Tour analysis

CEBU, Philippines - To be a successful sprinter today, you need a train. A train is just like a rocket made up of a series of fuels. As each fuel is spent, it is discarded and the next fuel is used until the payload is delivered on the desired spot. In sprinting, the fuels are the teammates and the payload is the sprinter.

If I'm not mistaken, "Super" Mario Cipollini invented the train. His team, Saeco-Cannodale, was made up of loyal domestiques who would gave up victories and careers all in the name of team victory, aka, Mario Cipollini. Of course, the flamboyant Cipo, whosaid he never sprints for second place, didn't disappoint.

Since then, anyone who believed he could sprint wanted a train. In this year Tour, the best trains belong to Mark Cavendish's Quickstep, Marcel Kittel's Argos-Shimano and Andrei Greipel's Lotto-Bellisol.

Yesterday's stage was a nervous one. Usually, a sprinter's train controls the race from 10K's out but no one team wanted to do it. Instead, there were 3 or 4 trains of the same jerseys jammed at the front, like they were waiting for someone to make a mistake. Finally with 2K's to go, Lotto-Bellisol took over. As they went past the 300m line, Cav, who was at 5th spot, started his sprint. But it was a 300m too long for the "Missile", as he lost steam with a hundred meters to go. Instead, Andre Greipel, his former teammate and greatest rival, won the stage convincingly. Cav was so livid that Greipel beat him that he went ballistic inside the team bus and blamed his bike. I guess that the chase he did, after he crashed with 32K's to go, was the reason why he lost.

There's still one more sprinter's stage before the peloton hit the mountains this Saturday so stage 7 should a very compelling stage. (FREEMAN)