Stage 20, Rambouillet – Paris Champs-Élysées, 120 km

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As usual, everything is all locked up as the party heads for Paris. Bradley Wiggins showed that although he may have been weaker in the mountains, he was dominant in the race against the clock. Had Froome been on his own team, he would have had a lot of time to make up in the mountains, given the two minutes he conceded in the time trials. On the 53.5 km route to Chartres for Stage 19, Wiggins took 1’30” out of Froome, who was in second, as the two of them again showed that they were the class of the peloton.

With first and second locked up, Sky now tries to put the cherry on top with a fourth win in a row for Mark Cavendish on the Champs-Élysées. The World Champion will have eager challenges from the usual suspects, the two triple stage winners of the Tour: the Green Jersey, Peter Sagan, and Andre Greipel, along with Matthew Goss, who will be trying to redeem a tepid first Tour for Orica-Greenedge by netting their first stage win. In fact with Goss, Orica is one of the only teams with a chance to salvage their Tour with a win. Given the dominance of Sky, Sagan, and Greipel, who have scooped up 11 stages among them so far, with good odds that the last stage will go to that group as well, there have been fewer opportunities for the lesser teams to get in with a chance.

One team that has had a solid, albeit drama-ridden, Tour is RadioShackTrekNissanLeöpard. Coming into the year as an unhappy marriage of two teams with Bruyneel fighting with the Luxembourg contingent and a series of crashes and withdrawals highlighting the early season. Then when they lost their best GC hope just before the Tour when Andy Schleck crashed at the Critérium du Dauphiné, the team really needed good things to happen at the Tour. Fortunately, Fabian Cancellara was back from injury and after winning the Prologue, Spartacus fought hard to hold the Yellow Jersey for a full week, giving them something to build on. Cancellara provided the only stage win for the team, but with a solid stable of second tier GC guys the unhappy, feuding, dysfunctional team found itself in the lead of the team competition. But although Jens Voigt and Yaroslav Popovych worked hard to keep the team in position, things were not all smooth sailing, for in the midst of the Tour Fränk Schleck got kicked out for testing positive for a masking agent. So while Schleck protests his innocence and the team prepares to fracture before next year, Haimar Zubeldia (6th overall), Andreas Klöden (11th) and his friend Chris Horner (13th), Maxine Monfort (16th), and the super-domestiques Yaroslav Popovych, and Jens Voigt, will be riding down the Champs-Élysées as the best team in the Tour. Not the most prestigious of palmarès handed out at the Tour, but quite the accomplishment by a number of very accomplished riders for an unhappy team.

Stage 19, Bonneval – Chartres, 53.5 km, ITT

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With two stages left on this year’s edition, the Tour is well-ordered, with all the jerseys assigned and Sky posed to pick up the last two stages to put a final exclamation point on their dominance during this year’s Tour. After, Cavendish destroyed the field at the finish in Brive-la-Gaillarde, he is again looking like a heavy favorite for the Champs-Élysées (if there was ever any doubt), and although we already had the yellow jersey leading out the world champion on that Stage 18 finish, Sky will be looking to repeat that effort and result on the final day in Paris. Cav is surely glad that his time carrying bottles is over and that he can focus on one last sprint at the Tour to give him three stage wins for la boucle, on par with Andre Greipel and Peter Sagan, and then he can turn his attention to the Olympic road race, which goes off in London a mere week from this Saturday.

With all the talk floating around the press corps and other disinterested observers about how Bradley Wiggins is not even the strongest rider on his own team, Wiggins is surely itching to declare his worthiness as a champion by winning the Stage 19 ITT and ensure that even if we was weaker than Chris Froome in the mountains, he was by far strongest against the clock. With Wiggins winning the first 41.5 kilometer time-trial by half a minute, it would not appear wise to bet against him in this final, longer ITT, although Froome seems equally eager to show that he could have won this Tour, if he were not burdened with pulling Wiggins around the hills of France.

