Paris-Nice: León Sánchez Wins in Cannes

By Jessica | Permalink |

No Comments | March 17th, 2007 | Trackback

Well, piss. We got up at 6:30 this morning, which is plenty early for a Saturday, thinking we’d see most of the better part of stage six. And by the time we got the computer up and running, there was only something like five kilometers left. The bad news is I have no idea what happened during the day and will have to watch a recap later on today to find out. The good news is that I can go back to bed now.

What I can tell you is that Luis León Sánchez (Caisse d’Epargne) won the stage from a little break of three - two Caisse d’Epargne riders (León Sánchez and David López García) and Alberto Contador (Discovery). Naturally, the peloton wasn’t keen on letting Contador get away, since he started the day at six seconds back on race leader Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner). They caught Contador and López García teammate just under the red kite, but León Sánchez managed to stay away for the stage win.

Once again, however, we have the odd and rare (I swear, normally this kind of thing doesn’t happen) experience of seeing the guy who wins the sprint for second place think he’s won the stage. Mirco Lorenzetto (Milram) came across the line with his arms raised in a two-hand victory salute. That’s three times this week, folks, and twice in one race that we’ve seen this kind of mixup. WTF?

Just saw on the coverage that Haussler is out of the race, so my favorite Frenchman, Thomas Voeckler, takes over the lead in the mountains competition. Those polka dots look great on him. The green jersey also changes hands today, from Daniele Bennati to one time race leader Franco Pellizotti. Atop the podium receiving the white jersey, Contador looks mightily disappointed. Can’t blame him. He thought he’d be pulling on the maillot jaune today.

Here’s where you’ll find the CyclingNews report (when it’s written). According to the coverage at least, Rebellin remains in the top spot overall, followed still by Contador (six seconds back) and now Luis León Sánchez in third (11 seconds back).