Vatan, France, July 15 (DPA) The 11th stage of the 2009 Tour de France got underway Wednesday in the town of Vatan with riders and their team managers able again to communicate via radio.
The ride over the flat 192km course to Saint-Fargeau is expected to be more rapid than Tuesday’s stage, during which the riders staged a slowdown to protest the experimental ban of the use of the radios during the stage.
Race organizers and the sport’s ruling body the UCI had hoped to inject some drama into the stage, but the majority of the teams were against the idea and apparently ordered their riders to make the stage as undramatic as possible.
Most riders feel that the absence of the radios increases the chances of an accident.
The manager of the French team Francaises des Jeux, Marc Madiot, who fiercely opposes the use of the radios during the Tour, said the riders’ action was “an insult to our sport.”
Another radio ban is scheduled for Friday’s 13th stage.
Wednesday’s stage will very likely end in another mass sprint to the finish line, giving Briton Mark Cavendish a chance for a fourth Tour stage win this year.
But the 24-year-old Team Columbia rider is not making many friends in France, the daily L’Equipe reported Wednesday.
The newspaper quotes a number of French Tour riders, who did not give their names, as saying that Cavendish has repeatedly insulted the French people and the country.
“Cavendish is racist,” one of the riders told L’Equipe. “He is anti-French. He’s going to have to pay attention to what he says. We’re not going to put up with that forever.”
Italian Rinaldo Nocentini continued to hold the race leader’s yellow jersey, with a 6-second lead over Spain’s Alberto Contador and seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong 8 seconds adrift.
The Tour ends July 26 in Paris.