Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

(pic from letour.fr)

The sprinters battle is leaning heavily to Tom Boonen as he took his second consecutive stage win ahead of arch-rival super sprinter Alessandro Petacchi. The sprint was almost an exact repeat of yesterday’s stage win minus the brutal crash by Tom Steels which resulted in a broken collarbone.

The two wins so early in the season don’t count for much except to help size up the competition as Boonen explains:

I already said before the start of this Tour of Qatar that it would be very important for me to be able to sprint against Alessandro Petacchi, and important to be able to beat him. Today, I again managed to do so and I’m very satisfied. If you look at the last few seasons, I haven’t really had the opportunity to sprint against him. Here, with my Quickstep team, we have the opportunity to see how he sprints, how he prepares… We also have the possibility to work on a strategy to beat him. To win two sprints against Petacchi, so early in the season is very good for the moral. — Tom Boonen (letour.fr)

Three more similarly flat windswept stages are on tap for the riders so there is still plenty of time for Petacchi to claim back a win or two.