What do you think about levi
getting bumped down to 6th? Too bad it had to rain. It would have been much more exciting. Bye Lance. Thanks for the memories. Courage is Contagious.
RE: time bonus in stage 21
We had this same discussion going on on another forum, with me being all ranty & ravey... and then it hit me.
This is the rule as explained by race radio:
"Jean-Francois Pescheux, the Tour’s sporting director, has just announced that the time for the general classification of the final stage will be taken on the first pass of the finish line."
The operative statement is "time for the GC of the final stage". If you look at the stage results all riders were given the same finishing time. They only cancelled the 2nd intermediate sprint time bonus, not the finish time bonus, which they then calculated into the overall GC placement.
Levi's team should have been off the front to make sure Vino didn't win it... they should've helped anybody BUT Vino to win that stage. Somebody fell asleep in the team director car.
spazz
GC finish time and bonus time
I agree spazzdog, Levi's team director was asleep at the wheel. They went after Vino the first time he went off the front. I can't remember if the ruling of doing away with the time sprints was before or after Vino's first attack. If it was after the first attack then my thinking would be that the team director thought that ALL the time bonuses were canceled. So maybe it was a matter of misunderstanding. Surely Levi's team knew that Vino wasn't gonna give up after one attack. Especially after he attacked all throughout the race for 3 weeks.
In my opinion I don't know if Levi could out sprint Vino. But he should have been up there to at least try. No one on Vino's team was helping him, so maybe if Levi's team had been up there like they did the first time Vino attacked then Levi could have beat him in a sprint. We'll never know. If anyone reads Levi's comments about this would you please post the article? Thanks!