BEFORE the finish yesterday the public-relations people from the race's leader Mario Cipollini's Saico-Cannondale team distributed neck scarves printed with a cartoon that portrayed the Italian as the Sun God. Such prescience: a short while later the man hitherto known as the Lion King scored his second stage win in two days, crossing the line in a blaze of yellow.
On Sunday Cipollini was fined for wearing a pair of shorts in a stars- and-stripes design to match his new bicycle. The shorts company happily payed up - as they did last year - in return for the publicity. Yesterday he was fined again, for wearing yellow shorts to go with the yellow jersey, which he won when he took Sunday's stage.
The sprint finish yesterday was, however, a truly magisterial elbow-to- elbow confrontation with last year's green-jersey winner, Erik Zabel, which went all the way to the end of the mile-long finishing straight in Avenue Foch. Cipollini made light of the fact that he was without both of the men whose task it is to drag him to within sight of the line; Paolo Fornaciari was left sitting on the verge stunned and covered in grazes a few kilometres out and his other pilot, Gian-Matteo Fagnini, was unable to keep up when his leader nipped through a gap in the final kilometre.
Cipollini expects to leave the race when the mountains start at Pau in seven days' time unless his team allow him to take a holiday in September instead. For the men with their sights on the finish in Paris, that time should be spent staying upright and saving energy, which is why it was curious to see Alex Zulle go on the offensive in the final hour.
Zulle's team manager spent most of Sunday evening persuading him to stay in the race after he was involved in that afternoon's mass pile-up, falling on the collar-bone he broke a fortnight ago in the Tour of Switzerland. If Zulle's move was an attempt to test his form he was probably pleased merely to cause a little consternation in the bunch.
Until Cipollini's final fling, the race's longest stage was taken at a sensible pace, with most of the field focused on avoiding a repetition of Sunday's mayhem. The only man with more aggressive ideas was yesterday's regional rider, Thierry Gouvenou, who treated himself to a 50-mile lone ride in front of his supporters through the bucolic idyll of the Calvados region.
Golden cornfields swooshed gently in the sun, sturdy cows munched the cud in the cider orchards in front of half-timbered farms and perfectly formed chateaux nestling among hazel hedges. Gouvenour was cheered to the blue skies by the largest crowd of the race so far but he and they knew that it was merely a side-show. Which is true of most cyclists when Cipollini is on form.
