Kittel claims his fifth stage win of the 2017 Tour de France
1 Kittel
2. Groenewegen
3. Boasson Hagen
4. Matthews
5. MacLay
And an honourable mention for Bodnar, who was allowed to lead for over 204km before being having his dream shattered just short of the line. A cruel finish after a gruelling ride for Bodnar and mostly harrowing viewing for armchair fans. It wasn’t a race so much as a commute. Here’s a report on today’s excitement:
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After leading for more than 204kms, poor Bodnar is engulfed by the chasers with 200 metres to go! (Congratulations if you calculated that correctly). The stage is up for grabs now ... Matthews is in the mix, so is Boasson Hagen .. but the winner is .... Kittel again!
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For those of you who miss your school days, here’s a question: with 2.8km to go, Bodnar is travelling at 50kmph. He is 15 seconds ahead of the chasers, who are going at 53kmph. At what point will be be overtaken?
Bodnar, with pain etched on his face, crosses the ‘5km to go’ banner. He’s been at the front for 200km - is he to be denied at the last? Yes, probably. He’s only 16 seconds ahead.
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Six kilometres to go. Bodnar is 29 seconds ahead but many teams are busting moves now. Quick Step are not going to have it their own way today. Perhaps.
Tim Wellens of Lotto Soudal has moved to the front of the peloton as he tries to tee up a fast finish for Andre Griepel.
Philippe Gilbert of Quick Step is leading the chase for the peloton, with Vermonte inevitably just behind him. With 10km to go, Bodnar is 37seconds ahead. He was travelling at 76kmph as he went down a little hill just now.
“I might be odd but I disagree with the ‘make flat stages (artificially) interesting’ argument,” drones Josephn Surtees. “The ebb and flow of a three-week TdFis what makes it unique.” I hear that, Joseph, but there’s been precious little ebb or flow today. The stage is basically a lull between more interesting ones, which is fine for the riders and followers of the overall narrative, but most viewers would also be best advised to take a rest today, is all I’m saying. However, let’s park that argument for now because, with 13km to go and Bodnar still 45 seconds ahead, things are starting to get interesting at last.
Pantano has dropped back to help bring Contador into the peloton, which he currently trails by 19 seconds after that fall.
Bodnar is hurtling along at 50kmph. He’s 45 seconds ahead. Can he possibly hold on?
“Have this year’s flat stages in the TdF become a riff on Gary Lineker’s famous line: ‘Cycling is a long line of people in lycra on bikes peddling along and then at the end a big German wins…”?” quips Jonathan Wood.
Crash! There’s been a collision between several riders at the back of the peloton - again the cameras didn’t pick it up - and Contador is among the fallers. By the time the cameras catch up we can see that he’s managed to get back on his bike but looks very sore.
Bodnar has decided to drop his erstwhile companions and make a bid for solo glory ... and he’s opened up a gap of 1’21”. Give that man a golden star for at least trying to make this interesting.
@Paul_Doyle I love The Tour, but when I watch the flat stages I spend the day hoping a crosswind blows the peloton apart or something.
— Gunnar Eichler (@GoodJob_Johnny) July 12, 2017
“I agree that today’s stage should have been sponsored by a sleeping pill’s brand, and is not helped by the long straight roads running through the Gascony, but after the humps and bumps of Sunday, maybe the riders need a little peace and quiet,” writes Roland Marshall, offering an explanation but no consolation to those of us forced to watch the dreary fare. “All the more so since at the start in Eymet today, it was absolutely heaving. In spite of that, Froome and his team-mates were absolute gentlemen, taking the time to sign a welter of autographs before signing in for the day’s stage (my son and daughter ares still grinning ear to ear about it as I write), though we weren’t quite quick enough to catch Romain Bardet… An omen for the overall result of Le Tour?”
With 28km to go, the breakaway trio are 28 seconds in front.
how about a mega prize for breakaways that succeed? shared €€€ & TV time for interviews
— pauldutton (@pauldutton) July 12, 2017
We’re building up for the last-gasp scramble that we’ve been spent four hours waiting for. Marcato, Bodnar and Backeart are now just 30 seconds in front.
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@Paul_Doyle I agree. The tour needs to find a way to make these stages more interesting, or a new generation will ignore the event.
— Arthur Mitchell (@misterarthur) July 12, 2017
Marcato, Bodnar and Backeart aren’t in quitting mood. With 36km left, they’re still 52 seconds in front and pedalling like men who believe they can complete a start-to-finish triumph.
Mercato, Bodnar and Bakaert’s time in the limelight could be drawing to a close, as the peloton are starting to such them in. The gap is below one minute, with 41km to go.
45km to go. Which means we have endured 160km (3 hours 457 minutes!) of nothingness so far. I’m struggling to remember a time when I have seen a worse sporting spectacle than what the Tour de France has served up today. The sprinters seem to be biding their time for the last few kilometres, while the riders towards the top of the general classification are just saving their energy for the mountain stages to come.
