2013 Tour de France Stages 6-7

Stage 6:

I know the picture above isn't actually of the stage, but I thought this was the most beautiful picture of the day. Simon Gerrans "passed" the Yellow Jersey on to his Orica-GreenEdge teammate Daryl Impey, and in doing this Impey became the first African, or South African to be more specific, to ever wear the Yellow Jersey. Impey now has a 3 second lead over Edvald Boasson Hagen and 5 second lead over Gerrans.

Andre Greipel was the winner of the stage. He has led the peloton over the intermediate sprints for most of the stages this Tour, but today he took his first win of the 2013 Tour de France. He beat Peter Sagan, Marcel Kittel, and Mark Cavendish respectively.

I was sad to see that Nacer Bouhanni had to abandon during this stage. He got caught up in a crash at the end of Stage 5, and couldn't make it to the finish of Stage 6. This is the first Tour de France for the 22 year old, who is quickly becoming a contender in the mass sprints.

Stage 7: 

Apparently, even World Champions have tight leashes on. This morning, and article came out about Philippe Gilbert not being allowed to try to get in a breakaway and win this stage, which is suited for a rider like him. Although the article isn't in English, Google translate helped me get the gist of it. The team's decision is to keep Evans safe and all team members around him. This is a race for Evans and no one is to go on their own (Sporza.be). Haven't we seen this before? Oh, right...in last year's Tour de France with Mark Cavendish on Team Sky. He wasn't allowed to sprint for himself, it was all about protecting Wiggins.

More came out today about Frank Schleck's release from Radioshack Leopard Trek. He had been training with them even during his suspension, but yet the team still released him. His own country, Luxembourg, believes that Frank didn't intentionally take this diuretic, and even the UCI admitted that the suspension had nothing to do with doping. Yet, the team still released him. Frank is hoping he can find another team before the Vuelta, although with it being mid-season, that may be difficult. His brother Andy even came out and said, "I will not ride in another team with Frank" (CyclingWeekly, and Sporten.tv2.dk with help of Google Translate).

But anyway, back to Stage 7. Jens Voigt was part of a 6-man attack very early into the stage, but the break only got about 10" ahead before being caught. Then Voigt attacked again, this time with Blel Kadri, and that became the break of the day. Unfortunately, as the two broke away, a crash happened in the peloton involving several riders. Because of his injuries from a crash two days ago, and now this crash, Christian Vande Velde abandoned. This was to be his last Tour de France before retiring, and it's sad he couldn't make it all the way to Paris.

Voigt and Kadri, who earned the KOM Jersey today, were caught 94km from the finish as the sprint teams kept the pace of the peloton high. The problem with that was some of the sprinters fell off the back with the mountains; Andre Greipel, Mark Cavendish, and Marcel Kittel all lost sprint points today to intermediate sprint and eventual stage winner Peter Sagan.

After the intermediate sprint, Jan Bakelants make an attack, which ended up giving him Most Aggressive Rider for the stage. He was quickly joined by Cyril Gautier and Juan Jose Oroz. However, their lead of just over a minute was cut fairly quickly when Daryl Impey's Yellow Jersey was threatened. This breakaway was caught just after the 3km flag.

And as I already said, the winner of the Stage 7 was Peter Sagan, and Daryl Impey stays in Yellow for another day.

2012 Tour de France Stage 7, 7/07/12

July 7, Stage 7: Tomblaine - La Planche des Belles Filles 199km

Froome leads double Sky success on La Planche des Belles Filles

(http://www.cyclingnews.com/tour-de-france/stage-7/results)

In shades of the 2011 Vuelta a España, Christopher Froome  led a doubly successful stage for Team Sky on the first mountaintop finish of the 2012 Tour de France. He was the only one who could match and top Cadel Evans (BMC) in the brutal final 100 meters of the climb up La Planche des Belles Filles in the seventh stage. Evans was second, with Sky's Bradley Wiggins third.

Fabian Cancellara fought long and hard but had to drop back on the climb. Wiggins thus moved into the overall lead. Evans is now second at 10 seconds, with Vincenzo Nibali third at 16 seconds, as the top ten was tossed around.

