it seems he will do just that. When he rode over the finish line of the 15th Stage, he explained to the Belgian press that he has experience riding with injuries, and all he has to do is stick to a comfortable speed and try to relax.
"If we have a bad day and get dropped early on, then it's a 200 kilometre-long time trial through the mountains," he said. "It's a hard Tour and I'm going bad but I'm staying at the level I am, so I'm hoping that the others are getting worse so I'm able to come at their level.”
The Australian, cited today’s Stage 16 as the most difficult, so having made it through, it looks like we’ll be seeing him at the finish line in Paris. Who knows, he may even be able to squeeze in another top 5 finish on one of the sprint stages before it’s too late.
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