PINK is the colour in this year's Tour, but not the pink everyone expected. The Deutsche Telekom team - colours light pink dots on a white background and the capital T logo of sponsor - have proved this year's dark horses, while the Spanish ONCE team - colours fluorescent pink with the logo of a blind man with a stick - have failed to live up to their billing as potential Indurain beaters.
Yesterday summed up Telekom's completely unexpected strength and ONCE's equally unexpected collapse. The German team - who last year were not considered good enough to field a full team in the race scored their second successive stage win, and their third of the race so far, when Erik Zabel won the sprint from a 40-strong group, while one of ONCE's mainstays, Laurent Jalabert of France, finally threw in the towel.
Jalabert's withdrawal was more than likely once he began suffering from gastroenteritis after Sunday's mountain time trial and was probably merely postponed when Monday's Alpine stage was cut due to snowstorms. "There is no room for sick men on the Tour," he said glumly after climbing into his team car with just 66 kilometres covered from yesterday's start in Turin.
Last year when the race went into its rest day, his ONCE team had three riders in the first 10, and led the Tour's team classification. As the race takes its repos in the Alpine foothills today, the strongest team are the other men in pink: Telekom, who have Riis in yellow, and the 22-year old prodigy ban Ullrich in fifth.
In addition, Zabel is wearing green, after a stage-long battle yesterday with the first-stage winner Frederic Moncassin which went decisively the German's way on the final, stiff climb of the Col de la Sentinelle. Here Moncassin was left for dead by the lead group, who were in hot pursuit of a lone breakaway, Rolf Sorensen of Denmark.
Sorensen's desperate flight began on a wide, windswept Route Nationale, took him through the crowds of Danish and Dutch tourists on the Sentinelle and down the heartstoppingly fast descent into Gap. His hopes lasted until a heart-breaking 350 metres to the line, where he was swept up as Riis made the pace for his team's sprinter - a display of selflessness rarely seen in a rider wearing the maillot jaune.
Then it was down to Zabel to hold off the familiar squat, weaving, figure of Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, who looks to have come to form too late to equal Sean Kelly's record of four victories in the points jersey.
On a day when, finally, the sun shone, and the peloton faced danger from melted tarmac on the roads rather than snow, wind or thunderstorms, there was further confirmation of the strength of Riis' team. Over the Montgenevre Ullrich escaped with two dangermen, Richard Virenque of France, and Piotr Ugroumov of Russia.
As Riis' team mate he was under no obligation to contribute to the breakaway, and simply sat there as the other two made the pace. Eventually Virenque and Ugroumov's team managers decided there was no point in merely playing the German team's game and putting Ullrich in the yellow jersey, and drove up alongside to order their men to slacken off. This tactical triumph, coupled with two stage wins in two days, will have left the peloton with few doubts about which team is truly in the pink - not to mention yellow and green.
