Vinokourov hopes crash doesn't destroy Tour hopes

	Alexandre Vinokourov dropped to two minutes and 10 seconds behind the lead thanks to his nasty fall late in stage five of the Tour. Joel Sagat/AFP/Getty Images
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We knew some of the flatlanders would be shed on Thursday's Stage 5, the Tour's first foray into mountainous country. More surprising was the fabric and epidermis shed by pre-race favorite Alexandre Vinokourov, who hit the deck hard 25 km from the finish of the rippling, 184-km run from Chablis to Autun. As a splintered field approached the finish line, there was drama at either end of the race. Out front, the dashing Filippo Pozzato of Team Liquigas shot up the left side of the road, barely managing to hold off Rabobank's Oscar Freire for the win. With that resolved, all eyes turned to the clock, to see how much time (and blood) Vinokourov had lost.

Vinokourov, 33, is looking at his last best chance to win cycling's biggest prize. Having laid low for four days, the compact Kazakh set out Thursday morning expecting to vie for the stage win. He finished it turning himself inside out to save his Tour. In the end, the man from Petropovlask lost 80 seconds to the race leaders. Whether or not Vino lost the Tour will be revealed in time.

Thursday's stage was interspersed with smallish and mid-sized mountains. With the peloton in full flight as it approached the last of those climbs, the Cote de la Croix, a motorcycle camera brought Versus viewers a shocking sight: Vinokourov standing beside a trashed-looking bike, a dinner-plate sized hole in his shorts revealing a large area of badly abraded skin. He stood, bent over, clenching his fists despairingly, his right side covered in road rash, while he waited for his team car.

Nothing comes easy for this guy. Three years ago he was in fantastic form but tore ligaments in his shoulder in the Tour de Suisse, and couldn't take the start in the Tour de France. Last year his team dropped out of the Tour on the eve of the race: too many Astana riders had been implicated in the Operacian Puerto doping scandal. (Vinokourov was not among them.)

On the even of this year's Tour, however, the French paper L'Equipe revealed that Vinokourov has been working with the controversial Italian doctor Michelle Ferrari, renowned earlier in his career for his cavalier attitude toward EPO. (Ferrari, who worked closely with Lance Armstrong during his career, was convicted of sporting fraud and malpractice in 2004 before winning an appeal in '06).

"Michele Ferrari is a physical trainer but not my doctor," Vinokourov told L'Equipe. "Armstrong also worked with him. I didn't want to miss out on this experience, I contacted him.

"Working with Ferrari is not that extraordinary. "Once a month I take a test to find out what kind of form I am in physically and my training depends on those results.

"Ferrari has never offered me any medication," he said. "He is just my physical trainer."