Since the jerseys are all assigned, the main thing to watch is who will win the final two stages. However, if one is in search of additional interest, the only other possibility of serious movement appears to be Tejay van Garderen. While pretty much locked into the maillot blanc since he has a three minute lead over the young Frenchman and Stage 8 winner Thibaut Pinot and beat Pinot by four minutes in the Stage 9 time-trial¹, van Garderen does have a chance to move up in the GC from his current place in fifth. Although he does not have any shot at the podium, since he his nearly five minutes down on Nibali, and van Garderen only beat Nibali by a minute in the first time trial, van Garderen does have a fair shot at moving up to fourth. Currently, he is 2’37” behind Jurgen van den Broeck, who has had a relatively quiet, but effective, Tour considering his standing on GC. In Stage 9, van Garderen beat van den Broeck by two minutes, so with the longer course from Bonneval to Chartres, van Garderen has a chance to move up with a good ride. It may be grasping at straws to tout a competition between fourth and fifth, but unless Nibali rides out of his mind and Froome has a bad day, that is probably the best to hope for, aside from seeing how badly Wiggins stomps the field.

¹Part of that deficit may be attributable to the big effort Pinot put in to win Stage 8, but while he may improve, he is certainly not going to reverse that to take time out of van Garderen

Stage 17, Bagnères-de-Luchon – Peyragudes, 143.5 km

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Stage 16 into Bagnères-de-Luchon was a reprise of Stage 10 into Bellegarde-sur-Valserine as Thomas Voeckler did the bleu-blanc-et-rouge proud by again taking the stage, the polka dot jersey, and the most combative on the day. Although this time he had to work even harder. Getting into a large early break, he had to head over the legendary Pyreneean Cols d’Aubisque, de Tourmalet, and d’Aspin, before summiting  the Category 1 climb up to Peyragudes alone and racing down to Bagnères-de-Luchon for the win. After the big effort on the day, he will be hoping that there is not a repeat of his last time in the polka dots, with him losing it the next day, unable to follow any of the breaks.

On the day, Brice Feillu was the last of the breakaway riders to lose Voeckler’s wheel, and Chris Anker Sørensen made a valiant effort to close the gap on the downhill, but Feillu fell away and Sørensen fell short, finishing 3’58” and 1’40” back respectively. Frederik Kessiakoff, who had taken the pois rouges from Voeckler the day after Voeckler’s huge effort on Stage 10, put up a stout defense, managing to make the break in an effort to hold onto the jersey, but after taking second place on the Aubisque, he fell to fourth on the Tourmalet, and was gone by the time Voeckler made a clean sweep by summiting the third and fourth climbs of the day in first place. Given that they both put out large efforts on Stage 16 and that they are only separated by 4 points with 30 more points down to Sørenson in third, who knows what they will have left to fight over the five categorized climbs on Stage 17.

Stage 17 starts off with a Category 1 climb summiting at 27.5 kilometers, followed by a Category 2 and a Category 3 as appetizers before the peloton takes on the hors categorie Port de Balès and finishes up to Peyragudes. By the time the last two climbs come into play, the GC guys may be there to take the mountain points, even if Voeckler and Kessiakoff have the energy to do battle over the mountains again. If they remain close through to the end, however, there are two category 4 climbs on Sunday’s stage into Paris, to add some spice if the GC, white, and green jerseys are all decided early, as they look certain to be. So on a relatively flat final stage, the mountain jersey could add an additional morsel of interest to the main question of whether Sky can top off their amazing Tour with the Yellow Jersey leading out the World Championship Stripes on the Champs-Élysées, but first Wiggins has to make it to Peyragudes.

Stage 15, Samatan – Pau, 158.5 km

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On Stage 14, the break stayed away with the help of some sabotage on the road and more importantly defensive indifference, as it is called in baseball. On the second category 1 climb for the day, everyone in the yellow jersey group started to puncture, including the trailing motos. Evans punctured twice and Cummings, coming up to give Evans his wheel couldn’t help out his leader because he had punctured as well. It turned out that someone had spread tacks across the road, so as the yellow jersey Wiggins neutralized the race (aside from Pierre Rolland, who has hopefully been working on a very good excuse for why he attacked…his dog ate his radio?) before puncturing himself, and the main contenders did not attack on the final climb. Not that the final climb was a particularly auspicious place to attack, since it summited nearly 40 k from the finish, but those chasing Wiggins certainly need to take advantage of every bit of steep pavement between here and Paris.

The break looked certain to win, even before the carpenter from Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go wandered across the road, but the tack diversion certainly didn’t hurt them. When Peter Sagan snuck into the break and Goss and Greipel indicated that they have both given up on any hopes of the green jersey, there was no one with any interest in corralling the break and Sagan was allowed to scoop up the points at the intermediate sprint. Realizing that getting to the finish line with Sagan was not conducive to his own chances of winning, and having the legs to choose his own adventure, Luis León Sánchez struck out on his own and took the stage nearly a minute ahead of his tired breakaway companions. Sagan led Sandy Casar and Philippe Gilbert across the line to take second place points and further put the green jersey out of reach, with the remnants of the break then trickling across for the next ten minutes or so before the yellow jersey group finally got all the tacks out of their tires and crossed nearly 20 minutes in arrears.

