I think Sky have to thank Ag2r & Katusha for some of the help getting back... I think without them it would have been worse.

Did anyone else think that Froome came out to chase down the break, looked around and went back?

I think he did you know... Could be a costly mistake, like this one, when Nibali shot off in the Tirreno-Adriatico.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/21750540

If i remember rightly, he made the mistake of thinking that his team mates could bridge the gap up to Nibali... They couldn't, and he lost the Tirreno-Adriatico in the process.

Didn't Nibali slow down the peloton when Wiggins had a mechanical in the Giro this year?

I have a lot of time for Nibali... Seems a likeable sort of chap!

Part of me thinks Saxobank will sit up tomorrow and conserve their energy to try and break Froome completely on Mont Ventoux on Sunday. Or at the very least to break Sky completely so they can then attack Froome again next week if he manages to cling on to them on Sunday.

One thing's for sure though, Froome will basically have to shadow Contador unrelentingly from now on, and sit right at the front no matter what - if he'd been about 3 riders further forward today he would have been in that break too. He can't give Contador even a hint of an opportunity now, so he'll have to cover every move regardless of whether his teammates are there or not, and I highly doubt any of them will be by the top of Ventoux, whereas Kreutzinger will probably be with Contador!


Indeed, he really doesn't have someone the way Wiggins had him! Kennaugh could get him back on a flat or low gradient, but he's only got Porte for the climbs, and unless Porte getting dropped so early today was a deliberate ploy to save him for Sunday, then Froome will probably be alone again up Mont Ventoux.


That only applies when all the GC contenders are together though, whereas Froome's biggest problem would be if he punctures going up a mountain, as the GC contenders would likely have dropped the rest of Team Sky by then, and they'd be under no gentleman's obligation to sit up and wait for Froome.

To be honest, I just don't think Porte has the legs at the minute. I don't think they would let him drop off again and lose time and signal even more weakness in an already weak team. The team isn't strong enough to fox.

Froome really has to start making friends in the peloton now or he stands a chance of spending the next week completely isolated.

I agree about Nibali - he seems a good bloke - and one who has spent a lot of time in the wind tunnel for those incremental gains

I wonder if Froome has thought back to how he rode last year with Wiggins and has realised that it's not an easy job being team leader.

There couldn't be more of an advert for Sky not doping than this TdF.

Seems like they really do miss the old head of Rogers.

What do Movistar do now... help Bertie?

Depends who you are. Bauke Mollema was saying on Twitter that Valverde has been unsportsmanlike in the past, so I think if you an unsporting drug cheat, you don't have many mates.


Yea he went to chase, looked back/ checked radio/ gave up. Radio giving him duff guff I guess. Sky are a bit of shambles this year really.

Cav back in with a good shot of winning the green jersey now?

Not really, Sagan has an 80 point lead, so has it in the bag as long as he stays in the race.

Cav doesn't bother with the intermediate sprints enough. That's were Sagan has picked up the bulk of his points.

No it isn't Sagan his picked up more points in stages were his superior ability to get over mountains has allowed him to gain big points on Cav. [Although last Friday Sagan did pick up 20pts on the Intermediate Stage, in the stage he won.

Under the current rules, there is no question that Sagan deserves his likely win in the Green Comp this year.

Cool

I wonder if the Tour organisers would ever contemplate an inter-Tour jersey like the inter-Giro?

What I'd like to see is a breakaway jersey for riders who clock up most kms in a breakaway! Get rid of the KOM jersey and reward the smaller teams who plug away all day with little hope of winning a stage.

I don't think the Intermediate sprints have worked very well this year. I thought it was a good idea to have just the one with big points but it only works when there a bunch of closely ranked riders in the classification...............now that Sagan is so far ahead it looks like they're all just going through the motions and saving themselves for the stage finish

So maybe the Intermediate sprint could be removed from the Green Jersey comp and made a separate comp with it's own jersey................in effect that would become the Breakaway Jersey..........they could vary the 'sprint line' so some days it's on the flat, other days it's on a mid-course mountain

Makes you wonder why he didn't... Fuglsang made it over, I just noticed now on the ITV highlights!

Sky look too fragmented when riding... Riders all over the peloton. Just sticking Stannard to protect Froome just isn't enough.

When things like today & Sunday happen, they can't get organised quickly enough... Or at all! And where the hell did Porte get to?

