But what struck me was how Garmin-Cervélo was poised
to drill it for Farrar. Except for the part about being
overpowered and stuffed by Lampre. You never saw that
happen to Cipo's lead out train.
That's not a good sigh for Farrar.
Fred Flintstein
His lead out man faded somewhere in the 1200-800 m to go area -
And from this quote from Farrar-
"I saw Petacchi sprint a dead straight line, so I guess he was pissed
that Petacchi won," he said matter-of-factly.
- there's going to be some continued bad blood between him and Cav.
Dead straight line???!!! Hey, it was a good sprint, it wasn't one that
I'd DQ Petacchi for, but it wasn't a good example of a "clean" sprint
and most certainly wasn't a "dead straight line." I can only assume that
Farrar was quoted immediately after the sprint and hadn't seen the
replays. Is Farrar assuming that an emotional Cav is going to make
mistakes?
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
I just watched it.
Petacchi came off Cavendish's wheel FFS.
Cavendish had a fair amount of room on the left. Petacchi
moved left but he was a bike length ahead of Cavendish
at that point and he didn't put him into the barriers.
I think this is just a training-bitch by Cavendish to make
sure he's in full bitching form by July.
Fredmaster Ben
Cav lamely said later that he was only mad at the judges, not Petacchi. Which is of course not true. But it's a semi-respectable backpedal for adrenaline fuelled rage, not to mention that Ale-Jet really did seem to squeeze Cav. I might or might not relegate for that, but I'd say Cav really has been done in for less.
A more respectable backpedal* would have been "yeah, I was a bit of a wanker there. The race officials were right to take no action. We'll race, bravo Alessandro, I'll get him next time."
Maybe he could have blamed post-sprint fatigue?**
*Best possible response: "yes, I was mad. I thought Ale was sprinting like Abje-, Adjou-, Abdou-...that barrier guy, and it pissed me off. No worries, Renshaw has orders to take out his wheel at the 1km flag next sprint. He's a real team player, Mark is. I couldn't ask for a more dedicated leadout man."
** http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/05/05/mulcair-explains-comments.html