Petacchi and Cipollini out

[steve]

It was just a matter of time!

www.cyclingnews.com

The Tour de France has lost two of its highest profile sprinters - Alessandro Petacchi and Mario Cipollini - neither of whom will take the start of today's sixth stage. Despite being hopeful last night that his shoulder would be OK following his crash in Stage 5 yesterday, Fassa Bortolo's Alessandro Petacchi was in too much pain to consider starting today.

"I'm really sorry I can't continue," he said. "It's a big disappointment to me, and basically it's because I just cannot raise my arm. Last year I came here and I was in worse condition but I managed to be a protagonist in the Tour. Now I'll just have to see what happens."

Mario Cipollini (Domina Vacanze) was also a victim of a crash, his problems stemming from the fall he had during the third stage to Wasquehal. There he crashed on his left side and opened up a cut in his left leg that hadn't healed from the Giro. It has become infected, he has a light fever and is in a lot of pain, which was why he was in trouble during stage 5. Cipollini decided that he didn't want to risk his condition and has left the race.

 

[mitosis]

They didn't even get to the mountains.

Promised so much too. A good field of sprinters this year.

 

[steve]

Originally posted by mitosis
They didn't even get to the mountains.

Promised so much too. A good field of sprinters this year.

did either of them even get on the podium?

 

[steve]

actually 9 stage wins in the giro is alright

cheers

 

[Powerful Pete]

Nope, neither did get on the podium in the TdF this year.

The Italian papers state that for Cipollini the issue was the scar, which had never been stitched, which has reopened and gotten infected. Yuck.

He will be 'operated' on and have it cleaned out and stitched up in the coming days.

 

[gntlmn]

It's very surprising that the dominant sprinter Petacchi was not able to pull off even one win this year before he had to leave. He had 4 tries at it. Prologue and TTT wouldn't count. That leaves 4 remaining stages, and he failed to get into position for a win. I guess you can't really count yesterday either, however, because he crashed and was knocked senseless before the finale. That leaves 3.

I think you cannot conclude that this signals a decline from Petacchi just yet because the other teams were clearly focusing on keeping him out of the mix, and 3 tries is not enough to tell.

 

[Cam the Ram]

Petacchi was just the ultimate failure this year. He came in the Tour with so much hype; everyone talking about how fast he was. Petacchi has a lot of talent, but he needs to improve. Hopefully he can get on a better team in the coming years. Possibly T-Mobile?

 

[Powerful Pete]

Politely disagree, Cam the Ram.

I think that you are pushing it a bit when you state that Petacchi was the ultimate failure. I think we are all comparing him to last year, and he is the first to tell us that 2003 was an exceptional year, with a number of stage wins in all three major stage races!

He is an excellent sprinter, was carefully watched and 'boxed in' in this year's tour, where Fassa was not able to handle things the way they wanted. His tour was a failure, but let us not exaggerate.

I doubt that T-Mobile would be the team for him. Now Fassa more or less is designed to ride for Petacchi. Somehow I doubt that Ulrich guy would appreciate spending the last 50km of each stage pulling with his 53-12 to keep the speed up and the pack together for Petacchi!

 

[GIFF07]

I heard that Petacci took the time between the Giro and the Tour off to "train for the Tour" which I think takes some of the edge off of a sprint no matter how fast you are. There is no better training for a sprinter than to sprint (in a real sprint not a simulated training situation).