Tour de France
Peloton spins out jokes, family feuds

By Jamey Keaten
The Associated Press

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LIMOGES, France — A final leg rubdown with stinging sports cream. A few scribbles into autograph books of adoring fans. Pockets stuffed with energy bars or fruit.

And away the Tour de France riders go.

Seen from the back of a motorcycle, the multicolored mass of riders resembles a swarm of bees. But inside, there's more bickering, humor and mind games than first meets the eye.

The 101-year-old Tour, which had the day off yesterday before today's ninth stage, is more than just cutthroat competition between jostling, nervous riders. It's a makeshift family caravan on spoked wheels.

Conversations in the peloton can revolve around the race, a wretched dinner or women.

Australian Michael Rogers said riders were flashed by three girls on Stage 1.

"For everybody in the peloton, there was this big roar," he said. More often, though, riding 2,000 miles over three weeks means bouts of boredom — especially in the flat wheat fields of northern France.

Frenchman Christophe Moreau, leader of the Credit Agricole team, says he uses a two-way radio to check on teammates, using nicknames like "Ma Poulette" (my little chick).

Almost like angry brothers, some riders bear grudges. Filippo Simeoni, an Italian with Domina Vacanze, said he has gotten a cold shoulder from defending champion Lance Armstrong. Simeoni was a witness in a trial of Michele Ferrari, a former sports doctor facing allegations of providing performance enhancers to riders. Armstrong, who insists he is drug-free, has long defended his ties to the Italian doctor.
 
"In the morning I look for him, I ride up to him, but he is cold, detached. He acts as if I don't exist," Simeoni told the French sports daily L'Equipe.

The peloton was more relaxed in the early 1990s, said Viacheslav Ekimov, a 38-year-old Russian on Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team.

"People would stop at pay phones to call their parents in the middle of the race," said Ekimov.

Clowning around was more common even further back, recalled Jacques Augendre, a former French journalist known as "the memory of the Tour."

Pierre Brambilla, a rider in the 1940s and early '50s, once left the pack and paid an innkeeper to fill his water bottle with sugar-sweetened red wine, Augendre said.

In a stage in the '70s, Augendre said, Dutch rider Gerben Karsten jumped off his bike and onto the shoulders of another rider.

"He got fined for it."

Two riders banned

LIMOGES, France — Two cyclists being investigated in doping cases going back to 2001 were ejected from the Tour.

Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc said Stefano Casagranda of the Saeco team and Martin Hvastija of Alessio would not start today's ninth stage.

"We do not want the serenity of the competition disrupted by their presence," Leblanc said.

Hvastija was 124th in the overall standings, Casagranda 155th.

"I don't understand such a cruel decision," said Hvastija, who suggested they were singled out because they are not top contenders.

Notes

• Tour organizers have contacted judicial officials in San Remo, Italy, about an article in the French newspaper Le Monde that said one of Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service teammates — Czech Pavel Padrnos — has been summoned to appear before an Italian tribunal for allegedly taking doping substances during the 2001 Tour of Italy. Johan Bruyneel, the Postal team director, dismissed the report last week.

• Overall leader Thomas Voeckler was among 42 riders given blood tests on the rest day. No anomalies that might hint at doping were found.