Deschanel2017

Another hectic day. Grégoire (🇫🇷 FDJ) hadn't recovered from yesterday's efforts, he completely exploded in the relatively short but very hard climb that was to be ridden twice in the final 25 kilometres, and lost the yellow jersey by a huge margin. Vauquelin (🇫🇷 Arkéa) and Alaphilippe (🇫🇷 Tudor) did a much better climb and lost less time to Almeida (🇵🇹 UAE) and Onley (🇬🇧 Picnic) who arrived together, respectively second and first of the stage. Gall (🇦🇹 Décathlon) seems to revive too, contrarily to O'Connor (🇦🇺 Jayco).

Vauquelin is the new leader, Alaphilippe 2^nd^ but they only have a small margin left ahead of Almeida.

Out of 4 stages so far, we can say that we already have had 3 days of fine cycling 👍:

• one where the peloton/favourites let a too large breakaway go, with a good battle in the breakaway too in the end, rain and wet roads, and Grégoire🇫🇷 taking much risk in a descent to get rid of the 3 others riders who broke away from the breakaway in the last climb;
• one with a performance by Simmons🇺🇸, whose breakaway was almost caught up 20 or 25 km away from the goal (gap down to 15-20 seconds) and yet, alone then, managed to keep and increase the gap;
• one with the biggest favourite (Almeida🇵🇹) trying to reduce his delay over first day's riders, with lots of different splits with those riders battling behind him.

The main favourite having from the start a significant gap behind not-top-climbers-nor-TT-specialists-but-not-horrible-at-those-specialties-riders ensures that almost all stages will be disputed.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to have a 'handicap' Tour of France. At the start, you'd give Vingegaard a 4 minutes handicap, and Pogatchar an 8 minutes one, and more stages would be interesting at different levels. 😁

Will Pogatchar allow other riders to win the green and dotted jerseys? At the moment, he leads the points classification (with the same number of points as Van der Poel) and the mountain classification (with the same number of points as Buitrago and Higuita)…

For the mountain jersey, Armirail (🇫🇷 Décathlon) managed to score a few points at almost each climb in the breakaway, and take over everybody, even Pogatchar who scored a few points in the final climb.

For the green jersey, Van der Poel (🇳🇱 Alpecin) got in the breakaway too and scored the best points of the intermediate sprint. However, Pogatchar finished 3^rd^ of the stage and thus scored the same number of points. As they both started and finished today with the same number of points, and the second criterium is the number of stage victories, Pogatchar gets the green jersey.

Seixas (🇫🇷 Décathlon) proved that he is the worthy successor of Thibault Pinot by crashing while riding uphill in the final climb of the final day of this Criterium du Dauphiné, thereby losing 2 places in GC 😬

Stage 8

Last stage. Basically, the riders will simply ride up the valley of the Maurienne (or valley of the Arc) and, from time to time, wander on its slopes to generate a climb. The final climb is about 10 km long, with a 7% gradient. The finish line is then laid after 5 km of a slightly bumpy plateau, which is in fact a part of the road around the Mont-Cenis reservoir.

Will Pogatchar allow other riders to win the green and dotted jerseys? At the moment, he leads the points classification (with the same number of points as Van der Poel) and the mountain classification (with the same number of points as Buitrago and Higuita)...

Let’s see if Vingegaard can be better on this type of climbs than the shorter ones we had on Stage #6 (on the other hand, he seemed better on the shortest and steepest one of the two…).

Mmwell... Pogatchar did again what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it, and nothing could prevent it.

Next day, during the first mountain stage, Poole apparently abandoned and all other Picnic riders including Bardet finished 13 minutes and more behind... So, it will be all for breakaways in the last two stages. Or nothing at all.

Stage 7

Moutain episode #2 out of 3. The big one. Starting directly with 2 very long climbs with no flat at all before or in between: Col de la Madeleine and Col de la Croix de Fer, each of them climbing for more than 20 kilometres. Then come a more relaxed part before the final climb to a ski resort above St-Michel de Maurienne, this climb embedding 75% of the Col du Télégraphe climb before diverging.

Let's see if Vingegaard can be better on this type of climbs than the shorter ones we had on Stage #6 (on the other hand, he seemed better on the shortest and steepest one of the two...).

None of the 2 Visma, nor anyone else could resist Pogatchar today... The hopes for a Vingegaard better than Pogatchar this week, and therefore able to fight on the Tour of France in a few weeks from now, were rather disappointed.

UAE, VIsma and Decathlon leaders had respectively 1, 2 and 1 teammate(s) in the flat valley after the first hard climb, yet nobody pulled. I think it is understandable from the point of view of UAE and Visma who were just trying to eliminate each other without much consideration for outsiders, and called it a draw until the last climb when they saw they were still together; however I think Armirail should have pulled for Seixas as it would have been beneficial for him to leave all the guys from the second group behind, instead of letting them come back for free.

(Caveat: I didn't see any replay of the final, so I only have my first impression – which often turns out faulty after checking – as a base...) With the curves, positioning played a big role, it didn't look like anyone could produce a really big kick in the last straight line. Then a legless Milan went backwards, and Van der Poel was cooked by his efforts in the previous mile to keep position because he worn his teammates out earlier (also possibly a bit by his staying at the very front of the peloton in the last climb); Penhoët was simply being Penhoët: this guy always finishes around the 5^th^ place, no matter who the guys ahead of him are, you'd put him in a local junior race, he would still finish 4^th^ 😄

Stage 6

The last 3 stages are mountain stages, with final climbs. On Friday, we have 2 steep but relatively short climbs in the second half of the course; however, they are separated by 25 of flat valley, so we can suppose that the serious things will wait for the final climb. It presents 3 thirds: the 1^st^ one is rather steep (> 9%), the middle one softer probably around 5%, and the last one of your normal 7-8% grade.

J. Milan finally found his climbing legs! Unfortunately, he lost his sprinting legs in the process.

Despite the playing field which was proposed, many teams preferred to race for a sprint today.

Poole has apparently fallen during the time trial. Does this mean that Bardet will be forced to play GC now, as he is now 45 seconds ahead of the following Picnic riders?