July 12/97 14:04 pm - Official Tour Results & Story

Posted by Editor on 07/12/97
 

Fraser 11th!  Erik Zabel and his Telekom team made up for yesterday‚s disappointing relegation (he has bumped from 1st to 123rd on the stage for irregular riding in the sprint), by setting up the sprint perfectly. of course, Zabel was greatly helped by the fact that his rival Mario Cipollini dropped out 20 kilometres into the stage, suffering from the effects of a crash the day before (Ivan Gotti and Berzin were in the same crash and did not start). An early break of 3, containing Adri Baffi, managed to gain as much as 5;10 on the field, before race leader Vasseur‚s GAN team went to work to bring them back, catching them with just 14 kilometres left in the stage. Gord Fraser, had another super finish - 11th - giving him 3 top-20 finishes so far. Of course, the obligatory crash happened, about 5 kilometres from the finish, catching Pantani, Leblanc and Virenque behind it.  Stage 7, Marennes to Bordeaux - 194 km  1 ZABEL Erik 4:11:15 2 KIRSIPUU Jaan 3 BLIJLEVENS Jeroen 4 MC EWEN Robbie 5 STRAZZER Massimo 6 SIMON François 7 VOGELS Henk 8 MONCASSIN Frédéric 9 JALABERT Nicolas 10 TRAVERSONI Mario 11 FRASER Gordon (Canada) all s.t.  19 VASSEUR Cedric 25 OLANO Abraham 34 BOARDMAN Chris 36 JALABERT Laurent 41 ULLRICH Jan 50 EKIMOV Vjatceslav 51 RIIS Bjarne all s.t. as winner 82 PANTANI Marco at 0:50  Abandon: Mario Cipollini DNS: Ivan Gotti, Evgeni Berzin, Leon Van Bon DQ: Tom Steels, Djamolidin Abdoujaporov  GC  1 VASSEUR 38:23:59 2 ZABEL 1:49 3 BOARDMAN 2:54 4 ULLRICH 2:56 5 O'GRADY Stuart 3:03 6 MONCASSIN 3:04 7 OLANO 3:04 8 JALABERT 3:06 9 CAMENZIND Oscar 3:22 10 REBELLIN Davide 3:24  15 RIIS 3:59 19 EKIMOVO 4:17 64 PANTANI 7:17 168 FRASER (Canada) 18:50  Sprinters  1 ZABEL 193 points 2 MONCASSIN 145 3 BLIJLEVENS 133  17 FRASER 44  Climbers  1 BROCHARD Laurent 41 points 2 SAUGRAIN Cyril 11 3 KASPUTIS Arturas 10