Le Tour 2014: Stage 14, Grenoble / Risoul

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Bad day for Sky.  As of today Le Tour is 2/3rds done and yesterday was not a good one for their emergency team leader, Riche Porte, who started fading with 25 km to go ending up 11 minutes behind stage winner and maillot jaune Vincenzo Nibali.  After Le Tour Dave Brailsford, the General Manager, may be looking for other employment as the decision to drop Bradley Wiggins looms large.  James Murdoch will, of course, never be replaced- nepotism.

What?!  You didn’t know Team Sky was part of Rupert’s media empire (a minor one to be sure)?  I find it hard to feel too badly for them.

Stage results- Vincenzo Nibali, Rafal Majka (:10), Leopold Konig (:11), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte (:50), Thibaut Pinot (:53), Tejay Van Garderen and Romain Bardet tied at (1:23), and Laurens Ten Dam (1:36).  Jean-Christophe Péraud, Frank Schleck, and Bauke Mollema tied at 2:09, Pierre Rolland and Rui Alberto Costa tied at 3:01, Michael Rogers (3:07) and Christpher Horner (3:11).  Ben Gastauer (4:02) and Michal Kwiatkowski (4:12).  Everyone else was almost 6 minutes behind or more.

In the General Classification, Vincenzo Nibali,  Alejandro Valverde BelMonte (3:37), Romain Bardet (4:24), Thibaut Pinot (4:40), Tejay Van Garderen (5:19), Jean-Christophe Péraud (6:06), Bauke Mollema (6:17), Jurgen Van Den Broeck (6:27), Rui Alberto Costa (8:35), Leopold Konig (8:36), Michal Kwiatkowski (8:51), Lauren Ten Dam (9:18), and Pierre Rolland (9:48).  Everyone else is over 10 minutes behind.

For the Points Championship it’s Peter Sagan (341), Bryan Coquard (191), Alexander Kristoff (172), Marcel Kittel (167), Mark Renshaw (118), André Greipel and Vincenzo Nibali tied at 117, Greg Van Avermaet (115).  Everyone else is over 28 points behind.

In Climbing competition we have Vincenzo Nibali (again) (70), Joaquim Rodriguez (53), Thibaut Pinot (41), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte and Rafal Majka tied at 40.  Everybody else at least 6 points behind.  Between the Teams it is AG2R, Belkin (9:24), Sky (23:46), Astana (29:20), BMC (33:31), Movistar (45:25), and EuropCar (55:33).  Omega Pharma leads a group of 10 teams at under 2 hours behind and the rest are over 3 hours back.  In the Youth Contest it is Romain Bardet, Thibaut Pinot (:16),  Michal Kwiatkowski (4:27), and Tom Dumoulin (37:50).  Everyone else is over an hour behind.

Today’s stage is 110 miles long.  Mercifully for the sprinters the Sprint Checkpoint is early before any of the climbs.  There are 2 Category 1s and 1 Beyond Categorization.

What they are chiefly is very, very long and the finish up hill.  It is our last day in the Alps, tomorrow will be a day for the sprinters if any of them are left.