The attack on the breakaway trio, led by Rudy Modard, has petered out, as Modard has dropped back into the peloton, which is now 1’38” behind the leaders.
The leading trio are now only 1’20” in front as they make their way up the fourth category climb.
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Française des Jeux have decided to launch an attack on the breakaway. But Vichot is not among them, because he’s been downed in some kind of mini-pileup in the middle of the peloton. He’s not hurt but he’s certainly angry, gesticulating in a way that suggests he feels he was knocked off his bike through the negligence or malice of someone else. Again, we have no pictures of that. It’s amazing that the broadcasters keep missing these incidents, given how little of interest is happening elsewhere.
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Marcato won the sprint, being the first of the breakaway trio to cross. Behind them, the true sprinters did not exactly deliver an explosive battle. Kristoff crossed first, just ahead of Matthews, and Kittel rolled in behind them “picking his nose”, according to Eurosport’s commentator. Greipel wheeled across a few metres behind.
Michael Matthews has a couple of team-mates are manoeuvring into position to launch an attempt for the 17-point haul up for grabs in the intermediate sprint. That’s go a smidgin of the way towards eroding Kittel’s 102-point lead in the sprinting stakes.
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We’re coming up the the intermediate spring - in 4km - so something might happen soon.
There are now 70km to go. Marcato, Bodnar and Backeart remain in front, by 2’25”. The peloton are travelling along behind them at 43kmph but so far seem more intent on admiring the countryside than launching a bid for a stage win. Anyone watching this on TV should be ashamed of themselves, to be fair.
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Four Lotto-Soudal riders have edged towards the front of the peloton, which is still 2’14” behind the leading trio. Could it be that one team, at least, is finally plotting a move to snatch a stage win?
WIth 87km to go, the trio who have led from the start are still 2’32” in front.
Here’s Nick Evans with answer to Arthur Mitchell’s question about a ‘team time trial’ . “I presume they don’t do this because the peloton would not let an whole team escape, so they would end up towing the entire peloton through the stage, and then not win it because they were all knackered. I’d imagine. I’m “working” so don’t have time to check the data, but I’d imagine that even the worst team has a rider who is within striking distance of one jersey or another should the team be allowed to escape and some sort of incident befell the current holder of a jersey. And a team won’t break away minus a rider who was a threat to a jersey because that would then leave that rider with no support.”
It’s been confirmed that Astana’s Dario Cataldo has to withdraw from the race. What a sad and sickening way for his Tour de France to end, a crash at the feeding zone during an otherwise uneventful procession. And this was his first Tour, to boot.
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Action!
There’s been a kerfuffle in the feed zone! As riders slowed down to collect some grub, several of them bashed into each other. At least that’s what’s been deduced, no actual footage has been shown yet. But we can see the aftermath: several riders are down and one of them, Dario Cataldo, looks seriously hurt: he’s holding his wrist in obvious pain. John Dekelkolb was among the fallers but has clambered back on to the saddle and got pedalling again.
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“Why doesn’t one of the teams with no riders in the hunt pull a “team time trial” on one of these flat stages to win the stage?” asks Arthur Mitchell. I don’t know. Nor do I understand why more of the non-Kittel teams have not made any effort to join the breakaway or launch a new one. What’s the French term for laissez-faire?
@Paul_Doyle Marcato, Bodnar and Backeart: the three classic manoeuvres of shopping trolley dressage
— Leo Chesterton (@leochesterton) July 12, 2017
100km left. Which means about 99km before anything happens. Actually, that’s not quite true: there’s an intermediate sprint 60km from home, then 58km for the riders to get their breaths back before the concluding dash. “Re friendships between riders,” begins Lieneke Koeksma in response to a previous inquiry. “In the Dutch daily late night talkshow about TdF there was an item the other day about roomies during the stage races “Can you have friends in the peloton?” Turns out that Koen de Kort en John Degenkolb (Trek team) have been friends since the first time they shared a hotel room in 2012 when they rode for Argos-Shimano. Outside races and training they share good times and bad, and Degenkolb was even best man at de Kort’s wedding. There is some irritation during the longer stage races, e.g. about how suitcases should be packed and unpacked, with the German Degenkolb apparently preferring slightly more ordered rituals to the Dutchman. (So what’s new?).”
The riders are approaching La Bastide-d’Armagnac, a dainty bucolic commune best known for ... being a dainty bucolic commune. Life here is slow and easy, which is why the 19th-century mystery writer Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly settled here when trying to leave behind booze and drugs. And now, over 100 years later, here come a load of professional cyclists.
For those of you asking about Chris Froome’s whereabouts, he’s on course to fulfil his mission for today, which he described thus: “The idea is to stay safely in the peloton, hope to have a day without problems and save energy for tomorrow and the Pyrenees.”
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The peloton have decided that, with 113km still to go, there’s no need to reel in the three excited leaders just yet; in fact, they’ve let them open the gap back out to four minutes.
