ToCA: Leipheimer crashes in home town, Brown sprints to victory

By Jessica | Permalink | 1 comment | February 19th, 2007 | Trackback

The details of today’s Stage 1 are still coming out, so there will probably be more written here later, but at the moment what we know is that Graeme Brown (Rabobank) won the stage by a hair’s breadth over Greg Henderson (T-Mobile) with a great bike throw at the line. Race leader at the start, Levi Leipheimer, looks like he’ll be relinquishing his leader’s jersey today after a crash with about 10k to go. It was a big-looking pileup, and though Levi was among those who got taken down in the melee, he did get up and keep riding. His left cheek was hanging out the back of his torn shorts (nice little show for the hometown crowd, eh?), but he didn’t look too badly injured. It was hard to see who else went down in the crash due to the pixelated video on the Tour of California’s website, but it was a big’un. I’m hoping at least everyone was okay enough to keep riding.

UPDATE: Levi got to hold onto his leader’s jersey in his hometown, thanks to race organizers announcing after the finish that the final three laps (rather than the final three km) were being neutralized. In more crash-related news, Dave Zabriskie (CSC) was taken to the hospital after the race “with a suspected wrist fracture, but x-rays showed no break.“

I’m guessing this is the picture that will make Levi happier than the one at the top.

Photo by Graham Watson

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