Having conceded the green jersey, Goss and Greipel should be eager for a chance at a stage win on Monday in Pau, and we will see whether with the prospect of a rest day on Tuesday either of their respective teams have the energy to chase, or whether it is another one for the break. With only one more sprint left, next Sunday on the Champs-Élysées, one would think that the sprinters teams would circumscribe the break’s freedom, but we shall see. Cavendish has also been absent from the pointy end of the last couple sprints so if the sprinters reel everything in, we will also see what he has left in the legs, and whether he can get up and down the bumpy profile and be a factor at the tape.

Stage 14, Limoux – Foix, 191 km

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Stage 13 into Cap d’Agde was a long one down to and then along the coast. If Bjarne Riis had someone in contention Saxo Bank surely would have been driving things into the turn for his signature move of forming echelons and hopefully catching someone out when the race started along the coast. Unfortunately, Riis does not have much going on this Tour, and the wind was not strong enough, so it was the Category 3 climb 20 kilometers from the finish that broke up the peloton, although Mark Cavendish and Matthew Goss were among few riders that it affected, in the sense of wanting to make it over, but not making it, most of the riders who did not make the split were likely content just to take it easy and let the race finish as it may. All the top GC riders, Sagan, Boasson Hagen and Greipel all made it over the climb, setting up what was sure to be a field sprint. Alexandre Vinokourov and Michael Albasini had designs changing the script, but after some time off the front, they were duly reeled in. In the final sprint, Wiggins showed some class in yellow, leading out Boasson Hagen for the sprint, but Sagan and Greipel proved to be too much, with Greipel pipping Sagan at the post.

Because of the relatively easy finish, the breakaway never really had a chance, and was mostly living on the goodwill of the peloton. Since it was Bastille day there was a large French contingent, but the most notable participant was in fact one of Riis’s riders, Michael Mørkøv. Mørkøv found himself in the polka-dot jersey at the beginning of the Tour and spent several days banging his head at the front in the breaks in order to pick up mountain points and consolidate his hold on the jersey, and he managed to maintain his lead until the high mountains came at the end of the first week. Stage 13 happened to fall on the fifth anniversary of his father’s death, and so to honor his father, Mørkøv was out in the break again,. When it became clear that the break was going to be swallowed up, he set out on his own, an effort that ended on the only categorized climb of the day, and while perhaps not as good as a stage win, the determination and effort certainly paid a worthy tribute.

Although, Sagan and Greipel made it over on Saturday, it is unlikely that they are going to make it over the two category 1 climbs, which peak 64 kilometers and 40 kilometers from the finish on Sunday. With the 40 kilometers remaining after the second climb, it is unlikely to shake up the GC, but we will see whether a break can stay away and who is willing to take some risks out of the lead group on the descent.

After this somewhat odd appetizer in the Pyrenees, Monday features another one for the sprinters with only a couple Cat 4 climbs and one Cat 3, spread between the 50 k to go and 25 k to go marks. Then there is a rest day on Tuesday, before Wednesday heads for the Tourmalet, along with other delights, and Thursday serves up a mountain top finish, providing the challengers to Wiggins their last desperate hopes to push him onto a bad day and make up serious time.

Stage 13, Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux – Le Cap d’Agde

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The Garmin Daves, Millar and Zabriskie, may have gotten themselves into a bum break on Stage 10, but on Stage 12, a day for the break, Millar navigated the rapidly forming and disintegrating breaks to find the right one, and in the end prevented Jean Christophe Peraud from making it three in a row for the French. With the high number of breaks resolving and dissolving themselves over the first portion of the race, Millar got himself into the winning one along with Robert Kiserlovski, Cyril Gautier, Jean-Christophe Peraud, and Egoi Martinez. Once they coalesced and hit the flat it was clear that the peloton was uninterested in their progress and the gap grew as large as 12 minutes. A Category 3 rise about 20 kilometers from the line seemed to provide a good opportunity for someone to give it a go and ditch his breakaway companions, but despite some desultory attacks near the end, the break stayed together until the end when Millar proved himself stronger than Perauld at the moment of decision. After a disastrous Tour so far, the stage win was very welcome for the Garmin-Sharp boys, and they must surely feel like things are looking a little brighter in the wake of that victory.

