2012 Le Tour – Stage 7

… the Yellow Jersey, except for staying out of crashes while the crazy sprinters go crazy ~ and given the distance of the prologue time trial, the first serious day.

Cadel was isolated on the climb, while Team Sky started the climb with four riders, and Wiggins used the four riders to tear the peleton apart and shake out the General Category (GC) standings. Cadel attacked Wiggins in the turn before the steepest (20%) part of the climb, and was grinding on the steepest part, so Froome who was the last of the pacemakers left for Wiggins was able to make a charge up the steepest part of the climb and take a two second gap for the win and the KOM jersey.

On KOM points: the “Prince of the Hills” for the first week was always going to lose the polka dot jersey on this climb. It is the first Category 1 climb, which gives 10 points for the winner, and the Prince of the Hills only had 9 points. Plus, since it was a mountain top finish, the points are doubled, so Froome at one KOM spot picked up 20 points ~ more than were available for the entire first week of the race.

There was also a shake-up in the White Jersey competition. American Tejay on Cadel Evan’s team BMC finished 3’08” back on the day, while Etsania’s Rein Taaramea on Cofidis finished 0’19” back. Rein put more than a minute into each of his Young Rider jersey competitors today. Tejay is still second in the White Jersey race, and may have a chance to take time back on Monday, the long and reasonably bumpy time trial: he has 2’37” to make up.

The KOM race is wide open at this point, because building up KOM points requires going out on a breakway on a stage like tomorrow, and Froome cannot defend his jersey since he must stay in the peleton and work for Bradley Wiggins. Cadel and Wiggins are second and third and they are leading the race, so they don’t have the freedom to go up the road. Morkov in fourth, the Prince of the Hills, is not likely to be able to handle the big climbs, Nibali is 3rd on GC so he won’t have freedom, and those are the only riders with more than four KOM pts in the bank.

Tomorrow has 1 Cat1 (10pts) before a downhill finish and before that has 4 Cat2 climbs (5pts) and a 3rd (2pts) so if someone gets in an early break in good climbing form, he could amass 22pts before the Cat1 at the finish., and have the polka dots through Wednesday, with the time trial and rest day coming up. Of course, with 20pts, Froome can expect to be leading Wiggins up the Cat1 and so will likely pick up some KOM on the Cat1 near the end just as a side effect of team racing.

A not unlikely scenario are several KOM hopefuls go out on the break tomorrow, split the spoils, Froome stays in polka dots but at the same time the real rivals for the KOM emerge.