He finished just 27th on today’s Mont Faron stage of the Tour of the Mediterranean, conceding one minute 17 seconds to the stage winner Jean Christophe Peraud (Ag2r La Mondiale) and losing the race lead to Maxime Monfort (RadioShack Leopard). However Wednesday’s time trial victor Lars Boom lurks just one second behind the yellow jersey, and is a long way from accepting that the race is over.
Tomorrow’s stage includes a first and a second category climb, but with the latter coming over 40 kilometres from the finish and with a strong team behind him, Boom is determined to throw everything he can at the new race leader and try to get the time back.
His directeur sportif Nico Verhoeven is encouraging his riders to do their utmost in the final stage, a 192 kilometre race from Bandol to Grasse.
“We would have loved to keep the race lead, but we cannot lose the jersey tomorrow,” he said. “The race leader Maxime Montfort (RadioShack Leopard) will be more nervous. We'll do some more aggressive racing tomorrow. It is definitely a hard stage with 200 kilometers to Grasse.
“It won't be easy but anything is possible. Twenty kilometers from Grasse there will be some climbing, although it is not marked as a climb in the road book. Several teams will try it at that point.”
He intends that Blanco will be one of those teams launching attacks on the race leader. Verhoeven insists that the RadioShack Leopard team have more to worry about that Boom alone.
“We have a good position with Lars in second place, Bauke [Mollema] in seventh and Laurens [ten Dam] fifteenth in the general classification.”
The latter two are 34 seconds and one minute twenty off yellow. While they’d prefer to be much closer, they are still a danger if a group does get clear and RadioShack Leopard miss out.
What seems clear is that the final stage could be far from the assured sprint finish that many similar stage races conclude with.