It seems the answer to stage success – at least for EF Education-EasyPeasy – is for your DS to have a bird poo on your head and then get your team bus stuck in a hairpin bend. Well it worked for Magnus Cort on Stage 10, giving a stage win to Le Tour for sure and Team Ciclominaccia. So tomorrow morning, for the good of your teams, stand under a seagull and wedge your minibus up St Lawrence Shute!
Stage 10 was neutralised for a few minutes while the gendarmerie (in the words of Lord Bradley of Wiggo) “put the boot into” nine peaceful climate protesters and dragged the “imbeciles” away after they had noosed themselves together across the road. He may well have been voicing the frustration of the riders and cycling fans, but it was the low point journalistic coverage so far. So many things ARE more important than sport, as much as we love it.
News from the medical tent
There were more positive Covid tests overnight, with two in UAE Team Emirates, resulting in George Bennett packing his bags but Rafał Majka evidently not getting Covid enough and allowed to continue. I wonder if he was given a bit more elbow room around him in the peloton today?
Ben O’Connor’s leg finally fell off and will be repatriated, together with the rest of him and the forlorn hopes of 5 teams as selected by Linda, Martin, Matt, Philippa and myself. Bother. Three minileague teams have now lost two riders (seven remaining): Lanterne Rouge, Le Tour for Sure and It’s all downhill from here. Weeping and wailing from the Edge household…
Team of the Day
Breakaway days are often lower scoring affairs in the minileague, and today was no exception with the lowest aggregate score of all teams for any stage so far. But Martin’s Le Tour for sure did best with stage winner and Lennie the not-quite-yellow in 10th. Those two high finishers puts Le Tour for sure at Number 1 in the Top Tens and 3rd in the minileague. They were featured in the Stage 6 update, and this were the 3rd and 4th of five mentions in dispatches for today. So Chapeau! … but enough’s enough! ;0) <<<— PS for younger viewers, that was an old SMS-style emoji (sideways clown winkyface, IIRC). Oh yes, Daddy-O, down wiv de kids, innit?
Stat du Jour
One good day in the mountains can change everything. Witness the Lennard Kämna Effect. The German rider was agonisingly close to claiming the yellow jersey – deprived by The Pog sprinting home a dozen seconds too soon. But Kämna leapt into second place on GC, and therefore appeared in the best 3 riders for Le tour for sure and Autres Autruches Autrichiennes with spectacular gains for both teams into 1st and 2nd places on the Team Times Ranking Chart:
Postcard from the Haute-Savoie
Mardi 12 juillet, Megève Altiport
The little airfield at 1432 m above sea level has the one paved runway which is, according to the all-knowing wikipedant, 434 m long by 18 m wide. This makes we wonder that when the riders emerged onto the tarmac the commentary announced 500 m to go. Not close, if you were Magnus Cort, as it was only the last couple of metres in which he lunged to win it!
We were fairly near the Luxembourg border earlier in the race, so here’s a stamp featuring a sepia-tinted Tour hero of yester-century, with a full colour bouquet of flowers. François Faber was the first foreigner to triumph at the Tour in 1909 when he bagged 5 stage wins on the trot. His record still stands. In 1915, serving with the French Foreign Legion, he was shot dead while carrying an injured compatriot back across no-man’s-land. It was the day he’d received a telegram saying that his wife had given birth to their daughter. Some things are just more important than sport.
I know an excellent little place to go fishing in the Sens area and that’s where I’m going to be from tomorrow onwards.
François Faber (when asked what would he do next after winning the Tour de France)