| | By George Hincapie
Special to ABC Sports Online
Greenville, S.C.'s George Hincapie rides for the United States Postal Service team, and played an integral part in Lance Armstrong's victory in the Tour de France last year. He is a two-time winner of the World Road Cycling Championship, and was ranked 50th in the world in 1999. Over the next several weeks, Hincapie will share his Tour de France experience through the eyes of a key member of the defending championship team.
VITRÉ, France -- Wednesday's stage was really fast from the start. I think everyone had really sore legs from Tuesday's time trials, but we were still flying. After one hour, I remember looking up and seeing that we had done about 33 miles.
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Marco Pantani is one of Lance Armstrong's main rivals. |
Then there was a breakaway of about five guys. Since ONCE has the leaders jersey, they had to really pull from then on in. One of those five guys in the breakaway, Jens Voight from Credit Agricole, was pretty dangerous because he wasn't that far behind overall, but he tired a bit at the end.
It ended up being an almost 30-mph average for a 125-mile race, so that's pretty darn fast. But we felt pretty good considering the difficulty of Tuesday's race.
Stage-winner Marcel Wust is a really fast climber. He's won several stages in the Tour of Spain. He won close to 15 races last year, so I wasn't surprised to see him win the stage today.
I think our team is in a pretty ideal situation right now. The team leading the race, ONCE, is really strong, but we still did a good job in the time trials to separate Lance from a lot of his main rivals, like Alex Zulle, Fernando Escartin, Marco Pantani and Richard Virenque. We like the fact that we're not leading the race and in the position where you have to control everything. We're definitely conserving our energy, and I'm taking care of Lance at the finishes. Things are going well.
Thursday's stage shouldn't be all that different than stage five. It's 125 miles again, and maybe a little flatter than Wednesday, so it's going to be real fast again.
The real Tour starts now. There are enough time gaps now that guys who are 10, 15, 20 minutes back are really going to be attacking early on until a breakaway gets away and it settles down. Depending on who's up there, they may or may not stay away.
For more information on George Hincapie, visit his web site at www.hincapie.com/2000tdf.html.
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