July 26/98 11:00 am - O'Grady Takes Stage 14

Posted by Editor on 07/26/98
 

O‚Grady takes Stage Win

Early in today‚s 187 kilometre stage from Valreas to Grenoble a group of 6 formed off the front of the peleton, after the first Mountain Points Sprint. The break, consisting of Orlando Rodriguez (Banesto), Peter Meinert-Nielsen (US Postal), Laurent Desbiens (Cofidis), Giuseppe Calcaterra (Saeco), Leon van Bon (Rabobank) and Stuart O'Grady (Gan) were no threat to any of the top riders, so they were allowed to roll away. With 20 kilometres to go the gap was up to 12 minutes, however, since the breakaways were all at least 38 minutes down on leader Jan Ullrich (Telekom), there was still little reaction to the time gap.

As is usually the case, the peleton began to pick up speed towards the end of the stage, and the gap began to shrink - 9 minutes by 10 kilometres to go. Attacks began among the leaders with 3 kilometres left in the stage, but all were neutralized, leading to sprint finish won by Australian Stuart O‚Grady, ahead of Giuseppe Calcaterra.