The two category 1 climbs that kicked off the stage and the fact that a break was likely going to take the honors on the day meant that the stage was not a leisurely exit from the alps, but rather a furious charge, and there were a fair number of riders hurting on the early climbs, especially those like Pierre Rolland and Thibaut Pinot who had dug deep on the previous couple stages. Although one rider now cowed by his efforts on the previous day was Robert Kiserlovski who got himself the most combative rider prize for jumping back into the decisive break after being the last breakaway rider to lose Pierre Rolland’s wheel on the brutal stage the day before.

For the Brits, Millar’s stage win was especially poignant as it came 45 years to the day after the infamous climb up Mont Ventoux when Tom Simpson collapsed and died from a combination of heat, illness, alcohol, and amphetamines. Until the current generation of British riders came along, Simpson was arguably the greatest British rider, having won three of the monuments, the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Milano-San Remo, and the Giro di Lombardia, and having been the only British cyclist to win the World Championships until Cavendish captured the stripes last year. Thus, it was appropriate that on the anniversary of his death an elder statesman of the resurgence of British cycling and a reformed doper himself, David Millar, took top honors and used the platform to remind people of the lessons to be learned from Simpson and himself.

After Stage 12, the race has definitively left the Alps and is on the way to the Pyrenees, finishing along the Mediterranean coast. If any of the sprint teams has the energy to hold the race together and to keep the puncheurs from getting any ideas above their station over the category 3 climb 15 kilometers from the finish, then the stage into Le Cap d’Agde (home of a whole nudist village) should be another chance for the sprinters. Additionally, given that it is Bastille Day, there are sure to be plenty of Frenchmen with ideas about sneaking away from the bunch throughout the day, since there is not much hope for le tricolore if it comes down to a field sprint.

Stage 12, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne – Annonay Davézieux, 226 km

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Vive la France! Well perhaps more accurately EuropCar. Thomas Voeckler took Stage 10 and Pierre Rolland took Stage 11. Like Voeckler, Rolland got into the big, early break, where he had the company of his teammate Christophe Kern, who deserves a lot of credit on the day for his work driving the break hard to slim it down over the first climb and up much of the second, before turning what was left over to Rolland. After Kern winnowed the break, Rolland was the strongest over the Col du Mollard, along with Robert Kišerlovski, although Chris Anker Sorensten, Vasil Kiryienka, and Peter Velits all hung around for awhile before succumbing on the final climb. Rolland finally dropped Kišerlovski on that last climb to Toussuire, and although it looked for awhile like he himself would fall victim to the challenges of the GC favorites, he held on to it in the end. Like Voeckler he picked up the most combative rider prize for the day, although he short of the pois rouges. Voeckler was cooked after his effort the day before and with three large climbs had no hopes of holding on to them, and it was Fredrik Kessiakoff who took over the jersey, finishing the day 11 points ahead of Rolland.

Rolland was not the only Frenchmen to show a little spirit on the day as Thibaut Pinot attacked the yellow jersey group on the final two climbs. Although he got reeled in, and he, marked by Chris Froome, only ended up finishing two seconds ahead of the yellow jersey group, Pinot did finish second on the day and succeeded in picking up about a minute and a half in the young rider jersey competition on Tejay van Garderen.

In terms of the overall it is looking pretty good for Wiggins and Team Sky. Wiggins is ahead by two minutes and his nearest contender is his teammate Froome, with Nibali next at another 20 seconds back. Evans was the big loser on the day, dropping nearly a minute and a half to Nibali, Froome, and Wiggins, and he is looking pretty much cooked. Nibali’s best hope is that Wiggins blows up on one of the big mountain stages in the Pyrenees, however, there is only one mountain top finish, so things are not looking bright. For the moment Sky and Wiggins are also lucky that Froome got that mechanical on Stage 1, because without it he would be within about 30 seconds of the lead, and he has looked stronger in the mountains, so they might be having some serious questions about who the real leader is. However, if Wiggins does blow up, they will probably be wishing that he had some more time on Nibali, even though Froome’s performance on the first TT suggests he will be alright. Also, with the talk of Froome and Wiggins, it should be noted that Richie Porte and Michael Rogers were still with them over the first two big climbs on the day, and Wiggins has been very well protected.

