Stage 7: Tomblaine – La Planche des Belles Filles

There is a saying amongst the riders when the race enters the mountains – ‘The Tour begins today’.  That it certainly did, Stage 7 providing the first serious mountain climbing challenge and giving us a good idea of who will be seriously competitive in this year’s Tour de France.

It was another beautiful day in northern France, the gentle sunshine belying the carnage of the day before as the peloton rolled along from Tomblaine to La Planche des Belles Filles.  The crashes certainly took their toll, a further eight riders failing to start the day’s stage in addition to the four who withdraw during the race yesterday.  A 13^th rider, Saur-Sojasun’s Anthony Delaplace, withdrew early on in the stage after being unable to continue with a broken wrist.

With the much-reduced peloton racing along at the fastest opening speed of this year’s Tour de France, going 44km/h, the race was nearly 20 kilometres in before the day’s breakaway was formed, the biggest of the Tour so far.  Seven different teams were represented in the nine-man escape group, Christophe Riblon (AG2R La Mondiale), Chris Anker Sorensen (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank), Martin Velits (Omega Pharma-Quickstep), Michael Albasini (Orica-GreenEdge), Cyril Gautier (Europcar), Dmitriy Fofonov (Astana) and Luis Leon Sanchez (Rabobank).  As we’ve come to expect, the septet raced away to build themselves a lead of up to six minutes by the 35 kilometre mark.

BMC Racing Team and Katusha Team were leading the peloton through the stunning mountain countryside of forests and lakes as the bunch approached the intermediate sprint, passed by the breakaway nearly five minutes hence with Albasini in the lead.  Orica-GreenEDGE put together their sprint train and raced away from the peloton, Peter Sagan sitting on Matt Goss’s wheel.  Unfortunately for the Australian team, Goss suffered mechanical trouble as Sagan began to sprint for the line, leaving Sagan to take eighth place along before waiting several minutes for the peloton to catch up after his huge acceleration.

BMC continued to lead the peloton as the breakaway began heading up through the mountains.  Luis Léon Sanchez had some problems with fans getting too close as they headed up the hills, appealing to the commissaires to intervene, to no avail.  Chris Anker Sorenson, teammate of points classification leader Michael Morkov, claimed the King of the Mountain points available on the first climbs to protect the Dane’s lead as the peloton began making their mountains as well.  It wasn’t long before the peloton began shedding riders; sprinters and those injured in crashes the first to go.  BMC, Team Sky and Garmin-Sharp were taking turns leading the peloton at an ever-increasing pace, trying to haul back the breakaway and set up the peloton for a stage win all in one go.

The first objective was achieved sooner than the second, but it still took a while to break the spirit of the breakaway.  As the peloton continued fracturing and some of the big names like Jurgen van den Broeck of Omega Pharma-Quickstep and Alejandro Valverde from Movistar punctured, the breakaway riders began attacking again, Fofonov and Albasini trying to escape their less mountain-inclined companions. The final climb finished off the peloton’s job, though, the seven escapees unable to cope with the high gradient of the final climb.

Riders continued going off the back as the peloton went up, some of the key GC contenders and notable climbers being the next to go.  Soon enough the ‘peloton’ was reduced to 10 or 15 riders who were able to keep up with the tempo that Sky were stamping out over the final few kilometres.  One by one the Sky riders emptied their tanks and trailed off the back, leaving both Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome alone with Cadel Evans and a handful of others, including Liquigas-Cannondale’s Vincenzo Nibali and Cofidis’s Rein Taaramae.  Froome continued to put the pressure on the leaders until the final kilometre, when Cadel Evans jumped out from behind Wiggins’s wheel and began leading towards the finish.  Wiggins was doing all he could to stay on Evans’s wheel as the Australian raced away towards the finish, allowing Froome to power up alongside him and leave both Wiggins and Evans in the dust to take the stage win.  Fabian Cancellara came over the line a little more than a minute later, putting Wiggins in yellow for Stage 8 with Cadel in second place on the general classification, just 10 seconds behind him.

Tomorrow is a lumpy stage with one Category 4, one Category 3, four Category 2s and a Category 1 climb leading into a downhill finish.  This is a perfect stage for a breakaway to stay the distance and take the stage, but with so many riders injured, the move may well come from Team Astana, which has the most uninjured climbers.  Simon Gerrans from Orica-GreenEDGE and Nicki Sorenson from Saxobank-Tinkoff Bank are other possibilities for mountain breakaways that can hold out against the peloton.  It will also be worth watching Team Sky to see how they go defending Bradley Wiggins and the yellow jersey.