“It wasn't the plan to go for the stage, it was just keeping Brad up there,” said an overjoyed Froome. “But we came to see the climb previously and I knew what the finish was like. I thought, 'I'm there, I've got the legs, why not give a kick and see what happens?' I gave it a nudge and couldn't believe when Cadel didn't follow my wheel."

The end result was the icing on the cake of a dominant performance by Team Sky, who drove the pace and whittled down the field on the newest climb in the Tour. They dropped several big names along the way, due to either crash-related injuries, mechanicals or simply an inability to stay with the high speed set mainly by Edvald Boasson Hagen, Michael Rogers and finally Richie Porte.

In the end, Froome and Wiggins led the high-powered group with Evans and Nibali into the final kilometer. The Froome-Wiggins combination was a familiar one from the 2011 Vuelta a Espana, and once again Froome showed his superior climbing abilities. Evans was the first to jump from the group as the gradient eased, and only Froome could go with him. As the road kicked up again, Froome passed the Australian to claim his first Tour de France stage victory.

“I was expecting someone to surge on that flat bit, and Cadel came through. I jumped onto his wheel. I could see him slowly hurting as the climb got steeper. that was fantastic for us. Having Bradley right there 2 seconds behind, We couldn't ask for more. It puts the team in a fantastic position going forward.

“I'm speechless. That was a dream come true. I never thought of winning a stage here. I'm chuffed to bits.”

While the main battle played out between Evans and Froome for the stage win, Vincenzo Nibali and Rein Taaramae had minor victories of their own, becoming the only other riders to hang onto the front of the race. The Cofidis rider moved into the white jersey of best young rider after Tejay Van Garderen was dropped early in the climb, while Nibali moved into third overall, now 16 seconds behind Wiggins.

With his stage win, Froome also displaced Michael Morkov as best climber, while Peter Sagan padded his lead in the points classification in the intermediate sprint.

A reduced field

There were 12 fewer riders at the start of the seventh stage, four of them having abandoned during Friday's stage. All eight DNF's today were victims of the many crashes in the sixth stage, including Giro d'Italia winner Ryder Hesjedal. They were soon enough joined by Anthony Delaplace of Saur-Sojasun.

About 20 km into the stage, an escape group formed and got away: Cyril Gautier (Europcar), Christophe Riblon (AG2R), Luis Leon Sanchez (Rabobank), Chris Anker Sorensen (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank), Dmitriy Fofonov (Astana), Martin Velits (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), and Michael Albasini (Orica-GreenEdge). The gap reached a maximum of about six minutes before settling in at around five and a half minutes.

The only excitement in the first half of the stage came at the intermediate sprint. Orica-GreenEdge looked to determined to take the remaining points for Matt Goss, but the team seemed to have started its jump far too early. In the end, Peter Sagan of Liquigas sailed on by the Australian to add to his lead.

The first two climbs of the day – the Col de Grosse Pierre and the Col du Mont de Fourche (both category three) - did nothing at all. The seven leaders rolled right over them, although on the approach to the latter, Sanchez complained about the fans running alongside.

The gap finally started coming down for good with about 40 km – and the final category one climb – to go. As the road went up and the gap went down, more and more sprinters and injured riders fell back.

The Planche de Belles Filles was an unknown factor, as it was making its Tour debut. The 5.9km closing climb featured an average gradient of 8.5 percent, with sections up to 13 percent, and the final 100 meters at 14 percent.

Garmin was suffering the loss of three riders, with others having dropped back, but those remaining riders spent much time at the front of the field. They were finally replaced by Bosson Hagen, who led the capture of Gautier, the first rider to fall out of the lead group.

Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto Belisol) suffered a mechanical with about 11km to go, and had to race hard to try and catch the field again. Adam Hansen was there to help him, but it was a long haul. Alejandro Valverde punctured shortly thereafter, so another top rider had dropped out of the main field.

Boasson Hagen put up such a speed that the field split. And only moments after starting the final climb, the lead group was caught. But the brutal pace and the new climb did their work, as more and more riders suffered, including Robert Gesink (Rabobank), Philippe Gilbert (BMC) ad Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep).

With five km still to climb, Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan) had to bid farewell to the lead group, the overall lead and his yellow jersey. Only a small group went into the final four km – but neither Fränk Schleck nor Andreas Klöden was among them.