After this diversion in the Alps, Stage 12 to Annonay Davézieux provides two serious climbs at the beginning, but the finish will not be one to separate the GC guys, and after all the work they have put in, Sky will likely try to let a break get away on this one. So there will probably be a big fight to get into the break, and then an easy day for the peloton.

Stage 11, Albertville – La Toussuire-Les Sybelles, 148 km

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Thomas Voeckler won’t be in yellow come Bastille Day on Saturday, but he has certainly done his yearly duty of giving the French something to cheer about at the Tour. The first break of the day was initiated by green jersey holder Peter Sagan on the hunt for some points, but he was quickly joined by a group of more than 20 riders, including a fair share of experts in the art of the break, some decent climbers, and Matthew Goss looking to keep up in the sprint competition. Given that there were no real threats on GC  and given the climbs to come, the large break was allowed to go on its merry way. Among the teams that got two riders in the break was Garmin, which managed to get Dave Zabriskie and David Millar in the break, although, given the other riders in the break, they appear to have been a little skeptical of their chances for ultimate success:

DEFINITION OF SNAFU: @dzabriskie to me once break had formed, DZ – Think you can out sprint Sagan? ME – Think you can out climb Scarponi?

— David Millar (@millarmind) July 11, 2012

After Goss beat Sagan out for the intermediate sprint, the road began to climb the hors catégorie Col du Grand Colombier, our hero of the day, Voeckler, made the more selective split along with Luis León Sánchez, Michele Scarponi, and Dries Devenyns. With one final climb after the Grand Colombier, the break disintegrating behind them, and with Sky content to keep them within reasonable distance, it appeared that one of the four were destined for victory. Yet there was a final twist, because breakaway expert and embracer-of-suffering, Jens Voigt was ready to emerge like a Phoenix from the shattered break. Apparently the rest day had left him refreshed from his hard two days before the rest day, so after cresting the Grand Colombier behind the four leaders, he began looking for the taste of blood in his mouth:

and chased back to the leading group. Unfortunately for him, he was gassed and Voeckler was the best of the bunch, so the Jensie happily settled for third and Voeckler took  the stage, the polka dots, and the most combative rider. So while he will not duplicate his feat from last year with a long stay in the yellow jersey, he did give the French something to cheer, and gave his teammate Pierre Rolland and Cofidis rider Thibaut Pinot some more time to develop into the next great French hopes.

After Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome managed to dominate the Stage 9 time-trial, beating even time-trial expert Fabian Cancellara by a minute and half-a-minute respectively, Sky controlled the stage into Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, with Jurgen van den Broeck in eighth being the highest placed rider to sneak out any time, taking 30 seconds to leave him 4’48” behind (the aforementioned Rolland also showed some friskiness and joined van den Broeck to grab 30 seconds back). Although, van den Broeck was the only one to get away, Nibali put a valiant, if doomed, effort as well on the back side of the Grand Colombier.

While Sky held it together on Stage 10, they have a long way left to go, and Stage 11 to La Toussuire-Les Sybelles, will be a serious test, giving the climbers plenty of chances to dry and disrupt the Sky mobile, with two hors catégorie climbs, the Col de la Madeleine peaking 40 kilometers into the stage and the Col de la Croix de Fer peaking 93 kilometers into the stage, serving to loosen up the bunch, and then after a second category bump on the back side of the Croix de Fer, the race finishes with a summit finish atop the first category climb to La Toussuire. The challengers will certainly have to make some noise if they want to break Wiggins’s grip on yellow before the final time-trial a week from Saturday.

Stage 9, Arc-et-Senans – Besançon, 41.5 km

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Rein Taaramäe, the great Estonian hope, is still in the maillot blanc, that is the good news, but he lost some ground in the overall. He appears to have left it all out on the hill up to La Planche des Belles Filles to finish with the favorites and ended up having a rough go of it on the following stage, Stage 9, which proved to be a tough day with its seven categorized climbs. Taaramäe’s struggles coupled with the fact that RadioShack had a good day on Stage 9, with four riders in the lead chase group, including their young rider Tony Gallopin, means that Taaramäe is no longer in fourth overall, and is now only 45 seconds ahead of Gallopin to maintain the white jersey. However, Gallopin wasn’t the only young rider to have a good day into Porrentruy, the stage winner, staying away out of the break, Thibaut Pinot of Française des Jeux, showed that Peter Sagan isn’t the only 22 year old who can come across the line first in this Tour (no word on whether he had a bell on his bike).

