2007 Tour de France, Stage 11 to Stage 20#Stage 12
The 12th stage of the Tour de France on July 20, 2007 was 178.5 km long and took the riders from Montpellier through the southern region of Languedoc -Roussillon to Castres in the south-western region of Midi -Pyrenees. The fourth mountain stage had a total of four climbs, the stage began relatively flat, but challenging with the ascent to the Montée de la Jeante ended.
On the undulating stage sat right at the beginning, after two kilometers race, Sylvain Chavanel and Fabian Wegmann from the field from which a short time later Axel Merckx, Iñaki Isasi, Daniel Navarro, Félix Cárdenas and Ralf grave robbers followed. However, your breakaway ended early after only 15 kilometers to the top. Following the abortive attempt to escape repeatedly attacked again rider or smaller groups, but due to the high tempo in the peloton, nobody could solve over a longer period of time.
Only after 57 kilometers driven succeeded the duo Amets Txurruka Pierrick Fedrigo and to initiate a successful escape. A chase group, which had been formed shortly after the attack of the duo, was, however quickly, before the German Marcus Burghardt broke from the field as a soloist and as well as the two leaders could extend its lead on the peloton quickly. The maximum protrusion of the leading duo on the peloton totaled 85 kilometers from the finish 11:25 minutes before the Liquigas team organized the persecution. In between Burghardt went to the leaders with a constant delay of about six to 6:30 minutes. Go to the bottom of the Montée de la Jeante, 58 kilometers from the finish, the peloton reduced the gap to the race tip on 5:12 minutes while the sole pursuer Burghardt broke off the breakaway and at race mile 113.5 had the field fall back.
The increase Fedrigo and Txurruka were the boss, in contrast to ride in the flat piece of hold, largely constant and reached the summit with still 4:58 minutes difference. However, when the Lampre team and Française des Jeux took over the pace of work on the high plateau of the Montée de la Jeante, the lead dwindled again, as before in the plane. Finally, the breakaway ended a kilometer before the finish. In the subsequent mass sprint, Tom Boonen secured his second stage win in the course of the tour just ahead of his nearest rival for the green jersey, Erik Zabel and Robert Hunter.
Again, there were no changes in the peak positions of the individual scores. Also in the team standings Team CSC kept the lead.
Having already the morning of the doping case to Patrik Sinkewitz was advised to the public before the 10th stage, was the evening before the 12th stage known that the leading at this point in the standings Dane Michael Rasmussen excluded from the cycling federation in his home country from the national squad and was thus suspended for participating in the road Cycling Championships 2007 in Stuttgart and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Rasmussen had several of his whereabouts for possible unannounced doping controls during training is not specified. This suspicious behavior drew the wearer of the yellow jersey in the suspicion of doping. However, the tour organizers sensed by Christian Prudhomme a cabal of world cycling federation UCI around the conflict of the ASO with the organization of the UCI ProTour since the World Federation of the incidents were known since the end of June.
Tasks
Disqualifications
Intermediate sprints
First intermediate sprint in Herepian ( 81.5 km ) ( 193 m above sea level. NN )
Second intermediate sprint in Olargues ( 101 km ) ( 182 m above sea level. NN )
Climbs
Côte de Cantagal, Category 4 ( 27.5 km ) ( 171 m above sea level, . 1.6 km à 4,3 %)
Côte du Mas -Rouet, Category 4 ( 58 km ) ( 171 m above sea level, . 2.4 km à 4,3 %)
Col du Buis, Category 4 ( 74.5 km ) (. 240 m above sea level, 2.6 km à 4,8 %)
Montée de la Jeante, Category 2 ( 130.5 km ) ( 958 m above sea level, . 10.4 km à 6,1 %)
* The points of the mountain classification are doubled when the last pass of the stage of the category HC, 1 or 2 corresponds.