It escapes me too.

On forums I read, there are always people defending them (there is even one guy asking for more!). The reasoning is particularly shallow, it always boils down to “there has to be stages for sprinters”. Myself, I don’t call this an argument, I call it a postulate.

This year, I haven’t heard the argument that I used to hear: that these stages were ‘transition’ stages, connecting dots on the map to ‘advance’ on the global course of the tour without huge bus transfers. It was untrue 3 out of 4 times. Firstly, they often loop around, or go backwards, and do not participate to a logical geographical progression. Secondly, tours are not tours any more, they don’t circle around a country or region, they are big spaghetti messes trying to build something out of a reduced list of towns who can pay the required bill, so the notion of progression is rather moot.

If we look at the general map, the stages of today and tomorrow can be seen as transition stages. But that’s only because they insisted on going into Brittany for a single stage, and then in the Massif Central for a single stage too; while they spent the first 3 days in the North without progressing by an inch (despite 2 sprinters stages out of those first 3 stages: those were definitely not transition stages). Between Brittany and Massif Central, the landscape is pretty flat; however you could find a few hills and a few valley slopes if you wanted.

Keeping Brittany and Massif Central, they could have done only 1 stage in the North, then the rest of the stages would have been two days earlier (meaning those 2 flat stages would not have happened during week-end), and then added 1 or 2 hilly or medium-altitude mountain stages in the Massif Central before the rest day.

More radically, they could have put the rest day on Friday or Saturday and removed those 2 flat transition stages altogether, restarting a new sequence from the Massif Central, and eventually adding a sprinter stage at the end of this sequence after the Pyrenees, when sprinters teams are cooked and there can be a fight between breakaways and sprinters teams. It would have been OK with UCI rules (first rest day must be later than 5^th day) and better balanced than as it is now with 10 days in the first sequence and only 5 in the second!

It make me think of Pacher (FDJ) who pulled the head group before the climb. What was the goal? Did he believe a fast approach would help Grégoire compared to the other guys? Why would it help him?

The actual result is that it enlarged the gap with his leader G. Martin who has crashed… And Grégoire cracked in the climb.

So I imagine, it was simply a case of “Damn, I am in a reduced head group with most favourites, I won’t be able to do anything in the climb, so it is my last chance to act”. Even if the action makes no sense, he showed he worked. That’s my theory for this case 😀

That’s possible. Attacking his opponents on the terrain most suitable for them would be another misjudgement of his capacities and the capacities of his opponents, but anyway both our theories imply a misjudgement 😀

Yeah, we usually don’t get the sound, so it had a greater impression of reality this time. Pure sound of bikes crashing (and no holler at all). The Jayco guy at the back crashed without being touched by anyone, just thanks to his disc brakes.

I don’t understand what Evenepoel expected to do. He had managed to reach the flamme rouge ahead, by pacing the group on his own terms. This was a tipping point with the slope getting easier after that, so I thought he would attack there as this the exact type of effort where he shines usually when others need a bit of rest. But no, he waited for the sprint. Is this another case of him falsely believing he’s got a sprint? I thought he would finally have understood he hasn’t any.

At the intermediate sprint, Q. Simmons had to wait before the line because he finally noticed that he had significantly dropped all the sprinters whom he was supposed to pull 🤣 He really is in a brilliant form.

Beware: today, the race starts and finishes earlier than on the previous days.

Pogatchar: what did he do in the end? Did he want to keep the jersey or not? Weird again.

It seems that except for the last metres, it was Visma who accelerated in the last 2 climbs. And we couldn’t understand what happened because the TV director decided never to show a few seconds of it in 10 or 20 km… (Same problem we had with the TV directors of spring classics who preferred to stay 80% on a solo guy and 19% on a chasing duo whose positions have been fixed for good for 1 hour, and not show at all what could happen behind, where things could still happen.)

Vauquelin (🇫🇷 Arkéa) was forbidden to break away by UAE who chased him every time he attempted something. Pogatchar🇸🇮 himself jumped in his wheel one or two times. Very weird.

As far as sprinters go, I had missed the climb to the finish line 👎 😁

At least I got Healy (🇮🇪 EF) right 👍 And damn he was in shape! The first breakaway, then a few tries, then the final breakaway which had to fight for 40 or 50 km just 5 to 20 seconds before the peloton, then the final solo where he kept on increasing the gap with his former colleagues who were not random riders.

Van der Poel (🇳🇱 Alpecin) helpless in the last 20 km or so, struggling to finish last man of the breakaway. Probably the heat, because he hadn’t made the early efforts Healy and Q. Simmons (🇺🇸 Lidl-Trek) made. Q. Simmons was in a great shape too, I would have thought that Storer (🇦🇺 Tudor) would have won their duel for second place.

