The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 58

8 SPORT 6 July 1997 The Observer RAGING FaltoE Hows it ob Bosim Graham Rock If Fallon had been expecting an instant response off a modest early pace, he was both optimistic and disappointed. In a truly-run race she might have been able to catch tiie leader, but by the time she had found her stride Pilsudski had swept past Benny The Dip, establishing a lead of two and a half lengths. Sasuru and Allied Forces were left for dead in the charge for the line. Pilsudski -is as tough as tungsten and he did not flinch from the challenge. Switched to the outside, Bosra Sham began to claw back the leader while Benny The TDip galloped on.

Pilsudski maintained his advantage and Bosra Sham managed to nose ahead of Benny The -Dip 100 yards out, but she conceded second place to the Derby winner appiraching the line, the pair separated by a nostril, but a length and a quarter behind the most experienced horse and jockey in the race. Beaten by Predappio in the Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot, Pilsudski takes the work of a galley slave to reach peak fitness, and trainer Michael Stoute hinted after his horse's success that PflsudM had been fully wound up yesterday for the first time this season. His tactical plan had worked to perfection. The race panned out the way we expected it to Stoute said. We thought we'd get going early, because she'd come after us.

We were in the right place to strike. Michael (Kinane) told me after the Ascot race that he'd have a big chance here, and the horse put up a very good While many thought that Kinane had come too soon on Pilsudski at Ascot, allowing Predappio to regain the lead in the closing stages, it now seems likely at Sandown TO ERR is" human, to orgive is divine, and Kieren Fallon will be praying that Henry Cecil is prepared to forget his ride on Bosra Sham in the Coral-Eclipse, when the best filly in the world could finish only third to Pilsudski and Benny The Dip. The race evolved as the crystal halls had predicted, Benny The Dip setting a modest canter until the straight with Pilsudski at his quarters on his outside, Bosra Sham tucked in behind the leader with Sasuru fourth and Allied Forces close up. Not until the field had levelled up in Results, page 10 the straight did Willie "Ryan quicken the pace on the leader, and the 1997 Eclipse became a sprint over the final three furlongs. The rail on the home bend takes the field wide into the straight, and as Benny The Dip swung out and then began to ease his way back towards the fence, Fallon asked Bosra Sham to quicken and go for a narrow gap on the inside.

Hindsight is perfect, but when Fallon ever watches a replay, he will recognise the manouevre that forfeited a possible victory. If Bosra Sham had been able to quicken like a quarter horse all might have been well, but this big filly takes time to wind up and with Benny The Dip giving no ground, she was forced to check and pull wide. Eclipsing the favourite: Michael Kinane drives Pilsudski out as the pair storm to a shock victory in the big race at Sandown. Photograph by Julian HerbertAllsport King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot he raced too freely ahd saw too much daylight but here Alex Greaves brought him late inside the final furlong and he won cheekily. A race at Chester on Saturday will be followed by the King George Stakes at Goodwood and then the Nunthorpe Stakes at York.

The five-furlorig championship is wide open and Ya Malak, who goes well for Britain's leading female jockey, has reserved his best efforts for his fifth season; it would surprise no-one if this rejuvenated sprinter won a Group race before the end of the year. Pilsudski, Helissio and Singspiel, was deferred. Like jaded humans, horses sometimes benefit from a chance of scenery and Ya Malak has been transformed by a move to David Nicholls' stable near Thirsk in Yorkshire. A "useful sprinter when trained by Pip Payne and Ian Balding, he was bought by Nicholls for 23,000 guineas and won his third' subsequent race when beating Smuggler in the Listed Sandown Park Sprint Stakes far more easily than the official distance of a neck might suggest. Ya Malak needs a strong pace and a challenge 'all but too late to win.

In the MOTORCYCLING but his future was in his own hands on the sweeping turn for home, and he rejected the option to ease out and allow Bosra Sham the space she needs to quicken. Benny The Dip put up the best performance of his career. He stayed on well in the closing stages, but in a race as false as this, it would be folly to suppose he would be better suited by a mile and a half. He now heads for the Juddmonte International at York next month. Cecil will be none the wiser whether Bosra Sham will stay beyond 10 furlongs, and a decision on her participation in the King George later this month, against aims to fill the vacuum letour tOJT EMS mm FRANCES TOUR DE FRANCE Indurain's absence creates Confident Boohan J) track for fourth title 9L Jmm that the Breeders' Cup Turf winner was a little short of the hard fitness which he needs to run to his peak at the highest level.

The King George and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes beckons, when he is expected to renew rivalry with Helissio, who slammed him in the Arc and beat him decisively again in the Prix Ganay three months ago. Bosra Sham, gambled on from 4-6 to 4-7 was the subject of a dozen hefty bets totalling 300,000. Only two fillies had previously wonthe Eclipse, Pebbles and Kooyonga, and she failed to join them. Fallon blamed the funereal early pace, crisis of succession but Riis when Rolf Albag was headbutted at the Dauphine stage race by Chris Board-man's team-mate, the sprinter Fred Moncassin, after a 40 mile-an-hour confrontation in a finish sprint. His broken nose is as nothing compared to the problems the men who hope to take on Riis have had to contend with.

