Saturday 23 January 2010 at 16h26

Today's stage was the queen stage of the 2010 Tour Down Under 2010 with two climbs of Willunga Hill.
The Australian World Champion, Cadel Evans (BMC Racing Team), ticked this stage to show his rainbow jersey to his public. Unfortunately for him he was finally not the strongest: the Spanish rider Luis Léon Sanchez of the Caisse d'Epargne team showed how strong he was to win this stage ahead of Luke Roberts (Team Milram) and Sanchez' team mate, Alejandro Valverde. Evans finally finished 4th and consoled with the prize of most aggressive rider in this stage; Sanchez makes a big jump in the general classification.

The summary of the stage Snapper Point > Willunga

After the start from Snapper Point, on the sea side, it was not very surprising that -as usual- the riders of UniSA-Australia were the first to attack: David Kemp and Simon Clarke.
The first leading group however was only really formed after an attack from Anthony Roux (Française des Jeux). The French rider finally wasn't part of that leading group which was formed by Cameron Meyer en Matthew Wilson (Garmin-Transitions, photo), Ludovic Turpin (AG2R La Mondiale), David Gutierrez (Footon-Servetto, José Ivan Gutierrez - Caisse d'Epargne's brother), Valeriy Dmitriyev (Astana), Michael Matthews (UniSA-Australia) and Eduard Vorganov (Team Katusha).

After the first round and when they came back in Snapper Point, the first intermediate sprint was won by Valeriy Dmitriyev before Eduard Vorganov and Matthew Wilson. Their lead on the peloton was about 1'55" at that time. In the second sprint at the same place Eduard Vorganov was the fastest, before Valeriy Dmitriyev and Cameron Meyer.

At the foot of the first climb the leading group still had a 1'45" lead on the peloton where the Caisse d'Epargne team at that time took over the leading position of the HTC-Columbia team of general classification leader André Greipel, which again was at the front of the peloton since the start of the stage.
In this first climb the King of the Mountains, Thomas Rohregger (Team Milram), attacks in the peloton, gets to the leading group and over them. Valeriy Dmitriyev doesn't let him go that easy however and he attacks and gets over Rohregger to get first on the top, before the Austrian rider and Cameron Meyer.

The leading group than contains 8 riders and at about 38 kilometers from the finish their lead is back down to only 17 seconds. Once this group is taken back and Thomas Vedel Kvist (Quick Step) tried without success to do a solo attack, it's time for the World Champion, Cadel Evans (BMC Racing Team), to attack. In the second climb of Willunga Hill he gets company from Alejandro Valverde and Luis Léon Sanchez of the Caisse d'Epargne team, Peter Sagan of Liquigas-Doimo and David Gutierrez (Footon-Servetto).
Alejandro Valverde is first on top of Willunga Hill before his team mate Luis Léon Sanchez and Cadel Evans.

This new leading group gets a maximum lead of 37 seconds, but the HTC-Columbia team again shows perfect team work at the head of the peloton and reduces the gap to only 19 seconds at about 1 kilometer from the finish. At that time, Luis Léon Sanchez decides to give everything for the stage win and shows his great strength to get a small lead, big enough to win the stage 2 seconds ahead of Luke Roberts and 4 of Alejandro Valverde. What a beautiful win!

The winner's comments (Luis Léon Sanchez)

The winner of the stage, last year's winner of Paris-Nice 2009 was quite short sinc he only said: I had a great tour. I am very very happy with the job of Valverde who is a very good person to have on this team.

This team, Caisse d'Epargne, now knows it has to start looking for a new sponsor because yesterday François Pérol, président du directoire of the group Banque Populaire-Caisses d'Epargne (BPCE) to which Caisse d'Epargne belongs, said: The Caisse d'Epargne team will participate in the Tour de France in 2010, but our contract ends in 2010. This contract will not be extended.
We are now (...) the new French bank sponsor of the Olympic Games and will accompany the French Olympic team in Vancouver, in London in 2012 and we support Annecy as a candidate for the Olympic Winter Games in 2018.
This is a decision about the communication of the company which is based on the fact that we think that the Olympic values correspond to BPCE's values.

The phenomenon Arthur Vichot

One of the 129 riders at the start of the 5th stage of the 2010 Tour Down Under 2010 this morning was the young neo-pro of Française des Jeux, Arthur Vichot. As a neo-pro (Arthur Vichot came to Française des Jeux after two years at CR4C Roanne) Vichot still has to become a known name in the cycling world and especially in Australia where until recently no one had ever heard of this rider who finished 2nd at the French Championship on the road for amateurs in 2009.

Vichot, one of the team mates who contributed to Romain Sicard's overall win in the Tour de l'Avenir in 2009, was quite surprised to see so many fans at the stage starts, finishes and alongside the road. What explains his popularity? That's what we call the Facebook effect!