They were just 6-10 sec down on that lead group for a few km's, but could not get it together.

They seem to be the Arsenal of Pro-Cycling. If plan A doesn't work, go back and try Plan A.

Porte lost another 10 minutes today. I don't like the phrase just riding round - but he's not being a lot of help that's for sure, although he is still the closest time wise to Froome half an hour back. Kennaugh is next at virtually an hour and a quarter back.

Team Sky are 12th out of 22 teams in the team competition (three quarters of an hour adrift) which is not good when they have the race leader - last year they were second just 5 minutes off RadioShack (although the closest team mate to Brad and Chris was Michael Rogers almost an hour back).

I know there's not a lot you can do about injuries, although three quarters of the peloton are carrying knocks by this stage, but the seemingly uninjured are not doing the business either, I wonder if Team Sky flattered to deceive last year with Brad and Chris masking a lot of the issues and Cav operating solo?

Oh dear... He wasn't told this. Someone should have radioed this to him surely?

bit in bold

i thought that. he looked at the Canondale guy as if he might go, and then didn't go. he was just behind Cav and Sagan at the time.

chris boardman never highlighted it afterwards.

mind you, Cav said he only just got on the break. maybe froome didn't have the legs.

I hope Chris wins, but he is going to have to do it the hard way now, without being able to rely on his team.

Or maybe he realised that if he stayed in the main group he could keep within a minute or so and save his legs a bit for the next couple of days, when he'll likely be completely isolated from his own team given half of them didn't even stay with him on the flat today...

I hope that it was a case of him making a calculated decision not to over-exert himself rather than him not having the legs for it!

Sagan is pretty shrewd and by the sounds of it Cav was the last to join and basically had to sprint in order to get across the gap. In that case it's hardly surprising that everyone behind him missed out

It all happened so quickly and with so much massed organisation from Saxo-Tinkoff it's not surprising given the conditions that they managed to engineer a split that didn't include an isolated Froome without a strong team to protect him and keep him safely near the front of the peloton.

I thought the race was over after Ax 3 Domaines, but maybe I was wrong. It's a pretty exciting prospect.
As much as I liked to see Wiggins win, a strong Sky team getting a gap in GC and neutralising stages was hardly trilling a lot of the time.

Yes, Cav said that in an interview but it was very hard to spot on the Eurosport coverage due to the camera angle and the echelon - and the commentators missed it.

I've replayed the start of the break a few times and you can just see one of Cav's teammates catching the end of the break but Cav was momentarily left and had to sprint to close the gap. Froome probably tried but couldn't keep up. It was an awesome break.

Still another TT to come for Froome to add a minute or two, but I can now easily see big losses on Ventoux. It will be the defining stage of his career

The thing in Froome's favour is that he can stay with the riders in the mountains and Belkin and Saxo cannot allow the other team to ride away unchallenged.

His problem is that Cheatador looks cooked and doesn't look like he could drag a Belkin rider back.

He has to accept that his Sky riders will do nothing to help him and will have to piggy back off other riders. He may also have to decide which attacks he marks and which he follows.

The choice is made for him really - he'll have to follow an attack by any of the top 15 on GC, or any attack by a couple of Saxo Bank or Belkin riders whether they're the GC contenders or not. He can't afford to be outsmarted again, so he'll have to take that risk and hope his legs hold.

He must be desperately praying that either Porte or Kennaugh will be recovered enough to stay with him at least halfway up Ventoux , as if he really wants to win this tour he should be the one attacking there, rather than just following. Maybe he'll be able to follow and then attack at the finish though, he showed that potential when he rode away from Wiggins a couple of times last year despite already having expended energy pacing him up a mountain!

Saxo Bank will probably be taking it easy today in preparation for tomorrow, but I'm sure Movistar will be hurting and may want to do something for Quintana to ensure that if he cracks in the mountains he still has enough of a buffer to stay top 10 on GC. I'm very surprised Valverde didn't just take a teammate's bike yesterday, and that Movistar made Costa stay back to pace Valverde back - it's ruined the GC for both of them, not just one.

Surely the risk with that is that he doesn't know it will only be a minute or so. It's OK for the Portes of this world to save his legs (if that's what he did), but not Froome with just a 3 minute(ish) lead.

I think he will be very exposed and vulnerable to being outsmarted by other teams if he doesn't have a team around him, and that's ignoring any mechanical problems.

Looks interesting for the next few days.