Switzerland's Alex Zulle, runner-up to Indurain in 1995 and a winner of last year's Tour of Spain, crashed in the Dauphine, then broke his collar bone in five places in the Tour of Switzerland. Such a fracture usually takes six weeks to heal, but Zulle rode yesterday's prologue time trial after just 13 days' recuperation, which included climbing Pyre-nean passes. He is not expected to last the distance; one of the dozen titanium pins holding the bone in place popped out this week in training. HOWM mm? 3 on granted, particularly after surviving a scare when he lost control on a lefthander as he tried to pass a slower rider during Friday's final qualifying lap. He careered off the track, sped down a grass verge for several seconds and appeared to be heading straight for a perimeter wall before he hauled the bike to the left and back on to the tarmac.

He completed the lap, constantly looking over his shoulder and shaking his head. But he remains reasonably happy with the way things are going. 'In general the bike doesn't seem too he says. Doohan proved it emphatically yesterday when, having been second on the provisional grid overnight, he clocked lmin 48.997sec to overtake his fellow Honda rider Carlos Checa of Spain, who lapped at lmin 49.374sec, with Australia's Anthony Gobert on a Suzuki third with lmin 50.096sec Italy's Max Biaggi also reminded the riders of the vagaries of motor cycling when he crashed during yesterday's practice for the 250cc event. Biaggi's Honda caught the back wheel of compatriot Luca Boscoscuro's machine as he attempted to overtake on a right-hand curve during the morning's free practice.

Biaggi fell off and slid about 30 metres across the track into a sand verge. He immediately remounted, the bike, completed the lap and' rode into the pits unhurt. Biaggi, chasing a fourth world title himself, had to settle for second place on the grid behind the Frenchman Olivier Jacque, who set a new lap record yesterday of lmin 51.582sec on his Honda. Ralf Waldmann, the championship leader from Germany, who had been quickest on Friday, will start in third place with lmin 52.426sec, behind the lmin 51.758sec of Biaggi, who. hopes to bounce back from the disappointment of Assen where he was disqualified for ignoring a stop-and-go penalty.

In the 125cc event, local hero Valentino Rossi also set a lap record of lmin 58.886sec on his Aprila to start ahead of Japan's Tomomi Manako and Garry McCoy of Australia. Stage Date (juty) France Km I 5 I 7J 1 6 9i 2 7 262 8 224 4 9 223 5 10 361.5 6 II 215.5 7 12 194 13 161.5 9 14 182 10 15 252.5 11 16 192 I2 I8 55 13 19 204 14 20 148 15 21 1 208.5 Switzerland 16 1 22 1 liT 17 1 23 1 218.5 France 18 I 24 175.5 19 25 172 20 26 63 21 1 27 149.5 4 WMh I Gideon Long at Imola MICHAEL DOOHAN will, in every sense, be staring down a clear road between himself and his fourth successive 500cc world championship when he manoeuvres his Honda into pole position at the start of today's San Marino Grand Prix. For the first time this season the Australian has not had his team-mate and one-time contender Alex Crivhle breathing down his neckhere in northern Italy, and the Spaniard will not be in the saddle again until at least September after sustaining severe hand injuries, including a severed artery, during practice for last weekend's Dutch round at Assen. Criville is recovering well but may need another skin graft on his left thumb. He is in hospital in Barcelona where he had surgery on Wednesday to see if initial grafts carried out in Holland were successful.

'Doctors at the clinic report the nerves and tendons are responding said a Honda team spokesman, 'and they are certain full mobility of the wrist would be restored. However, the lack of movement in his thumb is causing a little concern and it will require a further skin By the time Criville returns, 68 points clear and a further 90 ahead of the third-placed Nobuatsu Aoki of Japan, will almost certainly have sealed his fourth title. Not only will Doohan appreciate Criville's absence, he will be racing on a circuit he enjoys. He won here last year and gave a vote of confidence to the 4.89km layout, which was radically redesigned following the deaths of Formula One drivers Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger in 1994. Even the weather seems to be on Doohan's side.

He triumphed in torrential rain last year, but today's forecast is looking good. However Doohan, who has won six of this year's seven championship events, will be taking nothing for Riis pedals claim to be next boss of the bunch Wheel turns full circle a IN SPITE of its occasional visits to all-too-modern theme parks such as Disney, the Tour de France never strays too far from its past. This year's depart, based in and around Rouen, is intended to give the race and its caravan a chance to pay tributes to the memory of the town's greatest cycling son, Jacques Anquetil, the first ran to win the event five times, on the fortieth anniversary of his first Tour win. Yesterday flowers were laid at Maitre Jacques's grave in the village cemetary at Quincampoix, two kilometres from Rouen, by the other five-time winners: Miquel Indurain, Eddie Merckx and Bernard Hinault. Quincampoix is also the place chosen for the first hot-spot sprint of the race during today's opening road stage, while part of the Seineside was renamed Quai Anquetil on Wednesday.

