Tour- Stage 5 Recap - Back to the Flats

Anyway there was still a sick stage today, a six rider breakaway broke off in the first kilometer on the flat roads of southern France and at a point extended their lead out to 10 minutes over the main field. But it seemed like the sprinters were ready to have their day when the closed the gap to a mere 38 seconds with 40 k to go, it even looked as if the peloton would make the catch too soon. But a lapse in judgement by the sprinter's teams and a concerted effort by the breakaway to keep working together saw that gap reextend out to a minute and 20 seconds with only 10k to go. A lead which gave enough time for a Frenchman Thomas Veokler to make a move off the front of the breakaway and hold off the charging peloton for the stage victory, spoiling what before the stage looked like would be and inevitable sprint finish and taking away Mark Cavendish's chance at a 3rd stage victory.

Seeing the breakaway get a stage victory on a stage as flat as today was awesome, its kinda like a huge upset in the NCAA tournament, the peloton has no excuse for letting it happen and the riders in the breakaway are all smaller name guys form smaller name teams and a stage victory makes the Tour for them, and sometimes for their whole team. Also to see a Frenchman win a stage is cool because this is France's event yet in recent years it has been dominated by Foreigners, so this will be a much celebrate win for him and his upstart Bbox team.

Just for people who dont completely understand how the timing and such works, todays stage really did not have any effect on the leaders in the Overall Classification ( aka GC = lance, contador, sastre etc), those guys just chilled in the Peloton and conserved as much energy as they could for the mountains looming 2 days away. It would be stupid for a GC contender to try to gain time in a flat stage because it would require a lot of energy and it would be hard for them to gain any significant amount of time, therefore on flat stages they try to conserve while sprinters and domestiques go for the glory of a stage victory. The rule in cycling is that a group of riders in contact with each other at the finish line all receive the same time, so the Peloton all received the same finishing time and therefore Lance remains still less than a second behind Cancellara for the overall lead.