Le. Tour. De. France.
Yawn. Good Morning. The time is 6:30 am. It’s the next to last day of Le Tour. Nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes.
Now you may think these strange sentiments unless you’re as utterly sleep deprived as I am by 21 days of racing and you may think that 7 minutes a slim enough margin over 2,156 miles and you may look at yesterday’s massive pile up in the final 3 km of the stage precipitated by Peter Sagan who doesn’t even remember what happened so road numb is he and took out or tied up the vast majority of the field 74 of whom (more or less, the math is complicated) all finished :07 seconds behind the stage winner, the unheard of up until now Ramunas Navardaukas.
Other popular times (1:06), (3:10), (5:12), (5:58), and (7:57). You didn’t even really have to pass the line.
Admittedly the course was a little damp.
So what does this all mean? Nothing.
Oh sure, if you drill down to the also-rans, the 15th or 16th places you may see some movement and people faced serious injury and some were badly banged up, but if you’ve hung with it this long you’ll suffer through to the end and say “Wait until next year” and pretend you enjoyed it.
On the stage it was Ramunas Navardaukas, John Degenkolb, and Alexander Kristoff (the only one you’ve ever heard of). In the General Classification it’s Vincenzo Nibali, Thibaut Pinot (7:10), Jean-Christophe Péraud (7:23), Alejandro Valverde BelMonte (7:25), and Romain Bardet (9:27). Everyone else is over 11 and a half minutes behind.
For Points it is Peter Sagan (417), Bryan Coquard (253), and Alexander Kristoff (247). Every one else is 58 points behind.
King of the Moutains is done done. Rafal Majka (181), Vincenzo Nibali (168), and Joaquim Rodriguez (112). Everyone else is 23 points behind.
In Team competition it is still Belkin (28:33) to pass AG2R for the win and 3rd place between (1:05:47) and BMC (1:12:25), Europcar (1:27:49), Sky (1:38:37), and Astana (1:39:06).
For the Young Rider Classification (yawn) a 2 way race between Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet (2:17). Michal Kwiatkowski (1:09:35) is still a pretty sure 3rd since he has a 38 minute margin over Tom Dumoulin (1:40:19).
And 38 minutes is a lot to make up during a 34 and 2/3rd mile time trial over what can at best be called bumps.
Heck, even 7 minutes is insurmountable.
The big race will be between Thibaut Pinot, Jean-Christophe Péraud, and Alejandro Valverde BelMonte who have only :15 seconds between them. Everything else is meaningless.
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