Saturday 26: 12:05–12:15 → 16:10–16:35
A hilly stage, most likely for breakawaymen. A faint last chance for L. Martinez to score mountain points and finish 2nd before Vingegaard (Pogatchar is now out of his reach; only Vingegaard could in theory still grab the mountain jersey).
Beware: the stage starts and finishes about one hour earlier than most others, as there is a hell of a transfer to Paris area afterwards.
Onley could try something. He has a lot to gain really. Of course RBH will be wary all the way to the finish, so i don’t really expect him to succeed if Lipowitz doesn’t have any kind of mishap.
Don’t worry Oscar, Primož has your back!
In fact, it was Jegat (🇫🇷 Total), 11th and 4′08 behind O’Connor who attempted something, with a great deal of self-sacrifice because he wasn’t welcomed in the breakaway, and after his own attack on the 2nd cat. climb, he was cooked for the rest of the race, and struggled to stay in wheels from group to group until the end. He was lucky there were many splits and always someone with which to ride together.
Nobody attempted anything for mountain points, and the breakaway took all the points of the Intermediate Sprint.
I’m very happy for Jegat, he deserved a bit of luck after trying so hard for that Top 10 all Tour. Those lesser GC guys often don’t get much attention but I respect that they go through a similar grind as the top guys on every climb to minimise time gaps when a lot of other riders around them are taking it easier. I didn’t think O’Connor would care about a Top 10 considering his goal was a Top 5 and he’d already won a stage, but the fact he chased by himself at the front of the peloton suggests it meant something to him. Hopefully he gets a proper GC support team next year. I know Jayco were down one and Schmid crashed while leading the peloton, but it’s really quite poor that their team was so weak O’Connor had to defend by himself.
Yeah, it was surprising to see that basically the whole Jayco team had gone on holiday (I can’t imagine they were trying to bring Greenpaths to a sprint). A Plapp would have been immensely useful on this type of terrain, if it had been one of the few days in the year when he consents to ride (but if you are Australian, perhaps you know better than me, if he experienced some trouble in the first part of the race).
Jegat was lucky (and O’Connor unlucky) that despite a hell of a lot of infighting among the breakaway, there was almost no down-time at the front: infighting only made them go faster and faster, instead of the usual alternance of faster/slower. Even the crash didn’t slow down the front of the race.
A hectic race anyway. There was just a short moment of calm, mid-race, between the point when the breakaway finally got a substantial gap and Jegat’s (inconsiderate?) attack in the 2nd category climb. But otherwise…
Yes, Plapp was the one I was very surprised to not see chasing. He has been quite strong at this Tour, and even tried for some breaks later in the race.