Le Tour 2014: Stage 8, Tomblaine / Gérardmer La Mauselaine

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Flaming chunks of twisted metal!  You could hardly ask for better weather or roads than you got in Stage 7 and still you had massive, race altering crashes.  So much for your theories about cobbles, or rain, or ‘selfies’.

‘Selfies’! even my activist brother who admits he can’t watch 15 minutes of Le Tour without falling into a coma of boredom repeated that laughable excuse.  Folks, spectators have been crowding the road and even dashing into the middle of the course to take pictures since the invention of the camera, which is to say basically forever.  I wonder what the tough guys of the first Tour would have to say about these whiny ass pretty boys when they rode cobbles almost every day and had to deal with flash powder explosions?

Stef Clement, Belkin captain, withdrew after a crash at km 40 (dead flat and dry), but then again he wasn’t expected to even start.  Mathias Frank withdrew early in the stage and Danny van Poppel at km 120 leaving Simon Yates, who scored the Climbing point for Côte de Maron, the youngest rider left at 22 years old.  Shortly after Tejay van Garderen who fancied himself a contender in the General Classification at (2:11) was involved in a crash and ended up losing 1:03 on the day and taking out his team mate Darwin Atapuma.  

In the last km there was another crash when Andrew Talansky went down during the final sprint and it looked like Peter Sagan would get his first stage win only to be aced out by Matteo Trentin in a photo finish.

On the stage it was Trentin and Sagan followed by 25 other riders who scored the same time as the leaders.  In the General Classification it is still Vincenzo Nibali followed by Jakob Fugslsang (:02), Peter Sagan (:44), Michal Kwiatkowski (:50).  Three more riders are under 2 minutes back, Tony Gallopin, Riche Porte, and Andrew Talansky and only 10 more under 3 minutes including Alberto Contador (2:37).  In Points competition the leader is Peter Sagan (259), Brian Coquard (146), Marcel Kittel (137), Alexander Kristoff (117), Mark Renshaw (85), and André Greipel (91); the next rider is 31 points behind.  In the Climber contest another static day, Cyril Lmoine (6), Blel Kadri (5), Jens Voigt and Nicolas Edet tied at 4.  Among the Teams it’s Astana, Belkin (4:18), Sky (6:31), BMC (7:08), and Trek (8:25).  Everyone else is over 10 minutes behind.  In Youth competition nothing changed, Peter Sagan, Michal Kwiatkowski (:06), Roman Bardet (1:27), Tom Dumoulin (1:41), and Thibaut Pinot (2:40).  Everyone else is over 11 minutes out.

Today’s stage is almost exactly 100 miles.  It starts out fairly flat though constantly ascending and the Sprint Checkpoint is at exactly 100 km.  After that the day goes up hill for the pure sprinters as we finish with 2 Category 2 climbs, Col de la Croix des Moinats and Col de Grosse Pierre, and in a Category 3 climb to the line in Gérardmer La Mauselaine.  This is the start of 6 more days in the Vosges which while not as tall as the Alps or Pyrenees are pretty steep and narrow.  We shall see in the standings start to change.

Coverage will be on NBC proper, not Vs. (or NBC Sports as it is now known) at 8 am ET.  Your usual schedule of constant repeats will be interupted by IndyCar racing and Outdoor shows though they will do the customary noon and 8 pm.

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