According to CyclingNews, which was surprised about the many questions it received during its live updates of the Tour Down Under about this young rider, it all started with an initiative by Daniel Searson and a group of cycling fans in South Australia. The Port Adelaide Cycling Club decided two weeks before the start of the Tour Down Under to create an Australian fanclub for an unknown rider who would be doing his first race here, who had never been to Australia before and doesn't speak English. Looking through the start list of the 2010 Tour Down Under their eye falls on Arthur Vichot, they find his Facebook profile and decide to create a fan club for him.

The social network than does its work for the viral effect of the fan club and Arthur Vichot could thus discover his surprising popularity as soon as he arrived in Australia.

Still according to CyclingNews, Vichot would have said: There are more 'go Vichot' than 'go Lance', it's amazing. On the day that Lance Armstrong proposed a training ride via Twitter to Australian amateur cyclists (6,500 people participated in that rider), one of the members of the fan club, Aimee Alsbury, asked him Do you know Vichot?. Armstrong of course said he didn't and he thus heard him say: You'll know him by the end the Tour Down Under!

And when you see what kind of encouragements Arthur finds on the roads of the Tour Down Under, that probably is true (see pictures below).  
These pictures come from Arthur Vichot's Facebook fan page and are according to the information which can be found there © respectively Arnaud Gillouard and Kain Gardner.
Since it is very difficult to verify this information on Facebook, I invite you to contact me if it's incorrect or if the publication of these pictures here is in conflict with the copyright of these pictures.

Vichot is currently 50th at 3'36" from André Greipel and 9th best young rider at 3'10" from Jurgen Roelandts.

Did you know that www.velowire.com also has it's own fan page on Facebook at facebook.com/paristhovercom?! If you want to follow this website or simply if you like it, please become a fan of it so you'll be the first to know when new information gets published here.

The video summary of the stage Snapper Point > > Willunga

The classifications

Stage

1/ Luis Léon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne) - 3h29'39" (average speed: 42,356 km/h)
2/ Luke Roberts (Team Milram) - +0'02"
3/ Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne) - +0'04"
4/ Cadel Evans (BMC Racing Team) - +0'04"
5/ Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Doimo) - +0'06"
6/ Markus Fothen (Team Milram) - +0'06"
7/ Sebastien Rosseler (Team Radioshack) - +0'06"
8/ Cameron Meyer (Garmin-Transitions) - +0'06"
9/ Greg Henderson (Team Sky) - +0'09"
10/ Fabio Sabatini (Liquigas-Doimo) - +0'09"

General classification

Thanks to his stage win Luis Léon Sanchez goes up to the second position in the general classification while Greipel keeps his first place thanks to the perfect teamwork of his team mates:
1/ André Greipel (HTC-Columbia) - 16h53'45"
2/ Luis Léon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne) - +0'11"
3/ Luke Roberts (Team Milram) - +0'17"
4/ Robbie McEwen (Team Katusha) - +0'20"
5/ Cadel Evans (BMC Racing Team) - +0'21"
6/ Greg Henderson (Team Sky) - +0'24"
7/ Eduard Vorganov (Team Katusha) - +0'25"
8/ Jurgen Roelandts (Omega Pharma-Lotto) - +0'26"
9/ Markus Fothen (Team Milram) - +0'27"
10/ Andriy Grivko (Astana) - +0'29"

After the stage André Greipel said: It was just awesome from the guys, they stayed with me on the climb. Mick (Michael Rogers) didn't want to go for his own success, he said he wanted to stay with me. There was no point in panicking, there was no time to panic, we were 40 seconds behind on the climb and just had to go for it.

Best young rider

1/ Jurgen Roelandts (Omega Pharma-Lotto) - 16h54'11"
2/ Wesley Sulzberger (Française des Jeux) - +0'13"
3/ José Joaquin Rojas (Caisse d'Epargne) - +0'20"
4/ Gorka Izaguirre (Euskaltel-Euskadi) - +0'53"
5/ Fabio Sabatini (Liquigas-Doimo) - +0'58"

Points classification

1/ André Greipel (Columbia-HTC) - 24 points
2/ David Kemp (UniSA-Australia) - 16 points
3/ Martin Kohler (BMC Racing Team) - 12 points
4/ Mickaël Delage (Omega Pharma-Lotto) - 12 points
5/ Eduard Vorganov (Team Katusha) - 10 points

King of the Mountain

1/ Thomas Rohregger (Team Milram) - 54 points
2/ David Kemp (UniSA-Australia) - 28 points
3/ Valeriy Dmitriyev (Astana) - 24 points
4/ Timothy Roe (UniSA-Australia) - 22 points
5/ Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne) - 16 points

> Click here to download the full results after the forelast stage of the 2010 Tour Down Under 2010

Unless mentioned otherwise, all pictures in this article are © Tour Down Under.

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Tour Down Under | UCI ProTour | Tour Down Under 2010

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