OK, the other thing I don't understand is that Sky actually had a guy in the breakaway. Well, it's true that he eventually won the race (good consolation for Sky, given that Froome folded), but early on his contribution to keeping the breakaway going was helping Talansky and hurting Froome, wasn't it? Why contribute to a breakaway that's hurting your GC contender?

In truth, I can't remember a race like this - the final stage of a race where a top-3 GC contender just 30-40 seconds down is allowed to get himself into a big breakaway early on. I would have thought that the other GC contending teams would immediately move to the front of the peloton and chase down the breakaway. They were so sure that they would chase him down later?