Tour de France Team Talk Stage 8

Mark Cavendish (Team Columbia) claims his second stage win as he splashes into Toulouse. - report

Mark Cavendish was pretty happy to win his second stage of the 2008 Tour de France - “Just like a few days ago, I came from a long way back again at the finish, but I had the strength to take it all the way to the line which is what mattered.”

“I was three places behind Gerald at one point but then I was able to get past the three of me before Gerald made his final acceleration which got me ahead. And then I gave it 100 percent.” “The finish was perfect for us, taking first and second. It was all really beautiful.”

Kim Kirchen and Thomas Lovkvist are still leading overall and in the Best Young Rider’s competition.
“The way we worked so hard together in the last few kilometres shows exactly why we are so successful as a team.” Kirchen said. Talking about wearing the yellow jersey, Kirchen added “it’s something every rider dreams of. I’ve had to wait ten years to do this, but I can assure you it’s been worth the wait!”

Asked if he plans to go for the green jersey, Cavendish says that he still lacks the consistency to do so.
“My objective here is winning stages in the first week, but for the green jersey you need a lot of endurance and I’m still young.” As for going all the way to Paris, Cavendish was adamant that he is “going to try. I have no intention of stopping. It wouldn’t be fair on my team-mates, my sponsor or the organisers. I’ll give it 100 percent.”

Thankfully the team had a non eventful day in stark contrast to large amount of chasing that had to do on the previous stage - “This is a strange Tour, almost every day it’s raining, Damiano Cunego commented, Forecasts say rain for tomorrow too: I will try to understand if I’ve recovered the efforts of the last stages and I will give my best in order to realise a good performance”.

“Calm day for us – Piovani, Lampre’s sport director, said – Tomorrow our riders will use tyres for rain on aluminum wheels, only Bruseghin and Ballan will use rear carbon wheels”.

The team are looking up and think that their riders are coming to the boil. Robert Förster managed to achieve his best result so far to take fifth place. "Frösi is slowly gathering momentum", commented his Sporting Manager Christian Henn, adding: "That was a very respectable result."

Team sprinter (2nd in the green jersey comp in 2007) Robert Hunter was tenth in the mass sprint - "He is always a protagonist in the sprints - team manger Claudio Corti said - and today he spent a lot of energy to stay ahead in the peloton. He will have other chances: his shape is improving".

Erik Zabel sprinted to a sixth place - "We wanted to be part of a breakaway at all costs,” said Vittorio Algeri, Sports Director. "On the first 45 kilometres, heaps of attacks went but nobody could really open up a significant gap. By the second classified climb, a breakaway finally formed, but it left without our participation. In the end, it was a very difficult finale with Erik Zabel placing sixth.”

Riccardo Riccò crashed with 50 kilometres to go. He has hurt his right knee and hip badly, but he managed to regain the peloton with the help of his teammates.

David de la Fuente said - "I´ve met my goal of keeping the mountains jersey today. The early race was tough, with so many attacks and all. I took off from behind in the first climb and rode past other riders to be the first to crown it. The same thing happened in the second climb, but Lefèvre had already broken clear. Tomorrow´s different; there´ll be two main mountain passes and the race will be long. It´ll be an important day for the KOM classification, with two category-1 climbs plus four other ascents. Of course, my goal will be being part of the breakaways, for there´ll surely be one. My GC time isn´t very good, and this could help me for a place ahead, but then everyone´ll try to be in the breakaway.

Oscar Freire had worn the Green Jersey whilst leader Kim Kirchen wore the yellow version on stage 8, but afterward he wore by right.

Rabobank say that the green jersey is one of Freire's objectives this Tour. He said of Mark Cavndish's win,. "With these sorts of arrivals, without a short climb to the finish, he can almost not be defeated at the moment," judged Freire.

Freire held back when he realised that the win was not to be.

Magnus Backstedt failed to meet the time limit on stage eight and reflected that his build up to the race had not been ideal. Writing on the team website he says - What happened yesterday I still can’t explain. I was going great for the first 50 km and had no problems keeping the pace over the first couple of climbs. Then 50 km in to it my legs started building up lactic acid and I couldn’t get rid of it. Then when we hit the 4th category climb, I just popped. I couldn’t get out of the seat and by 500 m to the top, I could not even turn my legs over. Same feeling as I had when I was racing in the US earlier. I had to cruise for a bit to recover and then set about trying to get inside the time limit. I knew it was a tall task, but I wasn’t gonna pack it in out there on the road. I gave it absolutely everything I had for the last 100 km. I finished exhausted and unfortunately 4 minutes outside the time cut. I was gutted!!! Still am!!!

I can handle missing the time cut if I’m riding at 100% and I’m just not good enough to keep up with the race. But that part of the day when I got dropped, I was maybe at 50% and that is very hard to live with. The worst part for me is that my legs were better on the massage table after that effort than they were after the previous day. So it’s not the legs that can’t take it, something else is wrong!!

Herve Duclos Lassalle, Cofidis - stage 1 - crash
Angel Gomez, Saunier Duval - stage 3 - crash
Maurico Soler, Barloworld - stage 5 - injuries from an earlier crash
Aurelien Passeron, Saunier Duval - stage 6 - failed to start (Hit a spectator the previous day)
Magnus Backstedt, Garmin Chipotle - stage 7 - outside time limit
Lilian Jegou, FD Jeux - stage 7 - crash
Christophe Moreau, Agritubel - stage 7, bad back
John Gadret, AG2R - stage 7
Mauro Facci, Quickstep, - stage 7
Manuel Beltran, Liquigas - stage 7 - withdrawn before start after positive dope test

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