Kohl goes three for three

By Susan Westemeyer

To mix a few sports metaphors: Gerolsteiner's Bernhard Kohl has gotten a hat trick, or made three strikes, or gone three for three – three stages of Paris-Nice and three crashes.

"I'm slowly beginning to doubt my riding ability," 'Berni' jokingly wrote on his website, bernhardkohl.at. "Not that I could help it, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

After falling into the ditch in stage one and being part of a mass crash in stage two, in stage three he went down on a wet descent. "Every time there were other riders ahead of me who crashed; with the wet, slippery streets giving you no chance to avoid them. Then, you yourself lay in the middle of the rider-and-bike salad."