Crying Dutchman

Debutant Kroon claims emotional win, with Dekker's help

In his debut Tour de France, emotional Dutch winner Karsten Kroon makes the most of a little help from a friend, reports Cycling Weekly magazine.

FROM the moment Karsten Kroon roared across the finish line at Plouay to take stage eight of the Tour for Rabobank, the big Dutchman just could not stop crying.

Two or three boxes of tissues later, a still snuffling Kroon admitted: "I never imagined that one day I would cry like that in front of everybody. I just couldn’t contain all my feelings."

Understandable really, given that this was just the Rabobank rider’s second win in a four-year career, the first being the one-day GP Gippingen in 2001, and he had seriously considered quitting the sport altogether given his lack of success. Now, in his first ever Tour de France, he had hit the big time.

Kroon was not the only Dutchman who was flying on the fast downhill finish at Plouay, also used in the Worlds in 2000 when Latvian Romans Vainsteins outgunned the rest of the leading peloton. Second across the line was 2000 Paris-Roubaix winner Servais Knaven (Domo-Farm Frites), hammering his bars in frustration as he did so, while third was yet another rider from Holland, Erik Dekker (Rabobank).

What it meant IT’S over. The first long week of the Tour de France has ended, the last stage fortunately with no crashes, and now it’s up to Lance Armstrong and the other major contenders to slug it out in the first big race of truth. It’s hard to draw many conclusions. In fact, it’s hard to draw any. As Armstrong himself said, "So ONCE have done a good team time trial. They always do a good team time trial. That’s the only thing we’ve learned this week." What has effectively been a series of transition stages taking the Tour from Luxembourg to Britanny has caused one major favorite, Christophe Moreau, to disappear from the running, just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Other than that, a major sub-plot, the battle for the green jersey between Erik Zabel and Robbie McEwen, has already hotted up to the point that at Plouay they were fighting it out for eighth place. Then there is the lack of a French victory so far in the Tour, capped by their failure to take a stage on Bastille Day. This always causes the papers to hone in on the weakness of local cycling -- one French journalist even wrote in Monday’s Le Figaro: "Kroon could have chosen a day that wasn’t July 14 to win!" But with Frenchmen Laurent Jalabert and Richard Virenque at the ends of their careers and no new names to replace them, those pessimistic about France’s cycling future could well have a point.

Dekker, of course, is renowned for his Tour stage wins -- four in the last two years -- taken in the teeth of the peloton or by proving to be the cleverest in long breaks like last Sunday’s 109-kilometer move. On this occasion, though, Dekker’s form was looking strangely fragile after he had worked as hard as the remaining six breakaways -- Kroon, Knaven, Sebastien Hinault (Crédit Agricole), Raivis Belohvosciks (Lampre-Daikin), Franck Renier (Bonjour) and Stéphane Auge (Jean Delatour)-- to build up a solid lead of more than six minutes.

Renier,who had already taken part in one 160-kilometer break and another 152-kilometer effort this week, briefly became yellow jersey on the road for a third time, but the Frenchman’s "virtual" lead vanished thanks to ONCE-Eroski’s steady pace at the front of the peloton. But Renier had already bargained for that and what counted for him, as much as for the other six, was the stage win.

What was clear, though, was that the seven’s long effort through heavy terrain in France’s far western region of Britanny would allow them to stay away from the bunch. Then, when Dekker charged off up the road some 20 kilometers from the finish, with the break’s advantage still at three minutes, it was a sign for the working alliance to shatter. Dekker was evidently no longer suffering from his early crashes in the Tour, and the three French riders and Belohvosciks were determined not to let the Dutchman take off just like that.

While Kroon watched from the back of the string, Hinault and the Latvian quickly reeled his teammate back in, with the Frenchman -- no relation to five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault -- bawling out Dekker, presumably for attacking from so far out.

In fact, the Dutch veteran had tested the water because he wasn’t feeling so good. On the next short climb, Latvian national champion Belohvosciks put in a major dig, and Dekker promptly sat up and let them go.

The complicated, hilly terrain seemed made for ambushes, and that was exactly what Belohvosciks tried to do, on several occasions. The Latvian made no less than eight separate attacks, but they were all equally ineffective. Worse than that, as the break spread across the road on the Côte de Tyr-Marrec, the sharp fourth-category climb just three kilometers from the finish, who should catch them again but Dekker -- looking rough, but once again willing to work for teammate Kroon.

Indeed, Dekker succeeded in fooling Knaven into believing that his was the wheel to follow at the finish. Then when he slowed, briefly delaying the Domo rider,teammate Kroon flashed across the line on the other side of the road. A brilliant manoeuvre, which had Dekker raising his arms in victory to celebrate another Dutchman taking the stage -- but from his own team.

The first Frenchman to finish, Renier, could only manage fourth, with Belohvosciks an exhausted seventh.

"Belohvosciks’ tactics weren’t that intelligent," Kroon commented in the winner’s press conference afterwards. "In fact they played right into our hands.

"Also,I knew the finish from the World Championships two years ago, which certainly helped."

And, having explained his win to the jubilant Dutch media (there’s nothing like beating the French on Bastille Day), Kroon went off to celebrate -- or maybe cry a bit more -- in private.

 

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