I don't think radios had anything to do with it. If I was coming into the line with Gilbert, a guy who's making a career out of forcing or getting into a winning selection in the last 50k, and then winning the smaller sprint (Exhibits A, B and C) you better believe I'm going to try and force him to lead out, unless my DS is saying something like "his stem is loose and he won't be able to sprint." The only way I'd pull through inside a kilo is if I were racing for second. Of course, the radio does make a nice excuse for the reporters, in case I'm worried about looking like a jerk after I make us both lose.

Anyway, to think that a DS has any pull at all over a rider inside the final Kilo is a fairly poor assumption. Erik Zabel generally takes his radio out during the final run to the line (he forgot to at the 2004 San Remo), and in the 2003 Tour, when Jakob Piil won a 2-up sprint with Fabio Sacchi, team manager Bjarne Riis' instructions were just "stay calm and it will be no problem." So don't imply that radios make the riders into brainless automaton, forever at the whims of their earpieces; Euro pros might not be especially well educated, but to get to the top level in such a tactical sport as cycling requires some amount of race smarts and savvy.

At any rate, a two-man sprint is one of the most tactically challenging situations in bike racing (which is why match sprints on the track are so popular), and they generally play out at lower speeds. Thus, two-man breaks almost never win by less than a few minutes - any hesitation and a close field will catch them. Look at Chavanel/Horner at Stage 10 of this year's TdF, or O'Grady/Geslin on Stage 6 in 2003. Last year's Paris Tours winner, Erik Dekker, dispatched his companion over a k before the line, probably knowing that a sprint between the two of them would have only let the field catch up.