Cycling: Kirsipuu's victory forces latecomers to the fore

Jan Kirsipuu's face was all but rubbing his bike's handlebars in pain as he crossed the line at Rouen, but the burly Estonian none the less succeeded in fending off the sprinters' teams to take the third Tour stage win of his 10-year career.

The 32-year-old from Tartu needed no fewer than five attacks in the last two kilometres to shake off the four other riders who had accompanied him for nearly half the stage over Normandy's rolling countryside.

It was only within sight of the line on Rouen's river front that Kirsipuu obtained a definitive margin over his fellow breakaways, Michael Sanstod and the veteran Ludo Diercksens, by which time, to judge by the agonised look on his face, the Estonian's fuel tank was dangerously close to empty.

"I won today on raw courage," Kirsipuu said. "I had no strength left at all. But my team, Ag2R, had to justify our presence here in the Tour, and as the leader it was ultimately my responsibility to win." Indeed, when French television commentators took the unusual step of simultaneously interviewing both Kirsipuu and his team director, Vincent Lavenu, the two could hardly contain their self-righteous desire to point out that Ag2R had been "the last team to get a wild-card place in the Tour line-up this May".

Lavenu reminded viewers: "We've won a stage every year in this race for the last five years, but we're always only allowed to get in at the last moment."

Kirsipuu could not resist a touch of sarcasm, adding: "We ought to congratulate the Tour on letting us ride."

However, one reason why the Tour hesitated over giving Ag2R a berth was their excessive dependence on Kirsipuu, as became clear when the sprinter crashed at 60kph in a training accident this March, badly injuring his knee. The team's success rate plummeted during his three-week convalescence, and it was only after much humming and hawing that the team were finally admitted to cycling's blue riband event.

Barely visible in any of the mass charges for the line so far in the Tour, Kirsipuu, who held the yellow jersey for the best part of a week in 1999 after winning a bunch sprint, decided on yesterday's fifth stage that the best way to justify Ag2R's presence was to chance his arm in a break.

By far the fastest of the five riders that went clear shortly after the feeding station half-way through the stage, and aware that he would not be popular as a consequence, Kirsipuu worked harder than usual at the front of the move, and the quintet succeeded in building up a five-minute lead with some 50 kilometres left to race.

None the less, after the race leader, Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano, and his ONCE-Eroski team had kept the pace high early on to avoid long-distance attacks on the maillot jaune, the Australian national champion, Robbie McEwen, ordered his Lotto-Adecco troops to the front to chase down the breakaway.

By Quincampoix, the boyhood hometown of Jacques Anquetil, the five-times Tour winner, the gap was rapidly dropping. But if suicide breaks and bunch sprints are very much features of the first week, mass pile-ups are another, and shortly before the race passed the graveyard where Anquetil was buried, the end of the peloton, including David Millar, had to stop when nearly two dozen riders went down.

Eight, including the overall contender Tyler Hamilton, suffered minor injuries. It was the inert figure of the Italian team worker Marco Pinotti that gave rise to the most concern. Surrounded by team and Tour doctors, Pinotti, bleeding heavily, was rushed to Rouen hospital, where he regained consciousness. Apart from suffering numerous cuts and abrasions all over his upper body, the Italian had his nose split open under the impact of the 70kph crash.

Remarkably, the Belgian Rik Verbrugghe remounted and rode to the finish despite having a broken collar-bone, which has ended his race.

Although the pile-up prevented McEwen's team from reeling in Kirsipuu's break, the Brisbane rider could take some consolation from the organisers' decision to tell the Tour sponsors, PMU, not to distributing giant green hands to the public.

McEwen had complained on Tuesday that the publicity props been a danger as he sprinted to victory in Reims as he had been struck several times by the disproportionately large hands. Thanks to the Australian pointing the finger, the Tour gave the offending members the chop.

Alasdair Fotheringham writes for Cycling Weekly

Yesterday's results

STAGE FIVE (Soissons to Rouen, 195km): 1 J Kirsipuu (Est) AG2r Prevoyance 4hr 13min 33sec; 2 M Sandstod (Den) CSC-Tiscali, same time; 3 L Dierckxsens (Bel) Lampre-Daikin st; 4 S Casagranda (It) Alessio +3sec; 5 C Edaleine (Fr) Jean Delatour +8; 6 R McEwen (Aus) Lotto-Adecco +33; 7 D Cooke (Aus) FDJeux.com; 8 S O'Grady (Aus) Crédit Agricole; 9 E Zabel (Ger) Deutsche Telekom; 10 A Hauptmann (Sloven) Tacconi; 11 A Piziks (Lat) CSC-TTiscali; 12 J Svorada (Cz Rep) Lampre-Daikin; 13 N Mattan (Bel) Cofidis; 14 R Hunter (SA) Mapei-Quick Step; 15 L Pagliarini (Br) Lampre-Daikin; 16 E Magnien (Fr) Bonjour; 17 F Simon (Fr) Bonjour; 18 J-E Guttierez (Sp) Kelme; 19 V-H Pena (Col) US Postal Service; 20 L Brochard (Fr) Jean Delatour all st.

Overall standings: 1 I Gonzalez Galdeano (Sp) ONCE 19hr 5min 56sec; 2 J Beloki (Sp) ONCE +4sec; 3 L Armstrong (US) US Postal +7; 4 J Jäksche (Ger) ONCE +12; 5 A Olano (Sp) ONCE +22; 6 R Heras (Sp) US Postal +25; 7 I Nozal (Sp) ONCE +27; 8 J Azevedo (Por) ONCE +28; 9 G Hincapie (US) US Postal st; 10 M Serrano (Sp) ONCE +30; 11 F Landis (US) US Postal +32; 12 A Gonzalez Galdeano (Sp) ONCE st; 13 J L Rubiera (Sp) US Postal +35; 14 V Ekimov (Rus) US Postal st; 15 L Jalabert (Fr) CSC-Tiscali +37; 16 T Hamilton (US) CSC-Tiscali +53; 17 A Peron (It) CSC-Tiscali st; 18 P Padrinos (Cz Rep) US Postal +55; 19 C Sastre (Sp) CSC-Tiscali +1min 00sec; 20 B Joachim (Lux) US Postal +1:09. Selected: 23 D Millar (GB) Cofidis +1:40. Points standings: 1 E Zabel (Ger) Deutsche Telekom 113pts; 2 R McEwen (Aus) Lotto-Adecco 111; 3 B Cooke (Aus) FDJeux.com 80. Mountain points: 1 C Mengin (Fr) FDJeux.com 29pts; 2 S Berges (Fr) AG2r Prevoyance 26; 3 L Dierckxsens (Bel) Lampre-Daikin 15. Team standings: 1 ONCE-Eroski 57hr 18min 4sec; 2 US Postal +42sec; 3 CSC-Tiscali +1min 36sec; 4 Fassa-Bortolo +4:53; 5 Cofidis +5:06.