Team Gerolsteiner led the charge the last kilometre in the penultimate stage of the Tour of California, trying to set up the sprint for Robert Förster, but a collision with Predictor-Lotto's Fred Rodriguez dropped him back to a sixth place finish on the stage. "The preparation in the last kilometres was actually perfect," Förster said, "but I was a little too early in the wind."
Then he made contact with Rodriguez, "whose foot somehow got caught in my front wheel." If that wasn't enough of a handicap, Förster's feet clipped out of the pedals, and he could only watch as CSC's J.J. Haedo fly by to take the win.
"The team worked really well," said team manager Hans-Michael Holczer. "That was a very fast stage in which we were very active at the end."