Cooke went too early (what's too late?)

[Raptor]

Today's stage to Bordeaux: Measuring by Mark-I eyeball, it looks like
Baden Cooke pulled around McGee's leadout at least 300 meters from the
line, could've been more. That gave McEwen (and Zabel) plenty of time
to build up steam and move around him. I suspect Cooke ran down.

Shouldn't Cooke have waited until, say, 100 meters to go? If you've got
a fine leadout guy like McGee (WC pursuiter), why not use him up
completely? At some point you've got to worry about your leadout
nipping you all at the line, but I assume a professional can deal with
that. You could get boxed in, but then look for the guy on your wheel
to come around you, then take the other side (screw the other guy who
might be moving up on the other side).

If McEwen has more power and higher top-end speed, take away his chance
to get there, right?

--
--
Lynn Wallace http://www.xmission.com/~lawall
"I'm not proud. We really haven't done everything we could to protect
our customers. Our products just aren't engineered for security."
--Microsoft VP in charge of Windows OS Development, Brian Valentine.

[Andrew Swan]

Raptor wrote:
> Today's stage to Bordeaux: Measuring by Mark-I eyeball, it looks like
> Baden Cooke pulled around McGee's leadout at least 300 meters from the
> line, could've been more. <snip>

Yep, I called it that way too - no way the green jersey should have been
on the front with that far to go.

I wonder if our Cookey is a good timer of the sprint - he himself hinted
after his early win in this Tour that he was helped by having been boxed
in at the start of the sprint, so he was forced to wait until the
"right" time to go for it (implying he would have gone earlier, to his
detriment, if he could have).

&roo