(Spoilers below, with photos as I test out a new service…)
Tour de France Stage 5 start in Rouen, France.
Andre Greipel drops back to the team car for a new helmet during the stage.
JJ Haedo, Andre Greipel and Mark Cavendish fight it out at the spring finish after 196 km of racing on flat terrain.
Garmin-Sharp director Jonathan Vaughters was ambushed by the press before the Stage 5 start after reports surfaced that he testified in the doping investigation against Lance Armstrong along with American cyclists George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, Christian Vande Velde and David Zabriskie. Hincapie, Leipheimer, Vande Velde and Zabriskie are all racing in the 2012 Tour de France. In exchange for their testimony in which the cyclists admitted to doping with Armstrong, the cyclists will receive six month bans from competition beginning in September, according to unconfirmed reports from the Dutch De Telegraaf newspaper. Vaughters denied the suspensions; USADA refuses the confirm the reports either way. The racers named in the reports sidestep questions about the USADA probe. Armstrong strenuously denies he has ever doped.
All photos from European Press Photo Agency / EPA by Nicolas Bouvy and Yorick Jansen and used with permission.