However, all this Anquetilism is a timely reminder that this is the first Tour since 1985 without the man widely regarded as his successor, Indurain, the consecutive winner between 1991 and 1995, whose racing style was identical to that of 'The Norman'. Both men based their success on supremacy in the solo time-trial stages, using the mountain stages to defend or reinforce what had been gamed alone against the watch. Appropriately, the first Tour of the post-lndurain era has seen the race undergo a complete change of image. Everything to do with it bears a new logo with a bright yellow sun, which has replaced the, miniature cyclist which had been the emblem of the Tour since the mid-Eighties. The logo also represents the spokes of the wheel, and, as the French would say, the wheel has turned.

The influence cyclists such as AnquetiL Merckx, Hinault and, most recently, Indurain bring to bear on the Tour cannot be underestimated. Even in defeat, they are natural reference points. Indurain was the gauge by which you judged the temperature of the said the world Nol, Laurent Jalabert of France. Tor anyone who wanted to win, the aim was simply to stay with him as long as Thus it is that, outside his native Denmark, the 1996 race is remembered less as a victory for Bjarne Riis, and more as the year that mdurain was deposed. The disappearance of such a central figure results in what, in cycling terms, amounts to a crisis of succession.

Hinault and Merckx were dominant 'bosses' of the bunch, making sure whatever the lesser lights got up to, it fitted in with their plans. For all that he lacked their strength of personality, from 1993 to 1995 Indurain and his Banesto team dictated the pattern of the racing. It was expected and accepted that some kind of order would be maintained until he made his move after a week or 10 days. The question in most minds today as Le Tour 1997 Three weeks to go until SPAIN Loudenvielle Vallee du Louron Graphic News the race rolls out of Rouen is a simple one: are any cyclists or team capable of filling the void left by Indurain and Banesto? Yesterday's prologue time trial was too brief a test to provide any clear answers, and the next indication of form will come in the Pyrenees, reached in eight days' time. It is only then that an answer is likely to emerge, so the power vacuum while the race sweeps west from Normandy through Brittany, south through the Vendee and Aquitaine could produce freak results.

This occurred in 1990 and 1992, when lesser fights were permitted to gain a sizeable advantage early on because no team was willing to accept the responsibility for chasing them down. In 1990 the favourites had to play catch-up for three weeks and one of the unknowns, Italy's Claudio Chiappucci, came close to winning, eventually finishing second. Jalabert says: 'Someone has to replace Indurain and on what they've shown last year and this season, Riis and his team are the best This is indeed the case. Last year the previously second-rate Germans of Telekom, whose results had not been considered good enough for them to field a full team in 1995, not only won overall through Riis, but had young Jan Ullrich in second place, took the green jersey for best sprinter with Erik Zabel and won five stages. This year's results have confirmed the impression made in 1996.

Riis was a spectacular winner of the final single-day World Cup race of the spring, Zabel has been a regular stage-winner in lesser events, and won the year's opening World Cup race, while Ullrich cruised to victory in the German championship last weekend. Rhs's run-in to the Tour has gone to plan, whereas last year he suffered various minor illnesses in the spring. 'Why shouldn't 1 be he said. 'I won last year and I feel even better than that Indeed, the closest Telekom have come to a glitch in their build-up was iKHIWn ip-A" Si KdmM Total distance: SOURCE: Sotiete du Tour de France The man all Spain expects to be the next Indurain, the Basque Abraham Olano, also crashed in the Dauphine. He then went to look over the Alpine stages instead of allowing his cuts and bruises to heal and, consequently, is still stiff.

The mountainous middle third of the race is ideally suited to the bald-headed, goatee-bearded Italian imp Marco Pantani, but he is uncertain about the extent of his recovery after his highspeed collision with a car which put him for all of last year. Close encounters with the Tarmac have not been the only problem. Richard Virenque, third in 1996 and the king of the mountains for the last three years, has not been himself since a wisdom tooth operation in late May, while Chris Boardman starts uncertain of his ability to ride consistently for the full three weeks after suffering a stomach virus. The pedalling wounded will be looking to ride themselves in during the first week, but this may, be harder than it sounds. The first eight days are followed by an unusually tough eight consecutive days in the mountains, and this will weigh heavily on the minds of the flat-earth men.

They will have to take what they can in the opening phase because when the race leaves the Alps in two weeks they may no longer be in it. This may well make the opening week even faster and more dangerous than usual, a situation in which the peloton will look to the teams of contenders for the overall classification to prevent repetitions of the Chiappucci escapade. But if several potential favourites are under par, their teams will be unwilling to commit themselves to efforts which may prove fruitless in the long term. Riis has said that he would like there to be a 'Riis Victory this year would make him Indurain's successor as king of the peloton, but he and his Telekom team may have to begin working for it sooner than they expect. Leader of the pack: Doohan in pole position for today's San Marino Grand Prix Riis: 'I feel even better than last year1.