Dominoes

At the rate that people are dropping out of this race, Levi might be racing by himself (maybe Chris Horner too) by the end of the race. I mean look at this list of people who either did not start or DNF yesterday:

Riders who did not start stage 4:
Fabian Wegmann (Gerolsteiner)
Johannes Frohlinger (Gerolsteiner)
Heinrich Haussler (Gerolsteiner)

Riders who abandoned during stage 4:
Dmytro Grabovsky (Quick Step-Innergetic)
Patrice Halgand (Credit Agricole)
Jonathan Hivert (Gerolsteiner)
Mathias Frank (Gerolsteiner)
Peter Wrolich (Gerolsteiner)
Julien Belgy (Bouyges Telecom)
Tom Danielson (Slipstream-Chipotle)
Jackson Stewart (BMC)
Jonathan Sundt (Kelly Benefit Strategies-Medifast)
Matt Crane (Health Net-Maxxis)
Ivan Dominguez (Toyota-United)
Burke Swindlehurst (Bissell)

You have to feel for Jackson Stewart. Taking the max on all the KOM to get the jersey back and then dropping out due to hypothermia.

Hypothermia? At the Tour of California? Absolutely ridiculous. And who would have predicted that Gerolsteiner would have a smaller team than Rock Racing by the end of the race.

Add the virus going around to the miserable weather and it’s amazing more riders haven’t dropped out. The start list for stage 6 should be interesting since it still has a good amount of climbing in it.