Pogatchar: what did he do in the end? Did he want to keep the jersey or not? Weird again.

Martin (🇫🇷 FDJ) loses 20 seconds in the final climb, Skjelmose (🇩🇰 Lidl-Trek) 40.

Healy indeed made the first attempt with Q. Simmons right after the intermediate sprint. Before that, nobody tried as the sprinters teams made it clear they would pull and if necessary chase. They stayed ahead (joined by an Astana and Campenaerts) a dozen km before getting caught near the top of the first 3^rd category climb. Then many attempts were made. What seemed to be the true breakaway started just after the second 3^rd cat. climn, a group of 5 with Van der Poel and again Q. Simmons and Healy. However counter-attacks never stopped and the groups was a few seconds from being caught up a couple of times, which allowed a few extra riders to jump and join the breakaway. It is only after 100 km into the stage that the peloton gave up!

This was a typical case of all teams willing to go into a breakaway on the same day and not on other days…

Yes, it’s natural to have bad days, not natural to be in tip-top shape 8 months of the year

Pogatchar doesn’t take part in many days of racing, though (neither does Vingegaard). Despite riding 2 Grand Tours last year, he ended up with less than 60 race days. This year he only rode the equivalent of 3 weeks before starting the Tour of France. Even Roglitch who is very often injured, thus needs to abandon races and requires recovery time, rides a bit more than Pogatchar.

He seems to always start like a maniac, and it always looks like he’s lucky not to hit every fence and wall in the first half-mile. It doesn’t always translate into a good time however (like Vingegaard seemed to start very quickly today, yet even the first timings were not good).

Did Vingegaard tell something to explain his mediocre performance?

Surely a safe Evenepoel victory

I hope for him that he can turn better than in yesterday’s final parts 😜

Well, the gap was kept at the modern standard of 2 minutes, and half of the breakaway was limited when it came to climbing, so there wasn’t much of a fight.

L. Martinez tried to go for the mountain jersey, but he missed the first point (attacking very early because the second half was flatter), and then UAE had started a strong pace and caught him before the last 3 climbs. The idea was sound (IMO) but the result is meagre.

Many crashes again. Alaphilippe unlucky to get a puncture right when the peloton accelerated and never slew down again. Healy stopped in a crash. Both of them caught up with the back of the peloton after long (especially for Alaphilippe) and intense efforts, but never had a second to recover and never could go further up.

Lenny Martinez (🇫🇷 Barhein) attacked at km 0, followed by Abrahamsen (🇳🇴 Uno-X). No pursuit, no other attack. After 2 or 3 km, when they had a gap of 25 seconds, Gachignard (🇫🇷 Total) jumped and joined them (the two ahead weren’t pulling hard, they were waiting for him, they had hoped for an even bigger group).

And that was it.

edit: Ah! I read that Asgreen (🇩🇰 EF) joined them, starting even later and imposing himself a solo chase of almost 10 km. To each his kinks, I guess 😀

There is a tiny bit less elevation gain than on Monday, but it is more compact, and as you say, there are many turns.

I find Roglitch strangely detached. I also noted this ‘zen’ appearance on the Giro (between two crashes). Has he planned to retire soon?

And as often on the most boring stages, there are terrible crashes.

As long as tour organisers will keep on designing stages for sprinters only, it will be so.

Yeah, that was fun - getting so worked up over an intermediate sprint. Didn’t even seem like anyone did anything dangerous, yet two different arguments came from it.

It happened several 100 metres before, in the sprint preparation, when they were trying to get positions: Girmay went to ‘hit’ Milan because the latter was sitting in the former’s train. But the bleeding TV director stayed for an hour on the breakaway instead of showing the bunch’s sprint preparation and launching, so no viewer could see it on the main stream.

I don’t know about Coquard vs Penhoët. But arguments rarely come up for no reason, and when the recipient of a barney/insults doesn’t answer and keeps a low profile, it generally means that he knows he was guilty of something.

I concur with all points (even Onley was here!). However the sprint was relatively close to be ‘bunchy’, as most of the climbing distances were (strongly) paced by (strong) domestiques – Wellens (🇧🇪 UAE), then Narvaez (🇪🇨 UAE)–, and Vauquelin excepted, the other favourites didn’t pull/attack much. Van Aert pulled a bit, but he really didn’t last long; one could have thought that he would contest victory today as the profile suited him, but he was far from being able to do it.

Alaphilippe better than expected, but not enough to score. This could be the motto of his 2025 season 😀

Lenny Martinez still watching the peloton from behind all day long.

Several stupid crashes during the day. As the peloton was extremely packed most of the time, when the road rose up a hill and the peloton slew down, it was getting even more compressed from the back, and thus accidents did happen at the back.