Tour de France Stage 7 - Team Sky blows the race up in the mountains

Today's stage: The first mountain of the race atop a very difficult category 1 climb.

Who won today's stage? Chris Froome (Team Sky) helped his teammate Bradley Wiggins shed most of his rivals and then had enough left in the tank to win the stage himself by two seconds over Cadel Evans (BMC) and Wiggins.

What matters in the GC race? As expected, we have a new GC leader as the stage finale did not suit the talents of former leader Fabian Cancellara (RSNT). That leader is Wiggins, who was 3^rd on the stage and inherits the yellow jersey. In second is Evans, 10 seconds behind and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) is 3^rd, 16 seconds behind. Considering that Wiggins and Evans were the pre-race favorites and Nibali was the top darkhorse, this is, in all likelihood a 3 man race from here.

What matters in other competitions?

Green Jersey (Points) – Peter Sagan (Liquigas) scored points in the intermediate sprint after a botched day by Matt Goss and his Orica-GreenEdge team. The Sagan lead is 32 points over Goss with neither likely to score any more soon with more mountains and a time trial over the next few days

Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Mountains) – With the cache of points available at the summit, the stage winner was destined to take the jersey, therefore stage winner Froome is the current leader.

White Jersey (Best Young Rider) – Rein Taaramae (Cofidis) was in the front group at the end with Froome, Evans, Wiggins and Nibali. He moved up to 4^th overall and leads the white jersey competition by 2' 37” over Tejay Van Garderen (BMC), who was dropped early.

Team Classification (Calculated by adding the three best times on each team each day) – Sky gets to keep the ugly yellow helmets as the leaders here. With Froome and Wiggins placing so high, this was easy for Sky. They now lead RSNT by 1' 37”.

Biggest surprise: Froome's attack to win the stage though maybe it shouldn't be so surprising. At this point I wonder if Sky management didn't have Froome lose time intentionally early on to avoid another Vuelta situation. Today looked a lot like the Vuelta last year when Wiggins was the protected rider and Froome was the better rider. The difference is that Froome is over a minute behind whereas last year he beat Wiggins and finished second overall. Still, it was a surprise to see the pacemaker at the end have the energy to kick and win the stage that way.

Biggest disappointment: Team Sky dominated. This looked like Lance Armstrong's US Postal train all over again and if this continues Bradley Wiggins will likely win the race overall no matter what anyone else does. Additionally, no other team had anyone with their leaders on the climb making it even easier for Team Sky.

Other items of note: The abandonment list after yesterday's crash lengthened considerably. Most notable among the abondments was Garmin-Sharp leader and Giro'dItalia champion Ryder Hesjedal after finishing 13 minutes down yesterday... The three Rabobank GC hopes all lost more time today. Bauke Mollema, Robert Gesink and Steven Kruiswijk will all be stage hunters now.

What is coming tomorrow? More mountains, kind of. Tomorrow brings seven climbs as the race heads into Switzerland and they get progressively harder as the day goes on starting with a category 4, then a category 3, four category 2's and a category 1 followed by a descent finish. Looks like a day for a breakaway.

Tomorrow's prediction: 1. Sylvain Chavanel (OPQS) 2. Sandy Casar (FDJ) 3. Alexander Vinokourov (Astana)