By Susan Westemeyer
Teams Milram and T-Mobile were not very happy after Tuesday's Paris-Nice stage two. Both had their captains in the leading group which came in two seconds behind winner and new leader Franco Pellizotti, but both wished to have performed better.
When the peloton split with two kilometres left, Milram captain Igor Astarloa was in a good position. "When we got to the last 300 meters, I was in the leading group," he said on the team's website, team-milram.de. "But on the final run-in to the finish line, we had a headwind and I didn't have good legs." The Spaniard finished 13th on the stage and is also 13th overall.
T-Mobile's Patrik Sinkewitz was also in the leading group at the finish. He finished 22d on the day, and is now 19th overall, 19 seconds down. But that was the only good news of the day for the German team.
"It was just not our day," said Director Sportif Brian Holm on t-mobile-team.com. "When 17 riders escaped in the beginning, we didn't have a rider among them. Together with Rabobank and CSC we led the chase in the earliest parts of the race. Maybe our rider used up too much strength to be able to do something in the difficult finish."
