July 6/04 10:06 am - McEwen Takes Yellow

Posted by Editor on 07/6/04
 

Tour de France

Stage 3 - Waterloo (Belgium) to Wasquehal (France) 210 km

1 Jean-Patrick Nazon (Fra) AG2r-Prevoyance
2 Erik Zabel (Ger) T-Mobile
3 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Lotto-Domo

GC

1 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Lotto-Domo


The big loser was overall contender Iban Mayo (Euskaltel-Euskadi), who went down in a crash shortly before the first section of pave. His team did not drop back to help right away, and by the time they got going, the peloton had split on the pave. The other top contenders made the split - Lance Armstrong (US Postal - Berry Floor), Levi Lepheimer (Rabobank), Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile) and Tyler Hamilton (Phonak) - and the Posties drove the pace. Roberto Heras (Liberty Seguros) initially missed the boat, but his team got him back up after the pave. In the sprint, McEwen was just pipped by Nazon and Zabel, but picked up enough bonus seconds to take the yellow jersey. Mayo is now out of contention for the overall - his group came in nearly four minutes down.

This is the last day for changes to your CC Fantasy Tour team; we have already seen a steady stream of participants going in to remove Mayo! We will be closing the Fantasy Tour to changes as of 10:00 pm EDT tonight.