PETACCHI CONFIRMS HIS COMEBACK

When he won in Brussels there had been crashes in the lead-up to the sprint but in Reims, Alessandro Petacchi had to take on all the best sprinters. He read the race perfectly, followed the right wheels and took advantage of the lead-out work by his team as well as those of his rivals. Mark Cavendish was perfectly poised to take advantage of great work by his team-mates but wasn’t able to finish off the job… he stumbled almost at the same time that Petacchi began his sprint – about 230m from the finish line. The Garmin-Transitions boys didn’t have Tyler Farrar there for the win because of an injury sustained earlier in the Tour but the US squad put two men in the top five: Dean second and Hunter fifth… but the true master of the sprint in the 2010 is Mr Petacchi.

The Progress Report
The 153.5km fourth stage of the 2010 Tour de France, from Cambrai to Reims, began at 2.00pm. There were 189 riders at the sign on with David Le Lay (ALM) and Fränk Schleck (SAX) the non-starters. The conditions for stage four were fine and warm with temperatures in the mid-20s (Celsius). The route featured only one small climb, the cat-four côte de Vadencourt (at 40.5km) and three intermediate sprints: in Walingcourt-Selvigny (12.5km), Flavigny-et-Beaurin (49.5km) and Brienne-sur-Aisne (128.5km).

Champion Sparks Up The Action
At the 1.5km mark, Dimiti Champion (ALM) attacked and quickly joined at the front of the stage by Vogondy (BTL), De Greef (OLO), Isasi (EUS) and Mayoz (FOT). The peloton offered no response, Saxo Bank remained calm at the front of the main pack and they watched the advantage grow. At the 25km mark, the quintet had a lead of 3’50”, this was the maximum gain – and then HTC-Columbia sent Sivtsov to the front to limit the gain of the escapees. At 30km, the advantage was down to 2’00”. 
Txurruka (EUS) crashed at 32km, he sustained cuts on his right elbow but rejoined the peloton. The average speed for the first hour was 41.6km/h. Sivtsov remained at the head of the peloton for over an hour without reprieve. He did have the support of one Lampre rider while the RadioShack team tucked in behind this pair. The average speed for the second hour was 40.9km/h.

Toying With the Escape
The five escapees never really stood a chance of staying away as the peloton refused to give them any leeway. At the 106km mark, it was 1’00” behind… and, yes, Sivtsov was still at the front of the chase. With 30km to go, the Cervelo team moved to the head of the peloton and went about setting things up for a bunch sprint. Within one kilometer, the five escapees’ advantage dropped from a minute to 35 seconds. HTC-Columbia moved to the front of the bunch with 25km to go.

Petacchi: The 2010 Sprint Maestro
The escape was over with four kilometers to go. By then all the sprint teams were already in position for the lead-out and HTC-Columbia was the most convincing leading to the final kilometer. They had four men at the head of the peloton while Cervelo, momentarily set up a train to the right of the US-registered squad. Lampre had a good prescence and, going under the ‘flamme rouge’ Renshaw (THR) was perfectly poised for a lead-out but then things went slightly awry. Once the HTC guys regained composure, Cavendish was ready but with 200m to go, Petacchi jumped and ‘Cav’ seemed to suffer from some mishap… he was swamped by sprinters from other teams with Garmin-Transitions the best represented: Dean pushed Petacchi all the way to the line and finished second (and Hunter claimed fifth) but the Italian was too strong. He claimed his second win in the 2010 Tour.
Hushovd gained 17 points for his ninth place and is now 10 points ahead of Petacchi in the green jersey competition. Cavendish finished 12th. 
Fabian Cancellara finished 26th in the same time as the winner. He will wear the yellow jersey in stage five.