Ukraine's Popovych Wins Fifth Stage
MANOSQUE, France -- Ukraine's Yaroslav Popovych, of the Discovery Channel team, won the fifth stage of the Paris-Nice cycling race here on Friday, crossing the line just ahead of the main bunch.
Italy's Davide Rebellin, who rides for Gerolsteiner, retained the leader's jersey however two days before the end of the race in Nice.
Popovych managed to get away from his breakaway companions 14km from the finish and crossed the line about 15 seconds before the peloton.
Spain's Francisco Ventoso succeeded in securing second spot ahead of France's Samuel Dumoulin.
Popovych said afterwards: "My aim was to win the stage and I attacked when I saw others in the breakaway group were tired." Though he won the stage he added it was a close run thing. "At the end I lost quite a bit of time as the peloton was going fast and I had a 160km breakaway in my legs."
The start of the 178km stage, delayed by nearly half an hour after a nearby suicide, started brightly with a breakaway after just nine kilometres.
The initial 13-man breakaway group was whittled down to seven at which point there was a 2min 50sec lead over the main bunch.
It was at that point, 40km from the finish, that Popovych managed to get away on his own and his lead extended to him being in the virtual yellow jersey out on the course.
However the Gerolsteiner, Caisse d'Epargne and Predictor teams gave chase to cut down the lead of the 2001 under-21 world champion.
The 27-year-old Popovych did well in last year's Tour de France to win the stage which finished at southern town Carcassonne, a year after wearing the white jersey of the best youngster into Paris.
In the overall standings, Rebellin has a six-second lead over Spain's Alberto Contador.
Saturday's sixth stage has nine climbs in a 200km route from Brignoles to Cannes.
Source: AFP
posted by Nicholas @ 9:40 PM
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