Austria 18:00

[flockmastoR]

Need to open a thread for my home race too.

Starting with a very cheap team around Röntgen, Gabriel, Hund. Aim was to win stages with Röntgen in sprint or other guys in escapes. First two days I wasnt able to be online, hoped to find a sitter for the stage 1 were a Röntgen win would have been possible. Many points lost for the green jersey there.

Yesterday my first online stage and the victory of Röntgen, hard sprint with no team member around, but in the end he won if from first position. many errors from my team, starting from trying to take Hahn over the hills, losing Gabriel in front, then dropping Hund and not bringing the second group in front. All in all, a simple Gabriel, Hund, Röntgen 1st group would have been easy to control the end and do a sprint train too. Was very lucky in the end.

[Rexona]

haste mal echt noch glück gehabt dass diese etappe nicht verloren ging heute wartest du besser nicht auf Hahn

[Laurens88]

Today was the fourth stage of the tour. Just like yesterday, this stage should be for the sprinters who can get over a hill. Read: Ruslan Ergaliev and Conrad Röntgen. I was happy to work together with Dead And Alive (and O Imperdor) to control the stage. There were no dangerous escapes for the stage victory, so it wasn't too hard to control. Basically I was working for a second place in the sprint, because I expected Röntgen to be stronger than Ergaliev.

After a slow and easy race the last and decisive hill came. Ergaliev survived without problems. Unfortunately his master-helper Riccardo Zoff didn't. However, he showed true fighting spirit and made it back to the first group on his own. Now I was in a strong position to control the stage again with Dead And Alive. We managed to put a pace high enough to discourage any attacks and kept Calimero, who was chasing us, at a safe distance. Dead And Alive had a train for Röntgen and Ergaliev was in his wheel. It was pretty clear that it was going to be a battle between these two matadors again. Röntgen appeared to be in pole position until I saw a chance for Ergaliev with 150 meters to go. Ruslan started sprinting and as expected Saprikin followed him. This ensured Röntgen couldn't reach his wheel. For a moment the German was surprised and I started believing in Ruslan's chances. In the end he won with about two wheel-lengths and got himself both the green and white jersey! An amazing first victory for the 24 years old!

Obviously I was also very pleased with the second victory ever of Rapid Vitesse. In an interview after the race I revealed my goals for the rest of the tour: a second stage win and winning the white jersey. Both are ambitious goals, but it's always good to have something to fight for.

[flockmastoR]

Röntgen finally in green.

After missing stage 1, it was a hard way to finally get green, but he could win 2 IS and be second on the last yesterday. He is leading now 3 points ahead of Ruslan who will be his main contender. Though he might not follow yesterday, but Conrad was strong enough to beat him in every sprint. Furthermore he will start under 1000 today, I would say about 950 power. Not that much and probably not really interessting because I expect a group to win today. Lets see if Calimero is on today, or if Rapid Vitesse is riding for his sprinter. All in all still a lot things can happen in the fight for green.

In the general it looks like the outsider 84 climber of sport can win it, he has a strong enough team to control the Glockner and last stage.

[flockmastoR]

Wolfgang Pauli in the red-white-red jersey of the best Austrian rider !

Will not be hard to win it, becasue the only other austrian is Hans Werner Hahn. Come on guys take Austrian guys to that tour

[Laurens88]

Today was a flat stage. As I wasn't sure whether Calimero and me would be able to control the stage with so many teams wanting to attack, I decided to join the escape with Keizer. There was nobody who wanted to ride in the peloton, so the escape got a lot of time quickly. This wasn't too good for my team though. Minarovjech wasn't able to join the group because Freudenfeuer and Calimero immediately started riding. This angered me a bit, especially when I noticed that Thompson took a huge lead in the ranking for the white jersey. This encouraged me to start riding in the peloton.

The decision was not liked by Freudenfeuer, who wanted to win the yellow jersey. But well, I'm not riding this tour to help somebody else take advantage of the fact that another user was offline for an hour, so I didn't change my tactics because of him. What did surprise me was that O Imperedor and Dead And Alive (a friend of Freudenfeuer?) were riding hard as well, even though they had nothing to gain from this and should have been saving energy to help their leader in the escape group. It seemed to me like they were just helping Freudenfeuer win the tour in a relatively unfair way. This still makes me believe that it was not unfair for me to help Sport in the peloton, although it seemed like everybody was against me during the stage at some point.

In the end I didn't get to keep the white jersey, but the gap is small enough to win it back tomorrow. Winning the white jersey plus maybe another stage will be the goal for the rest of the tour, because it seems improbable that Ergaliev will still beat Röntgen for the green jersey. But as the Dutch say: you never know how a cow catches a hare.

[flockmastoR]

1) noone ever said it was unfair that you rode in the back.
2) I am no friend of Freudenfeuer. I rode in front hard with Euler because I thought it makes sense when Freude has a chance for yellow. than Sagna needs to ride and is not able to win the race (one opponent less + a bit a risk for green all in all)