latest news in hindi: 2011 Tour de France: Stage 4 News, Notes and Quotes

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July 5th, 2011 by Al Fresco No Comment

Cadel Evans of the BMC Racing Team won his second career Tour de France stage Tuesday by narrowly edging three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank Sungard) in a sprint to the top of the the M?r de Bretagne.?The victory was Evans?s second stage victory this year and the BMC Racing Team?s sixth of the season.

?I don?t know if I?m the master of the uphill finish, but today it was a difficult one with the wind and everything,? Evans said. ?It was very close. I didn?t know if I had it on the line myself.?
?It?s a big surprise for me,??said the Australian after his victory.??The first objective of the day was to take the stage without incident.?It was difficult with the rain, the head wind, the wind behind.?And if all went well, why not try my luck in the final and take 4 or 5 seconds on top.?
Evans punctured with 20 kilometers to go in the 172.5 km race and found his path blocked by a camera motorbike that crashed in front of him. But nearly half of the BMC Racing Team quickly returned him to the peloton. ?The reaction of the team was wonderful because we directly stopped with four riders,? BMC Racing Team Directeur Sportif John Lelangue said. ?Most important was that we didn?t panic. We were in the middle part of the peloton and there was no reason to take risks. The best was to wait until we made a turn and had a tailwind.?
With four kilometers to go, BMC Racing Team road captain George Hincapie, competing in a record-tying 16th Tour de France, racheted up the pace at the front to string out the field as the final two-kilometer climb approached. Evans said he followed the wheel of Phillipe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto), winner of Stage 1. ?Phil was certainly the guy to watch,? Evans said. ?It was a particular kind of finish with the wind and so on. I?m really pleasantly surprised.?
Asked if he can win his first Tour de France after runner-up finishes in 2007 and 2008, Evans said: ?I certainly hope so. So far all is going well. I?ve come close before, so we?ll see. We?ll keep working on it.? Evans remains second overall, one second behind Thor Hushovd (Garmin-Cerv?lo).

Contador came just inches from notching his first stage win in the 2011 Tour. Though he was not able to come through for the win, the Saxo Bank-SunGard rider did gain eight seconds on some of his rivals in the general classification.

?On one hand I?m happy because my feeling is good. In the finale I was the one creating the gap to see how the rivals were responding and especially to see if I could gain some time to some riders. In that sense I?m happy. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed because my team has worked hard and to have achieved the stage win when I was so close to it would have been a great joy,? Contador said.
?The ultimate goal for the team is the overall win and that encourages me and keeps me motivated. I?m basically very happy with the result. I have been feeling better than this but keep in mind that the Giro?s effort is still there and I don?t know how I will recover after the first week of this race,? Contador added.
?The stage shows that Alberto is ready for the Tour which we have known from the start of the race,? said Saxo Bank team owner Bjarne Riis. ?But remember that there?s a huge difference from climbing a slope like this and climbing Galibier or Alpe d?Huez. You can?t count on seeing the same riders finish like this on the big mountains. But it was a great and exciting finish today.?

Astana?s Alexandre Vinokourov says that his condition is improving:

?It was a very complicated stage, with a physically difficult finale.?I feel that the legs are there and that my condition is improving day by day.?I had a good result, it gives confidence for the future. ?

Andy Schleck lost eight seconds to Alberto Contador, but acknowledged that it could have been worse.

?I was a bit trapped in the bunch when Contador attacked for the first time, and I missed the selection,? explained Andy Schleck. ?A punch like this isn?t my speciality, so it wasn?t surprising that I lost a couple seconds today. It?s far from a disaster. Seven or eight seconds shouldn?t have much consequence in the overall result of the Tour.?
?The sprint uphill felt good, and I was happy to follow,? said big brother Fr?nk. ?It didn?t surprise me tremendously that Contador attacked. This was more or less what we expected.?

Thor Hushovd?narrowly defended the yellow jersey in Tuesday?s hill-top finish, riding mano-a-mano with the world?s best climbers.

?I am very, very happy to keep the maillot jaune. It was a very hard climb up to the finish line and I was really on my limit,? said Hushovd, who claimed the yellow jersey with Garmin-Cerv?lo?s team time trial victory in stage 2.??The main objective today was to defend the yellow jersey. It was a very hard stage, with wind and narrow roads, but the team did a great job to defend me until the base of the final climb.?
Hushovd thanked Philippe Gilbert, his neighbor in Monaco.??In training, I ride a lot with Philippe Gilbert.?He attacks me a lot in the bumps.?It helps me a lot.?Philippe Gilbert thank you! ?,?the Norwegian said at the news?conference.? For two-three years, I realized it was difficult to win the sprints flat against Cavendish.?I changed my style to be stronger in the bumps.?
?It was one of my best performances to stay there against these climbers,? Hushovd said.??I am very happy with how I rode today. With about 400 meters to go, it leveled out a little bit and I even thought that perhaps I could win the stage, but that thought lasted about one second. I was truly on my limit and to keep this jersey means a lot to me and to my team.?
?The goal now is to try to defend the jersey for as many days as possible,? Hushovd said.??We have the climbing stage at Super-Besse on Saturday, so maybe we can keep it until then. That would mean a lot of work for the team, so we will discuss it to see what?s best. Now we can take it day-by-day and enjoy this yellow jersey.?
Hushovd?s teammate Tyler Farrar?? hot off his victory in stage 3 ? won out of the bunch behind the lead breakaway at the day?s intermediate sprint at 92.5km to pick up more points in the hunt for the green jersey.

Everyone expected Phillipe Gilbert of the Omega Pharma-Lotto team to dominate today, but he faltered going into the final climb.

?My legs were so completely soured,? said the Belgian champion after the ride.
?I was not a great day.?It was normally a finish for me.?There was a little block at the end of the steep part when Contador attacked.?If I had the same legs that (I did on) Saturday, I could counter.Evans was very strong when the sprint launched,? Gilbert said. ?He can go far, as he did in a stage of Tirreno-Adriatico in March.?

More race news:

After the unexpected checks for seat levelling and other imponderables, Velo News reports that the UCI?issued a statement today warning teams that officials will begin random bike controls effective immediately.?The bike must be taken, under the supervision of an official, to the bike control tent. If the bicycle is not taken to the control or a team attempts to substitute the bike for another, the rider of the bicycle will be disqualified from the race.
In contrast to the 2010 race, the 2011 Tour went three days without a?withdrawal. Today, Jurgen van de Walle (Omega Pharma-Lotto) was the first to drop out of the race after crashing earlier in the race.
Colombian cyclist Juan Mauricio Soler is no longer in an induced coma but faces a long recovery from a serious crash during the Tour of Switzerland. The 28-year-old rider crashed on June 16 and was left with a fractured skull, plus lung and ankle injuries. The doctor for the Movistar team says Soler is being kept in a state of ?high drowsiness.?
Alessandro Ballan (BMC) appeared before Italy?s Olympic National Committee to answer questions about his involvement in the case of the Mantuan pharmacist Guido Nigrelli.?The former world champion will get to the end of this month to build his defense. Ballan is suspected of having undergone several blood transfusions in 2009 when he rode for Lampre. CONI also has telephone conversations between?Ballan?and?Nigrelli.?Yet the Italian is not worried.??I have all the doping controls without troubles,? he recorded in Gazzetta dello Sport.
Pavel Brutt and Denis Galimzyanov will continue riding for Katyusha. The 28-year-old Brutt, who is the new Russian road champion, extended his contract until 2012.?Galimzyanov,?winner in the Tour of Luxembourg and the Three days of De Panne, was awarded with a two-year term extension.

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