Mark Cavendish unlikely to start Sunday’s stage 15

By Andrew Hood

CAV EXIT LIKELY: Mark Cavendish’s dream Tour de France is likely over as it’s expected that the British sprinter won’t take the start for Sunday’s opening salvo into the Alps.

Cavendish won four sprint stages, but struggled to maintain the pace over a fourth-category climb with 9.5km to go to the line in Dignes-les-Bains. He popped off the back of the peloton and rolled across the line 108th at 3:27 back.

“It was really hard. We knew all along it was going to be hard. I tried to hang on, hang on,” Cavendish told Frankie Andreu at the finish line. “I’m just getting tired.”

Team Columbia officials said Cavendish has the freedom to leave the race when he decides is best and said a decision will be taken tonight whether the sprinting sensation will start Sunday’s climbing stage into Italy.

“It’s unlikely he’ll make it to Paris,” team manager Bob Stapleton said at the line. “We’ll make a decision together. His next goal is the Olympics, so to have him go too far, too long here at the Tour doesn’t make sense. With Mark, we’re looking ahead the next two or three years, not the next two or three days.”

Cavendish was one of the sensations of the 2008 Tour, winning all four sprints that he contested. He beat back such riders as Oscar Freire and Robbie McEwen to prove he’s the best sprinter to come along in a generation.

“He’s had a great Tour. There’s plenty of time for him to reach Paris. I didn’t want to focus on the green jersey this year,” Stapleton continued. “This Tour opened his eyes. He’s learned a lot. He reveres riders like Cipollini and McEwen and he appreciates what he’s been able to achieve.”

EVANS CAUTIOUS: Race leader Cadel Evans admitted his Silence-Lotto team will likely get outgunned in a trio of decisive climbing stages across the Alps. It’s a startling admission from the race leader who enters the Tour’s most decisive stages nursing a one-second lead.

“We don’t have the strongest team for the mountains. I’m well aware of that and I’m sure my rivals are as well,” he said, before quickly piling on the compliments. “They’re fantastic. They’re performing above and beyond what I expected, everyone.”

There were some red flags in Saturday’s stage, however, when five Silence-Lotto riders finished in the last group at 7:43 back. Evans quickly said that was part of a larger plan to save his team’s legs ahead of Sunday’s first big matchup in the Alps.

“We want everyone to be as fresh as possible for the mountains. So far it’s worked pretty well,” Evans continued. “It’s a long way to Paris, we need to expend our energy wisely. So far it’s worked pretty good.”

Since leaving the Pyrénées, Silence-Lotto has struggled to find the correct winning strategy on how to best defend Evans’ jersey.

In the first stage out of the Pyrénées, the team seemed willing to let the jersey ride away and it was only until Team CSC-Saxo Bank ramped up the chase, despite having one of its rider’s in the breakaway, on the road to Foix in Stage 11 that kept Evans in yellow.

In the windy sprinter’s stage into Narbonne the following day, Evans was caught without any teammates riding by his side as he hovered near the front in the closing 20 kilometers. It was a potentially dangerous situation when teams like CSC could have dropped the hammer to create echelons in the pack.

In Friday’s stage to Nimes, Silence-Lotto finally got it right and kept Evans wrapped tightly inside a cocoon of red and blue jerseys. But once again today, more than half of Evans team was dropped before the final sprint.

The team’s apparent weakness hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“When the yellow jersey hasn’t got his team around him, he has a problem,” said CSC’s Stuart O’Grady.

Evans, however, might not need a team. It’s likely that only CSC will have more than one rider present once the race hits the highest and hardest cols anyway. This Tour could be mano-a-mano all the way from the start of Sunday’s stage in Embrun to the final summit finish next Wednesday at Alpe d’Huez.

FREIRE CONTENT: Three-time world champion Oscar Freire (Rabobank) was happy enough to win his fourth career Tour stage victory after out-kicking the field into Dignes-les-Bains. Even with the dropped Mark Cavendish not in the sprint, the Spanish sprinter took pleasure in the victory while tipping his hat to the young British sensation.

“It’s always important to win at the Tour. Even if Mark wasn’t in the sprint, I don’t want to say that it was somehow less important. I haven’t felt good since the Tour started and to be honest, today is the first day that I felt good since the race started,” Freire said. “Mark is having a great Tour, but I don’t think even he expected to win four stages as easy as he has. The sprint he made yesterday (into Nimes) was like something I haven’t seen very many times in my career.”

With the win, Freire now takes a comfortable lead in the green jersey race. He leads with 219 points with 2005 winner Thor Hushovd second at 172 and the eternal Erik Zabel third with 167. Cavendish is fourth with 156, but he isn’t expected to make it out of the Alps.

Freire said he’ll now turn his focus on carrying the green jersey to Paris, where he’s only reached once in his Tour career.

“The team brought riders here to win the Tour with Denis Menchov. I’m here trying to win as many stages as I can without much help. Flecha is the only rider who’s helped me get into position for the sprints,” he said. “If I can do something to help Menchov, I will, but practically the rest of the team is here to help him, so I will try to pick up points when and where I can.”