Australian Cadel Evans came within a whisker of joining a handful of riders on the asphalt of the Tour de France fifth stage with a cheeky bid for a stage victory on Thursday.
Evans, Australia's top hope for the yellow jersey, found himself at the front of the bunch after they had reeled in a four-man breakaway and then tamed a couple of sporadic attacks as they drove for the finish line.
Having made history last year with a fifth place finish overall -- the best ever for an Australian -- the Predictor-Lotto climber is expected to do the damage in the mountain stages.
PHOTO: EPA
But temptation, and the belief he could pull something off, obviously got to the former mountain biker's head.
He decided to join the sprinters and one-day specialists as they raced for the finish line at the end of a 350m long home straight.
It took a brush with disaster to remind Evans that he really should wait for the road to get steeper before going for glory.
PHOTO: EPA
"I looked around with 500m to go and thought to myself that I would have a go," he said. "I was just starting to think about sprinting when [Daniele] Bennati came in front of me and my front skewer [of his wheel] went into his back wheel."
The sound of some of Bennati's spokes breaking, Ben-Hur style, under the pressure of the skewer on Evans' wheel was enough to bring the Aussie back to earth.
"I knew it was time to just make sure I got to the finish line in one piece," said Evans, who finished 11th on the stage to sit 15th overall at 56 seconds behind Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara.
Thursday's stage was the first to feature any real drama, as the CSC team of Stuart O'Grady decided to sit back and allow the teams with stage victory hopes to do some work for a change.
They duly obliged, and in the end Cancellara retained the yellow jersey ahead of yesterday's sixth stage, which could start without either Alexandre Vinokourov or Andreas Kloden, or both, after the Astana pair's respective crashes.
Kloden, a runner-up to Lance Armstrong in 2004 and who finished third last year, was diagnosed with a hairline fracture of his coccyx after crashing 107km into the 182.5km stage and landing in a grassy ditch.
Astana's hopes of seeing their team leader Vinokourov continue the race are also hanging by a thread.
The Kazakh hit the tarmac while racing at over 60kph as the bunch continued their pursuit of the four-man break over the tight, treacherous roads snaking through some otherwise lush vineyard country.
Astana team spokeswoman Corinne Druey said the possibility of Kloden starting would depend on whether he managed to recuperate -- and sleep -- on Thursday night.
"He's been diagnosed with a hairline fracture. It's very painful, and we'll see tomorrow [yesterday] depending on the kind of night he has," she said, admitting the team were as equally anxious about Vinokourov. "It's as serious for him as it is for Andreas."
Italian Filippo Pozzato meanwhile took the stage honors, shortly after Evans had wisely decided to leave the sprinting for the men with no jersey ambitions.
Liquigas rider Pozzato claimed his second career stage win on the race after holding off Spaniard Oscar Freire of Rabobank and Bennati, minus a few spokes.
"To beat Freire is a massive result for me," the Italian said.
"We saw when CSC let the breakaway go for so long with such a lead that they had decided not to defend Cancellara's yellow jersey," he said. "So we spoke with the other teams who wanted to launch a pursuit -- Freire's team and Alejandro Valverde's team [Caisse d'Epargne] -- and we began chasing together."
Cancellara, who almost left the road on a tight bend as he chased Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych of the Discovery Channel team, came close to losing the lead.
But with the Alps up ahead -- and one eye on saving their energy for helping their real yellow jersey contender Carlos Sastre -- they were prepared to risk it.
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