“Marcato Bodnar and Backeart were the original names of the farmers in Fantastic Mr Fox before Roald Dahl finally plumped for Boggis, Bunce and Bean,’ chortles Nigel Steel. If memory serves, the Fantastic Mr Fox ends with Boggis, Bunce and Bean sitting in dumb frustration as they wait for something exciting to happen, unaware that it’ll never come to pass ...
In the interests of building bridges in these troubled times, bringing people together through the soft power of sport, I politely invited to answer questions submitted by fellow readers. This initiative is absolutely not a last resort born of the fact that I, personally, have no idea what is going on.
“How much do each of the riders spend with each other outside of training/racing etc?” asks George Cox. “Do they just turn up for training or do the team members have a more personal relationship?”
And
“What are the prospects of anyone challenging Froome as we move into the Alps and Pyrenees?” asks Colin Keohan. “Could a coordinated attack from multiple teams work, or what about another immediate attack from the start of a stage like Contador did at the Vuelta last year? Also, what’s going on with Greipel, I know Kittel is strong, but Andre had a teammate in front of him yesterday but they didn’t see to even pull their hardest, unless maybe Kittel is currently just that dominant.
“I don’t think I’d like to meet a pigeon armed with a gun & a net!” blasts Malicious A in reference to the observations at 13:24. It’s the inevitable next evolutionary step, Malicious. Meanwhile in the race, everyone is still trundling along. It’s spectacular.
Here are some folks who’ve found alternative ways to entertain themselves:
@Paul_Doyle Lego considered naming one of their products Marcato, Bodnar or Backaert but after lengthy focus-group trials settled on Duplo
— Serge Nuffler (@SergeNuffler) July 12, 2017
.@Paul_Doyle Backaert, Bodnar and Marcato, trio of 13th Century Viennese mapmakers who supplied Marco Polo with the charts for his voyages.
— Paul Treloar (@PaulieTandoori) July 12, 2017
Sean Kelly, commentating on Eurosport, says today’s race has been boring so far. Typical media hype there: it’s been bloody excruciating. Like watching the first 25 miles of a marathon, another bizarre practice.
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The leading trio - Marcato, Bodnar and Backaert - suddenly aren’t looking so smart. They’re lead has been halved over the last few kilometres and is now down to 2’25”. The peloton is being led by the same lads as yesterday, namely: Vermonte, Tiago Machado (Katusha) and Lars Bak (Lotto-Soudal).
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The riders are making their way through Casteljaloux, where the ‘blue disease’ has not yet struck. That’s the name that locals give to the phenomenon that tends to strike the area every October, leading to shops to close down and home to be vacated while the menfolk go off to hunt wood pigeons (who are blueish) with guns and nets. Meanwhile in the race, still nothing doing. Just the 145km to endure now.
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The peloton are starting to nibble at the lead of three fugitives in front, with the gap down to 3’47”.
Wind update: apparently there are crosswinds of 19kmph. That don’t impress the leading trio much, however. They remain 4’30” ahead of the chasing mob. Keep that up for another 155km and they’ll be heroes.
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The breakaway trio are still four and ahalf minutes clear of the rest. Meanwhile, John Degenkolb spoke to L’Equipe before today’s stage and explained why he fancies that today could be the day he ends Kittel’s dominance of the sprints. “I’m getting better and better after my fall. At the moment Kittel seems unbetable but things can change quickly and this stage could be very different if the wind gets up. The end is very technical, with lots of turns and round-about. The key will be to be well placed.” It doesn’t seem to be particularly windy at the moment.
By the way, the preamble below was based on erroneous forecasting - a harmless cousin of fake news - and it turns out that the riders are not having to race under a scorching sun at all. It’s an overcast day with the occasional spit of rain.
Julien Vermonte (Quickstep) is at the head of the peloton again, intent on controlling the pursuit of the breakaway trio and shaping the race so that this team-mate, Marcel Kittel, can finish in style. “What Julien does is incredible,” Kittel told L”Equipe recently. “Physically and mentally he has to be enormously disciplined to do it. He is showing how strong he is.”
So then, you join us at the 25km mark, having missed absolutely nothing. 180 riders started today’s stage and they’re all still there, pedalling along like champs. Three of them mind you, are trying to make all the other look bad by launching a breakaway. The uppity trio are: Marco Marcato (Team Emirates), Maciej Bodnar (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Frederik Backaert (Wanty – Groupe Gobvert). They are over four minutes ahead of the peloton … with a mere 180km to go.
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Preamble
Hello and welcome to Stage 11, which is being billed as the sprinters’ last chance to shine before Paris. After today, it’s all about mountaineering and scrapping but this stage is flatter than stale beer, apart from a category-four hillock around the 142km mark. The route is mighty long, though, with the riders having to cover 203.5km under a scorching sun. And they’ll finish in Pau, a town famous for its funicular railway and, yes, the number of cyclists busted for drugs there down the years.
Chris Froome wears the yellow jersey today – for the 50th time in his career – but the man they’ll all be trying to stop claiming another stage victory is Marcel Kittel. The German has been unbeatable in the sprints so far, claiming four stage wins so far in this Tour. Will he add a fifth?
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