Issoire to Saint-Flour 130 miles
Le. Tour. De. France.
Well first of all Saint Flour is not for baking. Yes I need more sleep, coffee or both.
Teams were pretty cautious the first day in the Medium Mountains (only one more to go after today) but given Friday’s crash fest that’s not so surprising. However time is running out for the ‘punchers’, the not quite climbers, not quite sprinters like Hushovd and Gilbert to make their mark otherwise you’ll have to start rooting on the Schleck brothers and Evans if you’re not a Contador fan.
He’ll be starting his same old 1:42 back from Hushovd who expressed his surprise at being able to hold on as long as he has to the maillot jaune. It’s a measure of how the field has thinned though that Contador has moved from 82nd to 20th in rank with no change at all in that margin. On the other hand nobody has been able to put a move on him since Stage 3.
This Stage has 2 category 4 bumps at the end and 3 category 3s and 2s so there are a fair number of ‘King of the Mountain’ climber points available. The sprint checkpoint is only 19 miles from the end so your guess is as good as mine if the Green Jersey competitors will have caught up by then or been left in the dust.
Whatever happens it will surely be more enlightening than the Sunday Stupid Factory.
Tomorrow is a Rest Day but Vs. will be filling all the regular time slots (8 am, 11:30 am, 3 pm, and 8 pm) with a summary of the action so far. I’ll be covering today’s results.
Today’s coverage starts at 8 am.
- Jada Yuan Previews the Hell Out of the Tour de France in the New Yorker, 7/1/11 at 2:00 PM
- Le Tour 2011 official site
- Your The Stars Hollow Gazette Le Tour coverage tags-
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Phil- Gilbert
Bob- Vande Velde
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Contador dumped it and is chasing back alone!
Total Team Saxo Bank breakdown.
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4 withdrawals.
Exciting day already.
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2:40 in front.
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Peloton being ‘sportsmanlike’.
Even though he didn’t win this stage, Frenchman Thomas Voeckler won the yellow jersey.
Green Jersey (speed)- Philippe Gilbert
Polka Dot Jersey (mountain)- Johnny Hoogerland
White Jersey (young)- Robert Gensink
Yellow and White (team)- Europcar
1.Luis-Leon Sanchez, Rabobank
2.Thomas Voeckler, Team Europcar, at 0:05
3.Sandy Casar, Fdj, at 0:13
4.Philippe Gilbert, Omega Pharma-Lotto, at 3:59
5.Peter Velits, HTC-Highroad, at 3:59
1.Thomas Voeckler, Team Europcar
2.Luis-leon Sanchez, Rabobank Cycling Team, at 1:46
3.Cadel Evans, BMC Racing Team, at 2:26
4.Frank Schleck, Team Leopard-Trek, at 2:29
5.Andy Schleck, Team Leopard-Trek, at 2:37
… very bad day.
When the front of the peleton crashes overcooking a corner going 50mph+ downhill, that defines “a mess”. The yellow and green jersey wearers made the decision to neutralize the race until those involved still riding rejoined the peleton ~ despite the fact that it assured the yellow jersey wearer that he would surrender the maillot jeune, though the fact that he had not expected to still be wearing it today may have made the decision easier.
In the race for the Yellow, Voeckler is not considered to be a serious GC threat, so it serves the interests of the main GC contenders for him to be in yellow into the Pyrenees. The three fancied race winners all finished same time, but several podium threats crashed out, while Lulu Sanchez vaulted into second place, so he will have to be taken seriously as long as he holds the time.
In the race for Green, Phillipe Gilbert gained “best of the rest” sprint points at the only part of today’s stage close enough to flat to put a sprint point, and “best of the rest” points at the finish, to add 30 points to his Green Jersey talley ~ one more than the difference between winning a flat stage and finishing 8th. Cadel Evans finished “third best of the rest” to add 15 points to his 5th place in the Green Jersey, and Thor Hushovd picked up 7 points at the intermediate sprint just being near the front of the peleton as his team was still driving in an ultimately futile effort to hold the yellow. Thor goes into the rest day without having to worry about defending yellow, so can start thinking about staging an attack to move up in the Green Jersey competition.
On Tuesday, the spring point is early, but its right after a descent, so Cavendish and Farrar might not be contesting it. If not, JJ Rojas might be compelled to fight Gilbert for the points. Its a bumpy course, but not as high as today’s, with two Cat 3’s and two Cat 4’s and the race finishing 1,330ft in elevation lower than it starts the day as the Tour of the Massif Centrale finishes and they get ready to race across the plains on Wednesday toward the Pyranees on Thursday. JJ Rojas and Gilbert might be contesting the race finish as well, with Cav and Tyler looking ahead to the flat stage on Wednesday.
In the last flat stage we saw a 4 man break, with 3 French cyclists and 1 Spaniard, two of the French on the same French team ~ in other words, “do I really have to try to get into a break today?”. Today we say a five man break with a touted star of the future in his first tour riding alongside four previous TdF breakaway stage winners, so clearly the stage hunters had correctly pegged this on as a stage where the break could win. Nobody, however, could have predicted the crashes that shattered the field today ~ nor the idiocy of a network car driving alongside the break on a narrow road and taking out two members of the break while swerving to avoid a tree. Dude, you going to be driving there, you gotta have your foot hovering over your brake!
Well, we can expect that driver is going to be in Paris tomorrow rather than continuing to follow the tour around.