Today's stage: Time trial. Long
enough to create big time gaps. More torment for pure climbers, most
of who got smoked in the stage 6 supercrash.
Who won today's stage? Overall
leader Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) won the stage beating teammate
Chris Froome by 32 seconds. Prologue TT winner Fabian Cancellara
(RSNT) was third.
What matters in the GC race?
Wiggins now has a huge lead overall for this stage of the race. He
leads defending champion Cadel Evans (BMC) by 1' 53”, his teammate
Froome by 2' 07” and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) by 2' 23”.
Everybody else is over 3 minutes behind and likely has no chance at
all of catching Wiggins.
What matters in other competitions?
Green Jersey (Points) – None
of the top guys in this category are time trial specialists, so none
scored any points today. Peter Sagan (Liquigas) still leads and will
for quite some time as this category lies relatively dormant for
awhile with high mountains coming.
Polka Dot Jersey (King of the
Mountains) – No changes with a time trial. Fredrik Kessiakoff
(Astana) still leads.
White Jersey (Best Young Rider)
– Tejay van Garderen (BMC) rode an excellent time trial finishing
4th overall and retaking the white jersey from Rein
Taaramae (Cofidis). Van Garderen leads Taaramae by 42' and Tony
Gallopin (RSNT) by 45'.
Team Classification (Calculated by
adding the three best times on each team each day) – RSNT is
the leader for a second straight day leading Team Sky by 1' 25”.
Biggest surprise: Froome. While
he beat Wiggins in the time trial at the Vuelta last year, that was
the Vuelta and Tony Martin won that stage. Today, Froome beat
everyone except his teammate Wiggins in a huge shock. The biggest
shock there would be that Froome also beat Cancellara.
Biggest disappointment: Wiggins
has such a huge lead. Considering his train to see him through the
mountains, it will be difficult to do anything to stop this from
becoming a Wiggins procession to Paris to collect the final yellow
jersey. It is US Postal and Lance Armstrong suck the life out of the
race style riding all over again.
Other items of note: Poor Tony
Martin (OPQS). The World Champion has had an awful race. He punctured
in the prologue, broke his hand in a crash on stage 1 and then
punctured again today. Even with the puncture and the broken hand,
Martin still finished 12th today... Other than Wiggins and
Froome, Team Sky slow pedaled through the time trial, conserving
energy to help Wiggins later. Michael Rogers is a former World
Champion in the time trial and finished 27th. Edvald
Boasson Hagen is the Norwegian time trial champion. He finished 92nd.
Richie Porte is among the top 10 time trialers in the world normally.
He finished 95th.
What is coming tomorrow? Rest
day followed by high mountains, kind of. The next stage includes the
first beyond category climb: Grand du Colombier, but it is in the
middle of the stage and the stage finishes much like yesterday with a
descent and flat run in.
Tomorrow's prediction: 1.
Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) 2. Jeremy Roy (FDJ) 3. Chris Horner
(RSNT)
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