Contador quits: Diminished by a fever and still reeling from crashes on the opening two days of the race, two-time champion Alberto Contador pulled out of the Tour de France during the toughest Pyrenean stage on Sunday.
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Kittel was expected to dominate the sprints at the Tour but has instead registered only one win from the four flat stages so far and after being overshadowed by Cavendish. That left the squad in a pickle when Richie Porte flatted in closing kilometers of stage three while the team was working hard at the front to setup Greg Van Avermaet for the win.
BMC had a great start to the Tour, but do they have a plan for later? You have to have a teammate close by who can give your leader a bike.
Mark Renshaw quit due to illness, but given the way Mark Cavendish has won his three stages to date, he should not miss his Team Dimension Data leadout man too much. “No other team has made any attempt whatsoever to control the race”.
On paper, the stage had appeared to set up well for sprinters, but the wind made it into a more tactical finish.
The general classification table has Chris Froome of Team Sky leading, followed by Adam Yates of Orica-Bike Exchange and Irish Daniel Martin in third position of Team Etixx-QuickStep.
“I have no doubt people out there will already be calculating my VAM (velocity ascended meters per hour) going down that last climb, and saying that it was off the charts”, Froome said sarcastically, flashing a wide smile.
“This year, [Froome] said that he had delayed his preparation to be stronger in the last week”. “All the way up to the last kilometre and into the last kilometre, I thought, “He hasn’t attacked yet, maybe he’s saving it for one big move” but that never came”. All the contenders were able to regroup, catch their breath and save some matches which led to the all out war in the final 5 kms of the stage.
So what did we learn as the race leaves the Pyrenees?
“Peter is on a different level to everyone else and when he decides to do something he just does it. It’s nice to wear green but there’s nobody targeting it in Paris other than Peter”.
“The first real mountain day of the Tour I always tend to struggle [in] more than the other ones”. Sitting atop the leader board, he looks hard to beat.
So far, the Team Sky leader has not put a foot wrong, strongly defending his narrow overall lead of 16 seconds on Sunday’s first big summit finish in Andorra in atrocious weather conditions.
With Thibault Pinot out of contention, the French hopes of producing a first home Tour victor in 31 years hang on Romain Bardet’s shoulders. The spectator walked out in front of Bennett on the final Arcalis climb. Team Sky had controlled the pace but when they had all been dropped and only Henao and Froome were left, Henao jumped.
Finally, Froome accelerated halfway up the climb and the race was on with Quintana sticking to his wheel.
“Froome is quite strong, his team is quite strong but I m better than previous years”, said the 26-year-old Colombian. Is he waiting again for the third week?
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The Colombian – second overall to Froome in 2013 and 2015 – sits fourth, 23 seconds back. Then Quintana beat Froome on that penultimate stage by 1:20, but he still finished 1:12 down to Froome overall after losing 1: 28 on stage two and then another 1:40 on stage 10.