In there, though were Wiggins, Evans, Nibali, Boasson Hagen, Froome, Richie Porte, Rein Taramaae and Denis Menchov.

Froome, who proved himself in last year's Vuelta a Espana, took over from Boasson Hagen and pulled the increasingly smaller group up the final climb. Even Menchov fell back with less than two km to go.

Froome, Wiggins, Evans, Nibali and Taaramae went together unter the flamme rouge. Evans moved into the lead with 400 m to go and the sprint started. Taaramae was dropped it was Froome who made his move on the 14% gradient to take the win, with Evans taking second and Wiggins third.

Full Results

#	Rider Name (Country) Team	Result
1	Christopher Froome (GBr) Sky Procycling	4:58:35
2	Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC Racing Team	0:00:02
3	Bradley Wiggins (GBr) Sky Procycling
4	Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas-Cannondale	0:00:07
5	Rein Taaramae (Est) Cofidis, Le Credit En Ligne	0:00:19
6	Haimar Zubeldia Agirre (Spa) RadioShack-Nissan	0:00:44
7	Pierre Rolland (Fra) Team Europcar	0:00:46
8	Janez Brajkovic (Slo) Astana Pro Team
9	Denis Menchov (Rus) Katusha Team	0:00:50
10	Maxime Monfort (Bel) RadioShack-Nissan	0:00:56

Favorite Pictures of the Day:

Sagan doing a wheelie as he crosses the finish line

L. Sanchez awarded Most Agressive Rider...after punching a spectator who got too close. :)

2011 Tour de France Stage 8

Saturday was the first Mountain stage in the Pyrenees, It ran from Aigurande to Super-Besse Sancy for a total of 190km:

Due to time constrants, I am just going to copy the summary article from cyclingnews.com:

Hushovd unshakable on Super Besse

The first mountain stage of the Tour was also the first when a rider who had been in the main break of the day held on until the finish. That man was Movistar's Rui Costa, who had joined eight others on the attack after only 8km of racing and hung to win by just 12 seconds ahead of Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto), who had jumped away from the yellow jersey group that was rapidly closing in behind the 24-year-old Portuguese rider.

Going through the village of Besse, with six mostly uphill kilometres to the finish, Costa was in the company of Tejay Van Garderen (HTC-Highroad), Cyril Gautier (Europcar) and Christophe Riblon (Ag2r La Mondiale), with Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) and Juan Antonio Flecha (Team Sky) chasing frantically less than a minute behind having attacked from the peloton 25km from the finish.

As the road ramped up, Gautier produced the first acceleration, which quickly saw Riblon drop out of contention. Costa chased, caught and then attacked the Frenchman, as Van Garderen vainly tried to get back on terms. From that point, Costa's main threat came from Vinokourov, who dropped Flecha soon after Besse in desperate pursuit of his much-stated dream to take the yellow jersey.

Two kilometres out, the Kazakh veteran was 18 seconds down and appeared to be closing as the road rose ramped up again towards the finish. But, rather than Vinokourov, it was the youngster Costa who produced the stronger finish, staying clear on his own as the Astana leader was engulfed by the yellow jersey group.

"This is the most important victory I've ever had. I still can't believe I've won a stage on the Tour de France," said Costa. "Obviously it's always been a dream to win a stage like this. It's incredible! I attacked at a crucial moment when I saw that my breakaway companions were starting to flag. That gave me a bit of a cushion and worked to my advantage.

"To be honest, when I saw Vinokourov coming I thought he was going to catch me, but at the end I gave it everything that I possibly could. To win is great for me and it's great for my team, who have had some difficulties this year, and I know this victory is going to help us."

While Costa's was undoubtedly the ride of the day, not far behind was Thor Hushovd (Garmin-Cervélo), who went into the stage one second ahead of Cadel Evans (BMC Racing) on GC and came out of it with the same advantage. Although the Australian finished very strongly to take third place, 15 seconds down on Costa, the Norwegian sprinter was one of just 22 riders who were in that group with Evans.

"Today I surprised myself again, although I did not have a good day," Hushovd confessed. "But I just hung on, hung on, hung on, and it's just incredible that I'm still here in yellow. Cadel was the only rider I was looking for today, but I couldn't follow his move with 1k to go. I just did my tempo and managed to close a little gap at the end with a little sprint to get into his group. Tomorrow is another hard day and I'll just have to see what happens. Of course I would love to have yellow tomorrow night as well, but it's going to be really hard to control the race tomorrow."

