Tour de France 2013: Stage 7 Winners and Losers

Winners

Peter Sagan

A superb day for the Slovak champion, and he owes a lot of credit to his Cannondale teammates. The second category climb was always going to be difficult for the likes of Cavendish and Greipel, but I had expected them to bridge back to the peloton. However, excellent work by Cannondale on the climb and over the following kilometres forced them to abandon all hopes of regaining contact. The high pace of the peloton ensured that Kadri and Voigt, the two main attackers of the day were brought back before the intermediate sprint, allowing the Slovak to hoover up the full points, which when combined with the points picked up at the stage finish, puts Sagan well clear in the green jersey competition, 96 points ahead of Andre Greipel.

Blel Kadri

Another man who should be grateful for his teammate’s efforts, the AG2R rider took the polka dot jersey by a single point. I predicted yesterday that the mountains competition could heat up, and I’m surprised that Europcar let Kadri get away. A local rider, Kadri was always going to attack today, and took the points at the top of the Col de 13 Vents and the Col de la Croix de Mounis. However it was the efforts of Romain Bardet to jump clear and deny Pierre Rolland third place over the top that gave Kadri the lead in the mountains classification. 

Losers

Mark Cavendish and Andre Greipel

Both unlatched by the pace of Cannondale on the Col de la Croix de Mounis, it was not through lack of effort that neither were able to regain contact. Both Lotto Belisol and Omega Pharma-Quickstep lent all their resources to the chase without success. The failure to catch Sagan must surely be the end of any green jersey ambitions for either man.

Christian Vande Velde

A disappointing end to the American’s final Tour de France as he was forced to abandon midway through today’s stage. A crash on stage 5 had left Vandevelde riding with severe back pain, so an abandon was always on the cards, but another crash today put the nail in the coffin of the 37 year old who finished fourth in the Tour back in 2008.

Tomorrow’s Stage

The first mountain stage of this year’s Tour as the race enters its first of two days in the Pyrenees. As you can see below both of the stage’s climbs are typical Pyrenean climbs, never outrageously steep, but also never settling into a constant gradient. However, while the Col de Pailhères is on narrow roads, the road to Ax 3 Domaines was built to ferry skiers up to the ski resort during the winter, and so is relatively wide and well-surfaced, as is the descent of the Pailhères.

Scenario

The last time the Tour visited Ax 3 Domaines Christophe Riblon won from a break. Perhaps we could see a similar scenario tomorrow. Certainly the gaps between the GC contenders are very slim at this early stage in the race, and with a long hard stage 9, I would expect for the likes of Contador and Froome to keep their powder dry.

Perhaps we should look to one of the less-fancied GC contenders to light up the final climb, as the favourites watch each other. The likes of Daniel Navarro and Pierre Rolland lost time in the TTT, so maybe we should look to the French teams for the stage winner.

Stage Win: Pierre Rolland

Yellow Jersey: Chris Froome