Tour de France 2000 - 04 Saint Nazaire ONCE

Tour de Francia 2000 - 04 Nantes-Saint Nazaire, TTT 70 Km.

Results

1 O.N.C.E.- Deutsche Bank (20 sec added) 1.25.55 (48.88 km/h)
2 US Postal Service 0.26
3 Team Deutsche Telekom 1.06
4 Credit Agricole 1.12
5 Rabobank 1.52
6 Festina Watches 1.56
7 Cofidis Credit Par Telephone 2.33
8 Mapei-Quick Step 2.58
9 Mercatone Uno-Albacom 3.14
10 Memory Card Technology - Jack & Jones 3.19
11 Ag2R Prevoyance 3.57
12 Banesto 4.03
13 Team Polti 4.19
14 Kelme-Costa Blanca 4.48
15 Saeco-Valli&Valli 4.54
16 Lotto-Adecco 5.00
17 Farm Frites 5.23
18 Vini Caldirola-Sidermec 5.35
19 Francaise Des Jeux 5.47
20 Bonjour 6.25

General after stage 4:

1 Laurent Jalabert (Fra) Once-Deutsche Bank 10.09.10
2 David Cañada (Spa) Once-Deutsche Bank 0.12
3 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal Service 0.24
4 Abraham Olano (Spa) Once-Deutsche Bank 0.35
5 Vjatceslav Ekimov (Rus) US Postal Service 0.43
6 Nicolas Jalabert (Fra) Once-Deutsche Bank 0.49
7 Ivan Gutierrez (Spa) Once-Deutsche Bank 0.49
8 Marcos Serrano (Spa) Once-Deutsche Bank 0.52
9 Miguel Angel Peña (Spa) Once-Deutsche Bank 0.54
10 Tyler Hamilton (USA) US Postal Service 0.55

Report

On a beautiful, blustery day where the Loire River empties into the Atlantic, the strong winds blew Scot David Millar (COFIDIS) out of the Maillot Jaune and with a glorious display of precision and strength, O.N.C.E. powered to victory in the 70 km team test, putting their co-team leader Laurent Jalabert into the Maillot Jaune, the first time this talented Frenchman has donned the golden tunic since 1995. "It all went pretty much according to our plan," an obviously delighted Jalabert told the post race press conference. "I'm really happy and have to thank my team most of all."

USPS made a major effort to put their leader into the Maillot Jaune as well, but the Postal squad had neither the experience nor the determination today to win the stage. But upon analysis, it looks like the situation may be most advantageous for Lance & Co., as their main rivals O.N.C.E. have all the pressure and responsibility to defend the Maillot Jaune, while USPS can sit back and wait for O.N.C.E. and Jaja to crack, just as has happened so many times before.

Wait, there's more! A 20 second time penalty levied by the race jury on the entire O.N.C.E. team's time for towing Marcos Serrano back up to the other riders (dans l'abri) after the provisional GC was issued markedly changed the composition of the top 5 riders. Before the penalty, Lance was in 5th at 44", but he moved up to 3rd at 24", with Olano back to 4th (from 3rd) at 35". Before the penalty Lance had to contend with both Jaja AND Olano in front of him on GC. Now it's just Jaja, with talented youngster Cañada an unknown commodity. O.N.C.E. is still very dangerous, with 8 riders in the top 10, including solid climbers like Pena, Luttenberger and Gutierrez, wresting the Maillot Jaune from Jaja won't be easy!

Other winners on the day are Credit Agricole with American duo Julich and Vaughters both in the top 25, sitting pretty and ready to go on the attack when the moment is right. Their old fox director Roger Legeay, who guided Greg LeMond to two of his three Tour wins knows how to get the most out of his team, as evidenced by today's performance.

As for Telekom, it seemed as though they rode almost as hard as they could, but not quite. In that Ullrich is still only 1m07"out of the Maillot Jaune and their third place was respectable, but perhaps it seemed that they could have been closer to O.N.C.E. And USPS on time...while Mapei eventually ended up with a respectable ride for 8th.

Of the climber's teams, Pantani 5m46" out of the lead, but ahead of climbers like Richard Virenque (Polti) at 6m06", J-M Jimenez (Banesto) at 6m20"and Fernando Escartin (Kelme), who lost 6m46". Pantani is not far behind Alex Zulle either, last year's runner-up is 56th at 4m09" and one wonders if he couldn't have ridden the 70 km faster by himself.

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