Thaindian News

Thomas Voeckler won the stage 5 of this prestigious and widely followed bicycle race. The stage 5 was a 196.5 Km race and it started from Le Cap d’Agde and ended at Perpignan. But in spite of this the overall classification has remained the same. Therefore Fabian Cancellara will still be retaining the yellow jersey.

This part of the race was held in Southern France and the course was flat overall, running mostly along the Mediterranean coast. But the journey did take some turns into moderately hilly areas also, specially at the Couriers region. It ended back on flat terrain.

Before the race some experts and commentators were discussing that Thor Hushovd had high chances of winning this stage as he was familiar with the terrain at Perpignan, where he had stayed for long. Piet Rooijakkers (from Holland) on the other hand could not participate as he was yet to recover from the broken arm which he got from a fall. In fact the doctors had to perform a long seven-hour surgery on his arm.

As the race started Thomas Voeckler had a tough fight from Marcin Sapa and Anthony Geslin as they were seen to be heading into a group on their own. They were followed by Mikhail Ignatiev and Albert Timmer. The race became interesting because of the weather which produced wind at an average speed of 40 km per hour. Ultimately towards the last half of the race today’s winner Voeckler went solo and it was the 5 km mark when he did so. He was not challenged at this point and comfortably went onto win the stage 5.