Stage 7 - Sky Heights

We are only a week into this years Tour de France but we can safely say this year’s edition is a race in two. Cadel Evans and Bradley Wiggins finished second and third on the stage respectively, and left all of the other potential GC rivals in their wake on Stage 7 199km from Tomblaine to La Planche des Belles Filles. Sky’s Chris Froome won the stage on a day when the Sky team turned back the clock, dominating the race in a manner not seen since the hey day of US postal. Fabian Cancellara was dropped in the early stages of the final climb and thus lost his Yellow Jersey. The new wearer, for the first time in his career , is Bradley Wiggins, who holds it by 10 seconds from defending champion Cadel Evans. You can forget the rest.

The story of the day was the complete an utter devastation of the peleton by Team Sky, and in particular Australian’s Michael Rogers and Richie Porte who did all the ground work for Froome and Wiggins. In the end, one by one the GC contenders were popped out the back, including Denis Menchov, and only in the last 200m or so Vincenzo Nibali. If these guys can’t stay with Evans and Wiggins on the climbs, they are no chance of making up time on them in the time trials. In fact it must be said that Wiggins form looked ominous. For half a moment it seemed he would be unable to match Evans late surge for the line and victory (Froome eventually delivered the 1-2 punch for Sky coming around Evans for the win), but he was quickly on the Australian’s wheel to ensure there were no time losses. You would think Wiggo would have the advantage over Cadel in the time trials so Evans main hope looks to be to break Wiggins from a longer way out on some of the longer climbs.

His main issue in doing that may be lack of team support, with the BMC boys nowhere to be seen in the finale, while Sky had three other riders helping out Wiggins. That is a major concern, and it will be interesting to see whether that pattern continues in coming mountain stages. If it does, you would have to say Wiggins is the current favourite to wear the jersey in Paris. Chris Froome’s stage win allowed him to take the lead in the mountains classification, a jersey he could win if he is not sidetracked working for Wiggins. Tejay Van Garderen’s inept performance in assisting Evans saw him lose the White Jersey to Rein Taaramae who put in a superb ride to finish 5^th on the day. He was the second to last man dropped by the first three over the line.

The most pissweak performance of the day goes to Frank Schleck who was dropped inside the first 3 km of climbing on the stage. Paul and Phil have been talking this guy up as a contender all week but the Falcon knew better. After crashing and losing time yesterday he couldn’t even hang with the key climbers today. He may as well pull out of the race.

Yellow Jersey – Bradley Wiggins

Green Jersey – Peter Sagan

Polka Dot Jersey – Chris Froome

White Jersey – Rein Taaramae

Brock McLean Tweet of the day

@endurants – Frank Schleck dropped on a climb, not even in high mountains yet...bet he’s calling home tonight to see if Andy has the bunk bed ready