|
|
|
|
|
|
 
|
  Belgium's Steels gets revenge on cycle
Posted: Tuesday July 14, 1998 01:51 PM
Special from L'Equipe, the French sports daily PARIS (L'Equipe) -- The Tour's sprint specialists had just gone berserk. The finish line had become a boxing ring. After placing third, Djamoline Abdoujaparov was sent home for having swallowed enough drugs to arouse a horse for a week. Erik Zabel thought he'd won the stage, but was relegated for having head-butted Damien Nazon on the way to the line. Tom Steels had been behind, fighting his way to the front of the pack, but he was also sent home for having thrown a water bottle at Frédéric Moncassin. For one year and one day exactly, Belgium's national champion waited for his revenge. "I've always wanted to answer in a competition, not with words," Steels said. "Before Marennes, we'd been in very nervous finishes, with falls and sprint preparations that were almost foul," he still explained to Vélo Magazine's Etienne Terroir in September. "I'd already avoided a fall by inches. So I had this unforgivable an unexplainable reaction. Moncassin hit me. In the heat of the action, I didn't ask myself whether he'd done it on purpose or not. Two days before, I'd already almost fallen because of him. Nobody saw it, but my front wheel was actually off the ground! When I saw that it was him in Marennes, I got mad. After the stage, Moncassin came to explain himself. We made peace, we shook hands immediately. Frédéric is a clean guy." And what was Moncassin's reaction? "Tom is a good person. There's no dispute between us," he said.
Sprinters are special, like boxers, who go at each other on the ring and end up in warm embrace. They have their own guidelines, share the same love for danger, the same passion for thrills. "The Tour is always more dangerous than other races for a sprinter," Steels said in Dublin. "There are some riders you never see compete in sprints the rest of the year, but who, on the Tour, start fighting for a spot in the top ten. Those are the troublemakers, the riders who make us take big risks. Between specialists, on the other hand, we respect ourselves." Eight days after earning the right to wear Belgium's national champion jersey, which he says gives him "added moral strength," Steels is competing in his second Tour de France, with mixed feelings about the first one. All the more since before Marennes, he'd only finished in the top ten once in three sprints, placing second in Forges-les-Eaux. The Mapei team is very impressive in the "classiques," but usually doesn't fare well in the Tour. So it was a sweet revenge for their B team, yesterday, when they won a Tour stage without Johan Museeuw, Frank Vandenbroucke or Pavel Tonkov. "I've been coaching Mapei for four years, and we'd never won a stage. I had a hard time coping with that fact. Today, we made up for it magnificently. Tom won, but Stefano Zanini also participated in the day's only breakaway, and even took the polka-red dot jersey. In sprint finishes, I have two good chances to win, with Steels and Jan Svorada, but even after having given it a lot of thought, I've never found the good solution between the two of them. There never are good tactics. If one places second and the other one fifth, they'll always say the coach made a mistake. So I simply ask Jan to stay behind Tom and to take a shot at it if he can," Patrick Lefévère said Sunday. "The first time we passed the finish line, I noticed there was a strong head wind and that I'd have to get out of the bunch as late as possible," Steels said. "The slightly upward finish was favorable to Zabel, but it suited me too. I'd seen the fall before, but I didn't know who was in it. Since Mario Cipollini wasn't with us, I supposed he'd fallen too and, in these circumstances, the only rider I had to watch and stay behind of was Zabel. I waited for the last 100 meters to start sprinting." And that's how Steels ended up ninth overall, nine seconds behind Chris Boradman, with a shot at the yellow jersey on Monday. After spending two hours on Irish roads before reaching their hotel in Wexford, the Mapei team was about to discuss the following day's tactics. "Around a bottle of champagne," a beaming Lefévère said. "But I don't feel like wasting all of my riders yet. We're not going to stay at the front of the pack all day and get beat at the finish line, eh?"
| |||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||||
