CEBU, Philippines - What's wrong with Omega Parma-Quickstep? Why is it that the team, who lost the stage 4-team time-trial by just 1 second to Orica-GreenEDGE, couldn't find the horsepower to deliver Mark Cavendish 200m from the line?
Yesterday, the team did it again. Cav's final leadout man, GertSteegmans, who also led out Tom Boonen to many sprint wins, suddenly led out to fast and too early for Cav's liking.
When you are a sprinter, you don't wind up your sprint too early, (and early can mean 50m) or you'll lose power meters from the line. According to former green jersey winner Robbie McEwen, top speeds can only be maintained physiologically for approximately 200m. In other words, in the last 200m, most sprinters can't increase their speed anymore, they are simply maintaining that speed. Of course, there are other factors to be considered like your lead out, wind, route, tarmac, rivals, weather - lots of things.
When the sprint started, Cav was in 4th spot, bookended by teammates Tom Veelers in front and eventual winner Marcel Kittel behind. At 2nd spot was Andrei Greipel, who was following his teammate, Greg Henderson. Suddenly Veelers look behind him and saw Kittel sprinting to his left. So he moved to his right just as Cav started his sprint from the right. Well, we all know in elementary that no two things occupy the same space at the same time. Unfortunately, it was Veelers who went down hard.
Now the question was that did Cav deliberately shoulder-nudged Veelers? Absolutely not! It was just an accident. But if you read social media, it looked as if it’s Cav's fault, but no, it was nobody's fault.
However, by reputation, it was Cav's fault especially after what happened with Henrich Haussler in 2010. But if you ask me, the reaction was most likely professional jealousy.
(BTW, Omega Pharma-Quickstep announced yesterday the signing of Cav's former leadout man, Mark Renshaw, for next year. Cav and Renshaw were almost unbeatable in the sprints when they raced together at HTC. Just goes to show how much Cav has faith in his current train). (FREEMAN)