Riverside boy makes good

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Bob Stapleton, proud graduate of Riverside Rubidoux High and owner of Team Columbia, was feeling pretty good today. One of his riders, Kim Kirchen, had just taken over the Tour de France yellow jersey. A day earlier, another rider, Mark Cavendish, had won a mass sprint final to take Stage 5.

‘We’re pretty proud,’ Stapleton said after he made sure his team was showered, fed and ready for bed. ‘Right now we’ve got the yellow jersey for Kim, we have the best young rider jersey, we’ve had a stage win. We’ve been super aggressive all week really. And we’ve had a little luck.’

The luck came when Stefan Schumacher of Gerolstiner, who was wearing the yellow jersey, hit wheels with Kirchen. Schumacher went down and stayed down just long enough to ensure Kirchen, a 30-year-old from Luxembourg, would be able to own the yellow.

When Stapleton took over what had been the disgraced T-Mobile team last year, Kirchen was a disgruntled and unmotivated rider who felt lost in the German-heavy roster where he’d been a restless support rider for doping-tainted Jan Ullrich.

After Stapleton cleaned out the roster and moved the team base to San Luis Obispo, Kirchen bought into Stapleton’s plan to field a doping-free team of mostly young riders. Kirchen is now in position to be a true general classification challenger. And Stapleton says the team must decide whether it wants to defend the yellow jersey early in the three-week race or let it go for a time.

‘We’re going to talk Friday morning after we’re recovered and enjoying the moment,’ Stapleton said. ‘We haven’t decided on tactics yet. Do we try to defend the yellow or, in an intelligent way, let it go for awhile. We might do that, or else there’s a good chance we would exhaust ourselves in the defense.’

Kirchen took the yellow on the first stage this season that finished on a mountain -- the rugged Super-Besse in the Massif Central. Friday’s stage from Brioude to Aurillac will be racing torture because there are five rated climbs and virtually no stretches of flat roads.

-- Diane Pucin