Stage notes: Cardenas back in the bigs; Cavendish homebound, UCI weighs in
Felix Cardenas is back at the Tour de France after nearly disappearing off the peloton map.
The 34-year-old Colombian climber is back in cycling’s bigs after bouncing around Spanish teams before joining Barloworld in 2005. The team finally got a Tour berth this season and he’s ready to make the most of it.
“It’s good to be back to the Tour,” Cardenas told VeloNews before the start of Saturday’s stage. “I’ve only been to one Tour and I won a stage, so I hope to keep the streak alive this year.”
After Cardenas won a Tour stage while with Kelme in 2001 at Plateau de Bonascre, he bounced between Spanish and Colombian teams and won a stage each year in the 2003 and 2004 Vuelta a España.
For this year’s Tour, his goals are clear.
“There are six mountain stages so there are six opportunities. I’m hoping for one and then I will chase the King of the Mountains jersey,” he said. “The team is packed with climbers. We have four climbers on the team and we’re motivated to bring home a stage.”
On Saturday, he finished a discreet 101st at 18:42 back when he saw the breakaway was going to stay away for the win. Cardenas said he didn’t have a preference between the Alps or the Pyrenees, so long as the road heads up.
“I don’t distinguish between the Alps and the Pyrenees – the steeper the better for me,” he said.
Cavendish time short for Tour
Mark Cavendish knows his Tour de France is about to end.
The 22-year-old English sprinter crashed twice during his Tour debut and almost fell a third time in Friday’s sprint when Tom Boonen’s pedal tore through the spokes on his front wheel
“Tomorrow will probably be my last day,” Cavendish told VeloNews before Saturday’s stage. “I should get through today, but the plan wasn’t to do the entire Tour anyway.”
T-Mobile decided to bring its promising sprinter to bump shoulders with the big boys with the notion that he wasn’t expected to finish.
“It was a good year for him to come to the Tour because we have a transition year on the team,” said T-Mobile manager Bob Stapleton. “We brought him to get experience for the future. We want to be an open team, where young guys like Mark and Linus (Gerdemann) get the chance to race the Tour so they can develop for the future. That’s so fundamental.”
Cavendish did his best, but crashes on the road to Canterbury in stage one and in the final sprint into Ghent in stage two foiled his chances early in the week.
He was banged up Saturday morning, with scrapes, scabs and bruises covering his arms and legs.
“The biggest thing was to gain experience for the future, but I really wanted to try to get a result because the entire team was working for me,” Cavendish said. “I learned that bad luck can happen day after day and really affect you.”
The plucky Brit promises to come back next year to fight for the win.
UCI checking weights
The UCI was corralling riders ahead of the start of Saturday’s climbing stage to make sure their bikes weren’t under the minimum weight limit of 6.8kg.
UCI commissaires were randomly selecting riders after the sign-in protocol and pulling them behind the podium area to weigh their bikes. A simple hook was attached to a digital scale and it took less than a minute for a rider to hop off the bike and have it weighed.
“We are trying to weigh about 50 percent of the bikes today to make sure they meet the regulations,” said UCI commissaire Roberto Coca. “If the bikes don’t weigh enough, mechanics must add weight. They know the rules. Otherwise they are not allowed to race.”
Not everyone’s bike met the weight limit. David Millar, for one, said his Scott bike came in at 6.7kg, which required a quick scramble to add 100 grams to the weight of his bike.
The UCI was holding the right to weigh bikes at the finish, too.
