| | 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 in 1999. He is a two-time winner of the World Road Cycling Championship, and was ranked 50th in the world last year. Throughout the Tour de France, Hincapie will share his experience through the eyes of a key member of the defending championship team.
LIMOGES, France -- The seventh stage featured some really bad weather. We got stuck in a torrential downpour for about 20 minutes. At one point, it was almost hailing on us, but mainly it was just rain off and on all day long. It was also very windy. It made for a pretty nerve-racking day altogether.
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Alberto Elli, Jan Ullrich and the rest of the field withstood heavy rain Friday. |
We were fighting for position throughout the race. Christophe Agnolutto broke away to something like an eight minute lead pretty early on and he kept it up. We just came in all together with a pretty good time.
Our main goal was to stay together and not lose any time today, and that's what we did. Until we hit the mountains, my job is primarily to keep Lance (Armstrong) away from any potential trouble. At this point, as long as he's in reaching distance to the front and he's conserving some energy, we're in good shape.
Agnolutto is a talented rider. It was a really tough day for him, so it was pretty impressive that he stayed up there and won. I don't think there were any huge changes in overall standings. Alberto Elli still has the yellow jersey, but even he says that he won't be able to keep it when we hit the mountains. It's likely that he'll lose the jersy in his first couple days in the mountains.
Stage Eight should be a lot like Stage Seven -- 125 or 130 miles. Hopefully, the weather will clear up a little bit. There's been a lot of sidewind the last few days, so it's been pretty hectic. If we're lucky, we'll get a good tailwind day.
We're still going to basically concentrate on keeping Lance out of trouble, and we'd also like to get a breakaway as well.
Everyone in the race starts getting a little tired at this point. We're one week into the race, the stages have been long, and we've had to deal with a lot of wind and bad weather. It's definitely taking a toll on a lot of the field.
Hopefully, we'll all hang in there physically for the next couple weeks. It's really important to keep yourself rested away from the coarse. When the race is over, your only priority is recuperation.
For more information on George Hincapie, visit his web site at www.hincapie.com/2000tdf.html. | |
ALSO SEE
Stage Seven results
Dekker takes Tour's 8th stage; Armstrong looms
Ango on the go: Frenchman breaks free
Armstrong returns to Limoges
U.S. Postal in an ideal situation right now
U.S.P.S. in good shape
Day one a success
U.S. Postal team built for Lance
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