Jumbo’s eaten all the buns!
The sprinters’ teams kept the breakaway on the leash the entire stage. Whenever their lead went towards a modest 2 minutes they would bring it back to 20 or 30 seconds. Just for once this looked like a nailed-on conventional bunch sprint stage, but when the sprinters came to the table, they found that Jumbo-Visma had been greedy again!
Vive la france (enfin!)
Christophe Laporte (TJV) mugged the brave remnants of the breakaway and left the fast guys in his wake, to become the first French stage winner of the 2022 Tour de France. (Wasn’t there a clue when Wout van Aert parked up at 3 km to go, having got his leader to safety?) There had been a clutch of 3rd places including Laporte himself in Calais on the first stage (4) on French soil, and Valentin Madouas came 2nd in Foix (Stage 16). But so far it has been Denmark & Belgium (4), Slovenia (3), Netherlands & Australia (2), Luxembourg, UK, Canada (1) and now France. I feared that the organisers may have had to resort to reclaiming Quebec for France so they could count Hugo Houle!
Team of the Day
Just two teams record the stage winner in the minileague: Callan’s peut-être pas durer cette fois and Linda’s Lanterne Rouge. Both include Laporte (1st) and Pogacar (in a cheeky 5th – was he really trying to steal some seconds back?!) but Linda’s team scored more through Vingegaard in the top 15. With that Lanterne Rouge leap from 10th to 6th in the minileague, not so far behind the leading Edge now.
Linda’s low-Wattage lampboys appeared in Team of the Day at Stage 17, so this is a chance to have a look at how Callan’s team have fared so far:
Postcard from Lot
vendredi 22 juillet Cahors
The River Lot, not the biblical refugee whose wife was conjured into a condiment. Originally the Olt, but changed to the Lot by a process of metathesis (or “methatesis” as one linguistic text quipped). The Lot flows into the Garonne, and through the Departement of Lot, which doesn’t have a lot of people: just slightly more that the Isle of Wight which is not a lot of lotois and lotoises. And apart from that, I know not a lot.
How can it feel like this race is simultaneously breathlessly exciting, and like it’s has been going on forever. I’ve done the Giro and all but the last two stages of le Tour and I don’t know if I even have the energy to write a blog for La Vuelta! So how on earth do the riders do it? I will shortly write up my thoughts on a fascinating book by Alex Hutchinson called Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance [coming soon on The books and ideas on Grandpops’ Bookshelf – Welcome (grandpops-bookshelf.co.uk)].