The weather was the biggest problem yesterday for much of the peloton. "If it wasn't difficult enough as it was, the rain had come to complicate things even more," noted T-Mobile's Daniele Nardello on danielenardello.it. His teammate Bernhard Kohl was worried that his group would not make it in within the time limit, but figured "they wouldn't disqualify a group of fifty riders. And we were able to make it in OK." On bernhardkol.at, he also noted that "the whole team is proud to be the only team that still has all nine riders in the race. You have to have some luck to accomplish that, we only need to think about Klier's and Aldag's crashes."
The bad weather was the least of the problems for Gerolsteiner's Thomas Ziegler, who called it "a hellish day" on German radsportnews.com. It all began the night before, when he developed stomach problems. "I had to throw up, felt bad all night. This morning still a funny feeling in my stomach, I was tired and weak. I could have fallen asleep at the start. Nausea all day. I think, this is the result of the strain the last few days... Maybe I ate something bad or it's a combination of both. After two weeks of hard racing, the body is susceptible to anything."
