Often it seems to be the case that the Dauphine needs some relative time to warm up before it gets into full swing. This is an unfair and inaccurate observation. Ah! But when the Dauphine begins, all of us are still just only beginning to come down from our high from following the Giro d’Italia that always goes out with a massive bang in the final week. This year, the Dauphine was actually a week early and the opening stage clashed with the Giro’s final day TT in Milan. Thus Lotto’s Brent Van Moer’s solo-break stage win on the opening day was not as exciting to us as it should have been—I was arduously editing my final stage report of the Giro as I watched. Nor was Bora’s Lukas Postlberger’s similar solo-break stage win the next day for I could not endure another cycling race. In both cases they just barely held off the peloton with Bahrain’s Sonny Colbrelli winning the sprint for second. Luckily, Colbrelli could not be denied on Stage 3, where he took victory. But I barely watched much of that Colbrelli stage until the very finish, too busy was I trying to get my life back in order after a three-week adventure in Italy. I was too busy to even watch any of the Stage 4 Time Trial that was surprisingly won by Alexey Lutsenko (Astana-Premier Tech). It was not until the very last kilometer of Stage 5 that the Dauphine started to suck me in and grab my attention. Until that point I had only been looking to see who was on good form for the looming Tour de France…the top answer was of course: Sonny Colbrelli for any sort of lumpy stage.
Cycling Odysseys 