Gesink is the major loser
While Costa was riding away to the best win of his career, the overall contenders used the final 2km of the stage to test each other out – or at least most of them did. Surprisingly, Rabobank's Robert Gesink had been dropped from that elite group with 5km remaining and was being paced by a number of his teammates into the finish. Although the Dutchman still managed to hang on to the white jersey as best young rider, he lost more than a minute on all his rivals for the yellow jersey.

Up ahead of the Dutchman, several of the likely contenders for the overall title made tentative attacks in the final 2km. After Gilbert had attacked going under the kilometre banner, Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank Sungard) countered, but was immediately closed down by Andy Schleck (Leopard Trek) and Evans. The Spaniard had another dig 500m out, but once again failed to get clear. In the end, Gilbert's explosive power enabled him to get clear, as the overall contenders cancelled each other out. Gilbert's second place moved him back into the green jersey at the expense of Costa's Movistar teammate José Joaquín Rojas.

Defending champion Contador said he had felt good on the final climb, but explained: "The final wasn't hard in terms of the gradient and it was extremely difficult to get clear. But it's another day over and another day closer to the Pyrenees. I couldn't do much else on a stage like today. The best thing is that I got through it without falling."

Vinokourov was caught during that flurry of action and admitted at the finish he was very disappointed to have missed out. "I thought I had good legs today. I thought to myself. ‘I'm going to go for it,'" he said. "But in the very final kilometre it was just too much for me to bridge the gap. But I'll live to fight another day. I thought I was going to get up to Costa when I attacked, but he was just too strong today. Maybe next time..."

Riblon makes the first move
After several previous attempts had been neutralised, Christophe Riblon instigated the break of the day when he jumped clear after 8km. The Frenchman was quickly joined by Costa, Xabier Zandio (Sky), Addy Engels (Quick Step), Van Garderen, Romain Zingle (Cofidis), Gautier, Alexandr Kolobnev (Katusha) and Julien El Farès (Cofidis).

At the top of the first climb, the 4th-category Côte d'Evaux-les-Bains – where El Farès took the KOM point on offer – their advantage reached almost six minutes, making Costa, who was 4:02 down on GC, the leader on the road as BMC set the pace in the bunch behind. The intermediate sprint followed at Auzances. Riblon clipped off the front of the break to take 20 points for the first man through it, ahead of Costa and Kolobnev.
That left the green jersey contenders in the bunch sprinting for 10th place. Gilbert took advantage of the rise up to the line to outkick Rojas. Mark Cavendish (HTC-Highroad), who had jumped to third in the standings on stage 7, was beaten for 12th place by Rojas's teammate Francisco Ventoso.

The sprint offered just a brief respite from the climbing that was the main order of the day. The break was soon onto the 4th category Côte du Rocher des Trois Tourtes, where Kolobnev took the single point on offer. In the peloton, Astana had joined BMC in pace-setting duties and these two teams had trimmed the break's lead back to 3:45 at this summit.

Van Garderen takes the KoM jersey
When Omega Pharma-Lotto added their weight to the peloton's pace-making, the gap to the break began to tumble rapidly, dropping below three minutes with 32km remaining. Up ahead, the break reached the first slopes of the penultimate climb, the 2nd-category Col de la Croix Saint-Robert, where Van Garderen produced two accelerations that split the group.

Only Costa and Gautier were able to stay with him, although the Frenchman dropped back before the summit, where Van Garderen bagged five points as first man over. This was enough to earn the young American the lead in the King of the Mountains competition at the end of the stage, although he later admitted his day might have gone even better if he'd held back a bit more before the final climb.

"I think I paid for my aggression a little earlier on because I think the others felt that I was a strong rider so whenever anyone attacked they would like to me to shut it down. So I think it probably would have been better to stay calm earlier on, and I just lacked a little bit at the end. But the Tour's been incredible. I'm having a lot of fun."

Van Garderen's strength showed when he chased down Riblon twice on the approach to Besse, but those efforts rebounded on the 22-year-old HTC climber when the slightly more experienced Costa made what proved to be the winning move on the other side of the town.