2006 Tour de France, Stage 12 to Stage 20
The 2006 Tour de France was the 93rd edition of Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The Tour began in Strasbourg with a prologue individual time trial on 1 July and Stage 12 occurred on 14 July with a hilly stage from Bagnères-de-Luchon. The race finished on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, on 23 July.
A positive test for epitestosterone by Floyd Landis after Stage 17, however, left the results of the Tour de France in doubt, with the possibility that all of his records may be expunged, pending a hearing with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. On 20 September 2007, Landis was found guilty of doping and ordered that he forfeit his 2006 Tour de France victory, making Pereiro the official winner.
Stage 12
14 July 2006 — Luchon to Carcassonne,Stage 12 started in the Luchon, which held big celebrations because this was the fiftieth time that the Tour de France visited the city. The stage end location was Carcassonne and in between those cities the course featured four categorized climbs:
- Col des Ares
- Côte des Pujos
- Côte du Pâl de Pailhes
- Côte du Palmiers
This being the first stage after the Pyrenees, many riders were hoping to get an easy day, sitting at the back of the peloton; however, there were also a lot of riders who had lost a lot of time during those mountain stages and who knew that they were not going to get a good position in the general standings. Those riders all tried to get into the escape group which led to everyone chasing everyone for the first 100 kilometers and an extremely fast pace which caused the first riders already passing the 46-kilometre mark after just one hour. As a result, 4 riders dropped from the race during the first hour; among those were Paolo Savoldelli and Benjamín Noval from and the sprinter Isaac Gálvez. Another important fact for the large number of riders trying to escape was the fact that it was 14 July, in France known as Bastille Day. On this day the French are extra motivated as it is their national holiday, which shows in the results of the latest years with David Moncoutié winning in 2005 and Richard Virenque in 2004 on this day.
So a lot of changing situations during the first hours of this race, as there was always some team not happy with the current group of escapees. On the first climb of the day the first serious group formed, consisting of 15 riders:
- Michael Albasini,,,
- Daniele Bennati,,,
- Sylvain Chavanel,,,
- Damiano Cunego,,,
- Stéphane Goubert,,,
- Giuseppe Guerini,,,
- George Hincapie,,,
- Thor Hushovd,,,
- David Millar,,,
- David Moncoutié,,,
- Christian Moreni,,,
- Óscar Pereiro,,,
- Michael Rasmussen,,,
- Gorka Verdugo,, and
- Jens Voigt,,.
- Alessandro Ballan,,,
- Óscar Freire,,,
- Christophe Le Mével,, and
- Yaroslav Popovych,,.
Looking at the leading group, it was reasonable to think that Ballan, Le Mével or Popovych was going to attack sooner or later, as Freire is a top-class sprinter and would probably beat them all if they went to the finish line together. Yaroslav Popovych was the first to attack and immediately the French got disappointed as Christophe Le Mével dropped and never managed to come back. Alessandro Ballan however closed the gap and brought Óscar Freire back in his wheel. It was then Freire's turn to attack, but again Ballan closed the gap and now brought back Popovych. Popovych and Freire both took turns in attacking but Ballan seemed to be the strongest as he closed the gap every time. However, after a while he was also getting tired and could not respond to yet another attack by Popovych. He did not get any help from Freire in closing the gap and so Popovych won the stage. Freire knew he did not deserve the second place and left it to Ballan; however, this could cost him the green jersey in the end. Le Mével finished as fourth and in the peloton it was Tom Boonen who convincingly won the sprint for the fifth place, 4'25" behind Popovych.
As a result of this stage Floyd Landis remains in yellow and Yaroslav Popovych just moved into the top 10 at place 10. Robbie McEwen still holds a considerable lead of 25 points over Óscar Freire in the standings for the green jersey but sees Freire come 11 points closer, Daniele Bennati 3 points and Tom Boonen 1 point. Michael Rasmussen scored 12 points today for the polka dot jersey, but is still 19 points behind David de la Fuente. Markus Fothen stays the best rider under 23 and also in the team standings nothing changes, keeps a small lead over. Next to the earlier mentioned quitters, today Agritubel also loses two riders who give up — José Alberto Martínez and Samuel Plouhinec. Daniele Bennati, who was not amongst the escaped riders but was almost constantly in the offense during the first 100 kilometres, received the combativity trophy for the day.
Stage 12 resultStage 1315 July 2006 — Béziers to Montélimar,This stage had five categorized climbs, all Category 4. It started at Béziers and ended at Montélimar. This stage was characterized by an early attack including six riders — Voigt, Pereiro, Chavanel, Coyot, Quinziato, and Grivko, who attacked about 20 km into the race. As Cofidis had two riders in the lead group, Chavanel and Coyot, they decided to have Coyot wait for the peloton. The main peloton, including Floyd Landis, did not see anyone in this group as a threat, so they allowed them to get away and stay away. The attack group of five had a lead of 30 seconds at 27 km. They continued to increase their lead—to 3 minutes at 37 km, 6'20" at 47.5 km, and 11'05" at 61.5 km after the category-4 Cóte de Puéchabon climb. At the beginning of the third climb, the Cóte de L'Arbousset at 119.5 km, the lead was 18'50". The lead grew to 24'45" at the 146.5 mark, and to 27'10" at 172.5 km. Pereiro had begun the stage 28'50" behind Landis. Now he was threatening Landis's yellow. But this was intentional, because the previous mountain stages had shown that from Landis's teammates, only Axel Merckx was somewhat able to stay with Landis and help him. Through losing the yellow jersey, the team made sure that those teammates did not have to ride after the escaped riders every day; instead they now leave that responsibility to Pereiro's team,. On the final climb, the Cóte de Villeneuve de Berg, youngster Grivko attacked. Just like most times, the first attacker is not the winning rider, as the group was able to catch and pass him. Grivko never managed to return and finished fifth. In the final five kilometres, Voigt and Pereiro broke away from Chavanel and Quinziato, who were both expecting the other to close the gap. Neither of them did, and the other two maintained their lead the rest of the way. In the final hundred meters, Pereiro was on Voigt's rear wheel, angling to pass him at the finish. Voigt held him off and barely won the stage. In the peloton, the teammates of Menchov from Rabobank started increasing the pace, as they wanted Landis to remain in yellow to have his teammates work hard the next few days. After a few kilometres, however, they gave up and so the peloton finished 29'57" behind Voigt. Pereiro was rewarded for ending second and earned the yellow—one minute, 29 seconds ahead of Landis. The peloton came in past the time limit of 29'00", but since more than 20% of all riders were involved, they were allowed to stay in the race. Apart from the team standing, where Team CSC took the lead, all other jerseys remained with their rider, as the breakaway group had taken most points of the climbs and sprints.
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