jolly green giant
Just a few km into the 17th Stage and Wout van Aert has secured the green jumper for the Points competition, before the parcours headed uphill for the first of four mountains. Wout had popped into a very contested break group to hoover up enough points to have twice as many as any other rider, then straight out of the back of the peloton to fetch drinks for the whole team, then back to the front to drive the peloton and try to control it. Jumbo-Visma have bagged the green one and now needed to defend the yellow one.
We few, we happy few
But there was no control for TJV and no breakaway could withstand UAE’s Men-of-the-Match Mikkel Bjerg and Brandon McNulty who rode everyone off Pogacar’s wheel … everyone except one rider in yellow. UAE lost Majka overnight (careless) so they only had four left, one of whom was Hirschi who was off the back all day. Yet the American McNulty rode on the front into the last km up to yet another airfield, before his leader launched an attack to win the mountaintop sprint. McNulty rightly earned the combativity award.
Team of the Day
There were several contenders for the Team of the Day. It’s all downhill from here had the three best placed finishers with 1st (Pogacar), 2nd (Vingegaard) and 4th (Thomas). The top scoring team was Thin Fat Boys whose 1st, 4th, 6th (Bardet) and 7th (Gaudu) earned 763 velopoints which equals their daily score on Stage 11! However my team of the day is the second place Lanterne Rouge who had their best day so far with 725 points (including 1st, 2nd and 6th):
Stat du Jour
Postcard from the Pyrenees
mercredi le vingt juillet 2022 Peyragudes
Ten years ago, on another Stage 17, Alejandro Valverde took the stage win here just 19 seconds ahead of Froome and Wiggins. How time flies. That was the first Tour ascent to the ski station. The last time before today that the Peyragudes appeared it was won by Romain Bardet, who battled bravely with his teammates today. Carrying French hopes as Thibault’s early showing fell away, he came in 6th on the road and moved from 9th to 6th in GC, to the expense of Simon Yates.
courgette and astronomy news
Bendey is now in possession of the courgette cake recipe, and I trust they will be very happy together. I now have 6 jars of courgette and ginger jam. It has the consistency of a marmalade, so we’ll see how that goes down. We only have 3 courgette plants, but harvested 8 courgettes in one day. Help! [Send garlic butter.]
May I recommend a Zoom presentation at 19:30 on Friday 22nd July: Exploring the Universe with the James Webb Space Telescope Tickets, Fri 22 Jul 2022 at 19:30 | Eventbrite. It’s a great opportunity to see & hear about the early results from the James Webb. from Dr Stephen Wilkins of Sussex University.