Leinster

Exciting finish today, Kristijan Durasek made the winning move inside the last km. The big deal was definitely Fuglsang and Thomas battling on the final climb, but Dumoulin doing just enough to regain contact on the descent. All 3 of them look on great form coming into the Tour.

PepeM

Just caught up with this one. That was a great stage, attack after attack, not a single break. Pretty cool to see them reach 100 km/hr there too.

Leinster

Another exciting one. Hilly enough stage that it made people work for it, but still finished with a bunch sprint where Sagan was just quicker than any of the other survivors.

Sagan really impressed me with this one. For once he (or anyone leading a Tinkoff team this season) had a teammate in Majka who was strong enough to control things at the front on the uphill drag to the finish, and in the final km he was just able to follow the right attacks and his speed (and bike handling in a very narrow, twisting finish, it has to be said) were too much for the rest. He's up to 3rd overall now, 5s off the lead, with an undulating finishing circuit in tomorrow's stage that could suit him very well...

With only one proper mountain stage in this TdS, is it too much to suggest Sagan as a possible GC contender? If he picks up sprint bonuses and limits his losses on the queen stage, who's to say he can't sustain a TT ride for 38km on Sunday?

Also, I like that the past 2 days (and tomorrow, and it looks like Thursday, Friday and Saturday too) have been more classic-type terrain. Take note, Grand Tour organisers, there is a middle ground between pancake flat days for the pure sprinters and summit finishes for the pure climbers that can lead to exciting races. If you give riders a parcours that enough of them can be competitive on, you'll find more of them competing harder on it.

Pemetic2006

What is the best way to watch this race? It was advertised, during the Criterium, that it is on Universal Sports but I don't have that option.
Thanks for any help.

PepeM

steephill.tv bike travelogue and procycling live coverage

Pemetic2006

Sweet. Much appreciated!

PepeM

No problem. That is one excellent website to have bookmarked.

He is one second behind now, hard to not see him as a contender.

Leinster

We'll see how much time he loses tomorrow. If he pulls off the same type of performance that he did on Mt Baldy, he's a contender. It remains to be seen how good of a climber Dumoulin is too. You'd expect Fuglsang, Pinot and Thomas, and probably a few others, to all put time into the top 2. Majka is 25th at 1:24, so we'll see if his job is to go for the GC/stage win, or try and tow Sagan to the finish.

WCroadie

I kinda feel bad for Greg can Avermaet, he's just missed winning on the big stage so many times this year.

Blue Belly

Sagan is looking better at this point in the season. However, the last KM was a pretty bad piece of riding, by him. He should not have been in front of most of the sprinters at 1k & certainly not have started his sprint that early. He's lucky to have finished #2 . He'll need better instincts in the classics next year. luckily, he may not need to rely on his sprinting ability to win this race. He's proven that he can be a competent climber. Maybe not in huge climbing stages of the GIRO the TOUR but, good enough to hold his own in most other types of hilly stage racing. Hope he can pull this one off!

Leinster

I haven't watched today's stage yet. My quote above was referring to his win on stage 3. It sounds like he screwed up letting Matthews take his wheel, and he's been caught out that way in the past.

He'll have a hard day tomorrow. He can climb well for a big guy, but there are some very good climbers in the field, and it looks like a massive mountain to finish off the day.

PepeM

Didn't realize how brutal that climb was going to be today. Not sure Sagan can make up 20+ minutes.

Blue Belly

Nope. Yeah, that was one of those demoralizing type climbs. Everything out in the open & long stretches where you can see just how much pain you are going to endure. Pinot looked great! Though, most of the early climb seemed to be at a painfully slow pace. The tour won't be that way!

Leinster

Great ride by Thibaut Pinot on Wednesday to take the stage and yellow. It was a pretty epic finishing climb up to 2700m, so it's a shame that there was virtually nobody there to see it.

Today looks like finally being a boring sprinters' stage. No major obstacles for Pinot to negotiate until he gets to the TT on Sunday, when the question is can he hold off the likes of Thomas, Fuglsang and Dumoulin over 40km.

Leinster

It seemed to be a case of everybody watching each other waiting for someone to make a move. It wasn't until Henao went to the front for Thomas that the pace picked up.

Leinster

Did Sagan give the organisers a hand designing the TdS course this year? "Well, if you must have a dead flat stage, could you maybe have it finish on a narrow street with 2 hard 90deg bends in the last km? Oh, and if it could be raining on the day too, that'd be great."

jyl

A sprinter friendly race, and the pure sprinters have been blanked on every sprint finish so far - they've gone to Sagan (2), Matthews (1), a breakaway (1). Cavendish's 6th at 2 sec down today is the closest he's been to the sharp end.

Leinster

4 Cat3 climbs in the last 60km tomorrow and Saturday too. Even Matthews decided he'd had enough after Tuesday. Cav must feel completely lied to about the course.

I expected more from Kristoff and Degenkolb, though. They're usually able to get over some of the slightly lumpy ones. The stage 3 and 4 climbs looked a bit Milan-San-Remo-ey, though I guess given how they turned out they were a bit more LBL?

Given that he's going to be Quintana's super-domestique at the Tour, Valverde's probably been watching highlights of Suisse and thinking "Dude, I would've NAILED that one..."

TCR Rider

What happened to Cav today? He was poised to pounce and it looked as if he just pulled the plug. Wet roads? Tight turns? Looked like Kristoff started to slide in the turn so maybe that had somethng to do with it. No problem for Sagan. Are you watching Oleg?

jyl

Looked like he lost the wheel of his lead out, don't know why or if he dropped out.
Love seeing Sagan win.

Giacomo 1 

I don't think you can dismiss that crash at the front towards the end of the race as a factor in how the race wound-up. While all the sprinters made it through, a couple of the leadout riders didn't and it had to throw the race into some confusion.

That crash looked it hurt, ouch!

jyl

I don't usually get excited about new bikes, they all look the same to me, but here's the bike Cavendish is riding in the TdS and I'm in lust or at least in strong like . . . if Batman rode in the World Tour, this is what the BatBicycle would look like.

Gallery: New Specialized Venge spotted at Tour de Suisse - VeloNews.com

Interesting he has full Shimano Di2 despite EQS being sponsored by FSA and the team using FSA chainrings. I speculate after multiple mechanicals in which the chains dropped from the FSA chainrings (Boonen in Tour of Qatar, Cavendish in Tirreno-Adriatico sprint and again on Cipressa climb in Milan-San Remo), at least one EQS rider threw a big hissy fit.

PepeM

So that is the slow bike that can't keep up with Sagan. I would stay away from it.

68venable

It's been an awesome race. I just watch it on youtube when I get home. I watch the last 10 K in another language then watch the highlights in English.

Giacomo 1 

A bit of an upset for stage 7.

Everyone thought this was a Sagan stage all the way, but it was Alexander Kristoff for the win.

Kristoff took the wheel of Sagans lead out man and rode him for the victory. Sagan closed fast, but was unable to overtake and settled for a strong second. Cavendish was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Degenkolb, who should have had a shot here. Neither team had a good lead out. Giant especially doesn't ever seem to be at the front doing any work, nor does their lead out ever look organized.

Right now, it has to be Kristoff and Sagan going into the TDF with confidence, while Cav and Degenkolb must be wondering where they stand...