Stages Four and Five: More Glory for Australia/Orica; Cavendish Finally Scores!

The Australian team Orica GreenEdge capitalized on its momentum from Stage 3 by winning the Stage 4 team time trial at Nice by a mere 0.76 second.  Still, no matter how close the margin, a win is a win.  Their second stage win of this Tour.  And their Simon Gerrans keeps his Yellow Jersey for another day.

In Stage 5, a long ride of 228 Km from Nice to Marseille, the sprint teams did their jobs.  They caught the 6-man breakaway group with 4 Km to go, and then ran their set-up trains for a head-to-head contest of their chief sprinters.  Mark Cavendish rewarded his Omega Pharma Quickstep team by powering to his first stage victory of this Tour.  Edvald Boasson Hagen (Sky) took 2nd, Peter Sagan (Cannondale) 3rd, and André Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) 4th.  Cavendish moved into 2nd place for the Green Jersey, but, as I predicted, Sagan minimized Mark’s gain by matching his points in the intermediate sprint, and staying close at the finish. Still, Green Jersey or no, you have to admire Cavendish.  He now has 24 career stage wins at the Tour de France!  Most riders could reap a lifetime of bragging rights with even one Tour stage win.

Simon Gerrans (Orica GreenEdge) finished close enough to the sprinters, and in the same time, so he keeps his Yellow Jersey for yet another day.

The sprinters and their teams will need to control the next two stages, as they did today, if they want any more glory before the Tour heads into the Pyrénées.  They must monitor and capture the early escape each day, and they must execute their set-up and sprint finish to perfection.  When the mountain stages start on Saturday and Sunday, the objective of the sprinters will be to finish within the time delay!

Orica GreenEdge may well keep the Yellow Jersey through Friday, but on Saturday, with a category 1 summit finish (after an HC summit 30 Km out), the REAL contenders for the Yellow Jersey will move to the top of the GC (General Classification) standings.  In case you’ve forgotten “HC” stands for “hors catégorie” and refers to climbs that are harder than category 1, i.e., non-categorized.  Sunday’s stage has a downhill finish, but it will, nevertheless, further refine the GC standings, with four category 1 climbs, and a cat. 2 thrown in near the end, just for good measure.

Today's stage ended in Marseille.  I shot these photos at the Vieux Port (Old Port) in that ancient city where the fishermen come in off the Mediterranean Sea and sell their catch right off the boat.  These were taken in 1966 (while I was serving a mission for the LDS ("Mormon") Church in that part of France), but the scene  would have been familiar in Roman times, and would still be essentially the same today.