Saxo's Sorensen wins stage 12
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Saxo Bank's Nicki Sorensen emerged from a seven-man break to take a classic solo win on a perfect summer day in France Thursday.
Sorensen was part of the group that formed about 70km into the 212km 12th stage from Tonnerre to Vittel, the last relatively flat day before the Tour returns to the mountains Friday. Sorensen attacked the breakaway with Agritubel's Sylvain Calzati with about 20k to go, and then attacked Calzati with 5k to go to cross the line with a 37-second gap over the rest of the break.
On a tough, rolling course the day before the race re-enters the mountains, the pack was uninterested in killing itself to catch the group.
The peloton — containing all the GC favorites, race leader Rinaldo Nocentini and sprint stars Mark Cavendish, Thor Hushovd and Tyler Farrar — rolled in a bit more than five minutes later. Cavendish took the sprint for eighth place, earning 16 critical points toward maintaining his points lead over Thor Hushovd, who came in ninth.
Nocentini easily maintained his overall lead, for perhaps the last day.
Cadel Evans and Levi Leipheimer each got tangled in crashes during the run-in and rolled in about two minutes after the pack, but were given the same time, thanks to the three-kilometer rule.
Late-forming break
It took a while before a breakaway could form that the peloton would allow to get a decent gap. Several attempts were attempted and shut down, contributing to a blistering 48kph average over the hills for the first one and a half, before seven men formed a working relationship about 75km into the stage.
2009 Tour de France
- Stage 12: Tonnerre to Vittel
- 211.5 km (131.4 miles)
- Stage winner: Nicki Sorensen (Saxo Bank) in 4:52:24
- Stage winner's average speed: 43.4 kph (27.0 mph)
- GC leader: Rinaldo Nocentini (Ag2r)
- Points leader: Mark Cavendish (Columbia)
- Climbing leader: Egoi Martinez (Euskaltel-Euskadi)
- Team GC leader: Saxo Bank
- Best young rider: Tony Martin (Columbia-HTC)
- Stage wins/GC leaders
- Stage 1 (ITT): Fabian Cancellara/Cancellara
- Stage 2: Cavendish/Cancellara
- Stage 3: Cavendish/Cancellara
- Stage 4 (TTT): Astana/Cancellara
- Stage 5: Thomas Voeckler/Cancellara
- Stage 6: Thor Hushovd/Cancellara
- Stage 7: Brice Feillu/Rinaldo Nocentini
- Stage 8: Luis Leon Sanchez/Nocentini
- Stage 9: Pierrik Fedrigo/Nocentini
- Stage 10: Cavendish/Nocentini
- Stage 11: Cavendish/Nocentini
- Up Next:
- Friday's stage 13 is an even 200km (124.3km) from Vittel to Colmar. The route includes five categorized climbs, including the category 1 Cols du Platzerwasel and Firstplan. Although it's not a mountaintop finish, the Col du Firstplan summit comes just 20km from the finish.
The seven:
- 1. Laurent Lefevre (Bbox)
- 2. Sylvain Calzati (Agritubel)
- 3. Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas)
- 4. Egoi Martinez (Euskaltel)
- 5. Nicki Sorensen (Saxo)
- 6. Remi Pauriol (Cofidis)
- 7. Markus Fothen (Milram)
The best-placed rider in the break was Sorensen, in 39th at 10:36 behind Nocentini. Martinez, the mountains leader, went along to mark Pellizotti, who started the day third in that competition.
The group worked together most of the day, with Pellizotti snagging the top kom points atop the ridiculously steep category 3 Cote de Bourmont.
With a hair less than 20km to go, the seven were enjoying a four-minute-plus gap over the peloton, and Sorensen and Calzati took a flyer, quickly opening up a 10-second lead over the other five. The pair held a gap in that neighborhood for about 10km, but were unable to increase it.
By this point the breakaway had more than six-minutes' lead over the peloton, which had concluded a field sprint was not in the cards for this last day before re-entering the mountains.
With 5km to go, Sorensen attacked Calzati, who quickly faded back to the chasing five. Sorensen rode brilliantly to cross the line 47 seconds ahead of Lefevre and Pellizotti, who filled out the stage peloton.
Race Notes
Jerome Coppel (Francaise des Jeux), Angelo Furlan (Lampre) and Roman Feilu (Agritubel) pulled out of the Tour on Thursday.
Furlan was the first to pull out, shortly after the peloton had set an imposing pace of 47.9km for the first hour of racing.
An hour later the Italian was followed by Coppel, who abandoned before the halfway point of the stage.
Feillu, who wore the race's yellow jersey for a day last year and whose younger brother Brice won the race's first stage in the mountains, to Arcalis in Andorra, began struggling early in the race. After three hours of racing he had a 15-minute deficit to the main peloton and pulled out shortly afterwards.
Earlier Thursday it was confirmed that Rui Costa (Caisse d'Epargne) had left the race following a crash in Wednesday's stage. The Portugese rider, competing in his first Tour, sustained ligament injury to his collarbone and was set for further scans in Portugal.
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