Teams to battle it out in Tour's Stage 18
The Tour de France route this year seems designed to have decided a winner by this point. The 16th and 17th Stage climbs of the Tourmalet should, by all rights, have already shown us who is going to win this Tour. It’s a credit to the skill of the two race leaders that it still cannot be decided. Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck stand only eight seconds apart overall, and reached the summit of the Tourmalet at the end of Stage 17 in the same time.
"I don't want to sound arrogant but the battle for the win is between me and Contador, with Sanchez and Menchov going for third,” said Andy Schleck after the stage.
The 18th Stage is the return to a flat course after four says in the Pyrenees and the traditional rest day in Pau. Many of the sprinters, as well as the injured and exhausted, have been visibly suffering through the second set of mountains after the Alps earlier in the Tour. Some of the leading contenders, before the first rest day, are now finishing at the back of the peloton, including Cadel Evans, who was thought of as the best opponent for Schleck and Contador but now suffers from an elbow injury. Mark Cavendish, third place in the points classification, hasn’t been heard from through the mountains, and 5th place Robbie McEwen has made no secret of the damage done in his collision with a photographer after the finish line in the fourth stage.
“For the general classification riders it's easy when they have a bad day because they end up in the grupetto and for sure they'll make it within the time cut,” said McEwen. "If we [the sprinters] have a bad day and get dropped early on, then it's a 200 kilometre-long time trial through the mountains. 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," he added.
McEwen was in the bunch finish in 1999, the last time the stage finished in Bordeaux. Tom Steels won the stage ahead of McEwen, who finished ahead of Erik Zabel. Stage 18 might try to outdo his last performance here, or it might be a good chance for team strategy to target RadioShack’s lead in the team classification. The stage is a dead-flat, 198 trek from Salies-de-Béarn to Bordeaux. The riders will hope for a repeat of the Stage 17 rain, because the alternative is the forecasted heat-wave like weather, this stage being the southernmost so far. This is the first time in seven years for Bordeaux, 79-time stage town, to host a stage finish, the longest break since WWII.
The 5,000 population town of Salies-de-Béarn is hosting a stage for the second time, its first being in 1939. The route then cuts through the pine forests of Landes in long straight roads, making it all-but-impossible for a breakaway to get out of sight of the peloton. The green jersey battle is dominated by Thor Hushovd and Alessandro Petacchi, and after four long days in the mountains, the last thing the points leaders will do is allow a bunch sprints to get away.
The 236,000 population city of Bordeaux is second only to Paris as the most visited city in the Tour. The first stage finish in Bordeaux was in 1903 during the very first edition of the Tour de France, and the finest sprinters to ever ride the Tour have won here, on the river bank or at the Lescure Velodrome. British and American fans have vacationed here this year just to watch Mark Cavendish or Tyler Farrar sprint for the finish.
Will Schleck and Contador continue to reign in Stage 18, or will another rider surprise everyone and make it across the finish line first?
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