Now, after two hard days in the hills, most of the peloton gets some extra rest during the 41.5 kilometer time trial from Arc-et-Senans to Besançon. Aside from the GC guys, the time trial guys who have a shot at the stage , and anyone who is doing a hard ride as reconnaissance for either of those two groups of riders, everyone else gets to take it relatively easy. The main GC contenders at this point are Bradley Wiggins, Cadel Evans, and Vincenzo Nibali, with Denis Menchov and Haimar Zubeldia, both lurking within a minute of Wiggins. With another long time trial in the offing, we will see whether anyone manages to establish a gap with this first TT, and how they are all feeling after having survived the first week of racing.

Among the favorites for the stage win, Fabian Cancellara would appear to be the top favorite after his dominating win in the prologue and his week in the yellow jersey, although one may wonder whether he did too much work defending the jersey and won’t be able to go full gas in the TT. After him, the 1a favorite is surely reigning TT World Champion Tony Martin, and after him Dave Zabriskie and Gustav Larsson both deserve mention, although neither has been in the class of Martin or Cancellara recently. In any case should provide a competitive race and should provide further elucidation of the GC.

Stage 8, Belfort – Porrentruy, 157.5 km

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Instead of focusing on the English Speaking Peoples in the GC overview for this year’s tour, I clearly should have focused on the Baltic peoples instead.¹ Like the English Speaking Peoples they had a milestone at the Giro d’Italia, when Ramūnas Navardauskas of Garmin became the  first Lithuanian to wear the maglia rosa. Now, at the Tour, the Estonian Rein Taaramäe was the only rider aside from the three favorites, Bradley Wiggins, Cadel Evans, and Vincenzo Nibali, to survive Sky’s furious climb to La Planche des Belles Filles yesterday. Well Chris Froome also survived the assault, since he won the stage, but he was leading the skyward charge for his captain Wiggins.

Speaking of Froome, Wiggins and Sky must have something compelling to lure riders, because after his ride at the Vuelta last year, Froome surely could have gotten himself on a team where he was riding for himself instead of for Wiggins, and Cavendish could have had a team that was focused on keeping him safe and helping him win stages instead of asking him to carry bottles. So far Sky seem to be keeping it together , but one really wonders what will happen next year. If he has a good Tour Froome surely would prefer not to have another year as super-domestique and Cavendish won’t want another year of crashing and carrying the wet stuff while he watches Greipel and Sagan clean up the hardware.

Blast, that was all English Speaking Peoples again, back to the Baltics and Rein Taaramäe, who is the GC contender for Cofidis, a team that left the Pro Tour ranks in 2009, but as a French team got an invitation to the Tour. Their leader, Taaramäe, had a breakout year last year finishing 11th in the Tour and winning his first Grand Tour stage during the Vuelta taking Stage 14 out of a breakaway. Now with his performance on Stage 7 of this year’s Tour he is sitting fourth overall behind Wiggins, Evans, and Nibali (Froome got mixed up in one of the many crashes during the first week and is sitting in 9th, 1’32” in arrears) and at 25 he is wearing the maillot blanc of the best young rider (a competition in which he finished second to Pierre Rolland last year). Taaramäe is also the reigning Estonian individual time trial champion, so perhaps he has a chance to keep up in the tests against the clock (starting with 41.5 kilometers on Stage 9) as well. He obviously has a long way to go, but his 11th last year at least shows he can make it, and we will see whether he can put any pressure on the big three. So amongst all the former subjects of Queen Victoria, keep an eye out for the rider(s) from the Baltics.

After the GC guys got their first taste of productive action with the mountain top finish on Stage 7, Stage 8 provides a series of punchy climbs with the finish 15 kilometers of downhill and flat road after the last climb. Given the hard first week and hard day on Stage 7, Stage 8 is probably better suited to a breakaway finally staying away (if he’s healthy, it’s the kind of stage Alexandre Vinokourov may take a flier on) or someone with a little bit of sprinting ability making it over all the saw teeth with whatever is left of the pack (surely those ramps on the Col de la Croix will prove too much for Sagan if he makes it that far). In any case, it will be the beginning of what Sky hopes to be a two week long defense of the maillot jaune.

¹I was going to make this more symmetric by calling them the Baltic speaking peoples, but, unfortunately, while Lithuanian and Latvian are related, and are part of the Baltic Language group, Estonian is part of the Uralic language group along with Hungary and Finnish, so that didn’t work and they had to be tied together by geography instead.