procycling

A stage where teammates can play an important role, as the main pass is in the middle of the stage, and riders who will be dropped uphill or downhill in this pass or the smaller next one will need teammates to catch up on the false-flat sections. And of course teammates of riders ahead will be used to pull hard the front groups so that dropped riders cannot come back.

LOL, it happened right at the start, no need to wait for the big climbs, it happened before anything was climbed. Thanks to the TV direction, we didn't see or understand how it happened, but both Ferrand-prevot and Gigante were dropped, so there was a pursuit that consumed all Visma domestiques (1st chase group), all AG domestiques (2nd than 1st chase group), and several FDJ domestiques (peloton). It also annihilated the SD-Works breakaway.

Kerbaol was dropped in a crash in the first curve of the main climb. She never managed to come back.

Gigante was dropped as soon as the very first hairpin bend of the descent that followed. Heck, they weren't even coming fast in the curve, it has just started going downhill for 75 yards and she was already 10 yards behind at the exit of the curve! Insanely bad. She wasn't as strong as yesterday in climbs, so she hadn't managed to get some time margin before the descent.

Then the whole rest was Labous laboriously pulling a group of 5, with some help from the Polish riders who were interested in dropping Gigante for good. There was nothing Gigante could do, there was no one else being dropped (and very few riders ahead), and the groups behind were very far, so she rode alone for over 50 km, progressively losing time.

Vollering was as likeable and bright as always, asking her opponents for a relay 3 seconds after attacking them and failing; attacking in the worst possible locations for her; pointlessly sprinting for mountain points; accelerations that only drops her own cooked teammate Labous who needs to come back to pull gain (after riding for her leader in climbs and flat for 100 km in two days); and so on. Got beaten in the end by Ferrand-Prevot in the last part of the non-categorised climb a few miles from the finish.

I didn't understand Squiban's (🇫🇷 UAE) attitude at all. She didn't dispute the mountain points to Chabbey (🇨🇭 FDJ) and just went for the second place on each of the 2 climbs the breakaway passed ahead. The only reason I can imagine is Chabbey offered her money, because I can't figure out any sportive reason, and I also fail to see what Chabbey could have exchanged in the sport domain.

For the final win... Let's sum it up by saying that the favourite Vollering (🇳🇱 FDJ) massively failed one more time. She was beaten hard by Gigante (🇦🇺 AG) and above all Ferrand-Prevost (🇫🇷 Visma). She could have been beaten by Niewadoma (🇵🇱 Canyon) as well, if the latter had got another rider's help like Vollering behind her got (and the first two riders got too before her).

With only one stage remaining, the biggest team with the biggest favourite, FDJ, has zero stage victory and won't win the Tour unless Ferrand-Prevot has an accident and Gigante is a bit dropped; even the podium was compromised 1 mile from the line. That's the result of the "all for Vollering, all for stage #8" plan.

Same winner as yesterday, Squiban (🇫🇷 UAE), this time from a breakaway.

Again, the FDJ team was pretty lethargic, not trying to catch up with the breakaway, not trying to finish the riders who had been dropped in the last climb, except for a mile or so before and after the pass.

Le Court had temporarily lost her yellow jersey, but she managed to catch up in the second half of the descent, and didn't lose a second in the end.

Obviously, her team and herself see Vollering way above the others in the future stages. Well... this kind of overconfidence has already bitten her in the past, I think. She is still the favourite, but who knows what can happen when you chose to place yourself at the mercy of a bad day, an incident, a pee break?

I also didn't understand that Le Net, FDJ teammate of Chabbey who wears the mountain jersey, didn't contest the points to Squiban on the first two climbs despite being in the same breakaway. Chabbey wasn't going to lose the jersey on this stage, given the poor points scale (the second climb was particularly under-categorised), but still... Now that I think of it, Squiban wasn't lucky with pints the day before either: on top the second climb she passed in first position, they had put a time bonus sprint in place of a mountain sprint! That's why she ends up with so few points, in spite of having ridden 5 out of 6 climbs in first position since we arrived in the (pre-)Alps.

Perhaps GC favourites will attack (like they did in the punchy final part of stage #5); perhaps it will simply be a game of attrition before the following harder stages, as the two major climbs are a little bit far from the finish line today.

It looked more like option B.

I am not quite sure what FDJ (Vollering's team) attempted to do in the final two climbs. They were pulling the 'peloton' (about 15 riders only), but weren't reducing the gap with the breakaway (the lone Squiban) and weren't dropping anyone. And Vollering didn't get any time bonus, neither at the last climb not at the finish, while Le Court took all she could (it probably won't matter after real mountain begins, but still...)

Wiebes was quickly dropped in the little climb 20 km from the line, and neither Kopecky nor herself made a big effort to try to come back.

It was a much more interesting and pleasant final part than the previous stages (even the first two). Successive splits left a group of 7 for victory, and Le Court wins and takes the yellow jersey, even though her recklessly stopping 10 metres from the line almost caused Vollering to cross the line before her.

After the easy half of the Tour, we have already lost 19 riders. That's almost the equivalent of 3 full teams.

At the Intermediate Sprint, only 1.5 rider seemed interested in the points.

I am not sure because I really don't know them well, but wasn't it a little bit the same for GC, with several riders, whom one may have expected to put up a fight, having a bit of a Roglitch attitude? Do many riders submit to the favourite(s) and already give up on GC before the first stage is finished?

Still amazed at how many female riders can crash in seemingly unremarkable situations. It had gotten better in last year's edition, but we seem to be back to the number of crashes of the year before. No massive crash though, more individual / little groups this year.

Oh surprise! there was a sprint and Wiebes won for the 38^th^ time in two years. 🙄

Several but not too many hard crashes, I believe.

100% expected outcome of a sprint stage:

• Wiebes (🇳🇱 SD-Worx) wins,
• mass crashes, involving GC leaders.

🙄