Guardian report: Sagan doubles up in Quimper
Jeremy Whittle is at the Tour for the Guardian and these are his first impressions of today’s stage, where Peter Sagan secured his second stage win (and fourth podium finish) of this year’s Tour.
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General Classification after stage five
Here’s your top 20 after five stages of this year’s Tour de France. Greg van Avermaet (BMC) keeps the yellow jersey for another day. Peter Sagan (Bora Hansrohe) is, as is customary, in the green jersey. Trek Segafredo rider Toms Skujins efforts were enough to put him in the polka-dot jersey and Team Sunweb’s Søren Kragh Andersen is in the white jersey for best young rider.
Peter Sagan wins: In his post-stage interview, he says he was a little bit lucky, that his team-mates had got him in a good position before Sky took over at the front. “It was up, down, left, right ... I liked it,” he says of the stage’s closing stages. “It was a good parcours.”
Stage Five Top 10
Peter Sagan takes the stage win, while all the major players in this year’s Tour finish in the same time. They predicted carnage in the closing stages of this stage, but we didn’t get it. Good news for the cyclists, but not necessarily for us, the viewers.
Peter Sagan wins his second stage of this year’s Tour: Inside the barriers separating the cyclists from the crowd, it was a narrow, twisting, punishing climb to the finish, boasting the cream of the peloton’s big names. Sky rookie Egan Bernal led the way with Chris Froome on his wheel, only for Philippe Gilbert to launch a blistering attack.
He shot his bolt a little too earlier and was passed by Colbrelli and Sagan. The Italian looked to have the legs on his rival, but the man in the green jersey got past him to finish first by a bike-length or so. Gilbert was third. The winning time? 4hr 48min 06sec.
Peter Sagan wins!!!
Of course he does! It’s a Who’s Who of the peloton’s finest as Peter Sagan leads the field over the finish line after a brutal dual with Sonny Corbrelli from the Bahrain Meridia team. Philippe Gilbert was third.
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1.6km to go: All the big names line up behind young Sky rider Egan Bernal as they hit the final climb to the line.
4km to go: Bora Hansrohe, Sky and Wanty-Groupe are all well represented at the front of the bunch as each team tries to block their rivals ahead of the imminent bottleneck. Sky riders Moscon, Thomas, Kwiatkowski and Froome are all well positioned. So too are Peter Sagan and Greg van Avermaet.
6km to go: Sky riders Wout Poels and Gianni Moscon do short turns at the front of the bunch before peeling off. The Skybots are in complete control of this peloton with five riders at the front as we reach the sharp end of this stage. Rein Taaramae’s attack and dreams of glory come to a very abrupt end.
7.5km to go: Rein Taaramae zooms clear of the bunch, catching his colleagues napping. The 31-year-old Estonian opens a gap of 15 seconds as the riders of Team Sky line up at the front of the peloton.
10km to go: With Calmajane and Skujins caught, Direct Energie’s Rein Taaramae attacks off the front of a peloton that is depleted, shorn of many of its sprint specialists, but still big. On the subject of sprint specialists, yesterday’s stage winner Fernando Gaviria is still looking strong.
Intermediate sprint: Quick Step’s Julian Alaphilippe attacks off the front of the bunch, passes Calmejane and Skujins and takes three bonus seconds that send him virtual fourth on GC. He was marked by Van Avermaet there, but the yellow jersey couldn’t beat him to the line. Alaphilippe takes three bonus seconds, Van Avarmaet takes two and Calmajane takes one.
12km to go: Calmejane and Skujins take on the stiff climb to the intermediate sprint and look over their shoulders after feeling the collective breath of their peloton on their necks. The gap is 10 seconds, but nobody in the bunch seems interested in competing for the bonus seconds.
15km to go: Calmejane (Direct Energie) and Skujins (Trek Segafredo) pedal on, while Chris Froome and a couple of his lieutenants make their way to the front of the bunch just 30 seconds behind them. There are riders from BMC and Movistar at the front of the peloton, with Greg van Averamaet’s yellow jersey visible towards the front.
18km to go: The gap is a little under a minute with a nasty turn coming up in four kilometres time. Expect much movement in the peloton as the big boys jockey for position at the front of the bunch.
24km to go: Up front, Lilian Calmejane and Toms Skujins have dropped Nicolas Edet as they stand on their pedals and head onwards and upwards towards the summit of the Cote de la Montagne de Locronan. Skujins is first over and takes two more KOM points. The gap to the peloton is exactly one minute.
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25km to go: The peloton hits the foot of the final categorised climb of the day – but not the final climb – as the lading trio negotiate a short stretch of cobbles 1,500m from the summit. The streets are narrow and the bends are tight. In the peloton, four or five riders hit the deck.
27km to go: On Eurosport, the commentary team of Sean Kelly and Carton Kirby are now explaining that the he bonus sprint, with bonus seconds up for grabs, comes with 12 kilometres to go. It is, they say, in a “very gnarly, twisty and narrow” technically challenging stretch of road and they rather concerned that there could be all sorts of carnage in the battle to get near the front and be in a good position for that the final kilometres ahead.
31km to go: Our three leaders have a gap of 1min 44sec over the peloton, who don’t seem to be working particularly hard to reel them in. Behind the bunch, there are two separate groups of dropped riders, with Mark Cavendish, Mark Renshaw, Ryan Zabel, Marcel Kittel and other sprinters taking up the rear.
39km to go: Calmejane, Skujins and Edet maintain a gap of over two minutes on the peloton, which is pedalling hard enough to have shed most of the sprinters. It’s lumpy all the way to the finish, with one Category 3 climb left to negotiate. They’ll have street furniture, narrow roads and dark tree lined passages to negotiate between now and the finish on a very technical run-in with fast downhills and tight corners.
On Eurosport, Sean Kelly reminds viewers that the usual rules about crashing inside the final three kilometres of stages (that aren’t time trials or mountainous) do not apply on this stage. Anyone unlucky enough to go down or suffer a mechanical will not get the same time as the group they happen to be in at that time.
45km to go: Up the narrow mountain road they go, with Trek-Segafredo rider Toms Skujins attacking again and taking the two King of the Mountain points available. He’s followed over by Calmejane. Nicolas Edet is behind them struggling, while Sylvain Chavanel’s goose looks cooked for today. The gap between the stage leaders and the peloton is 2min 19sec.
46km to go: With one kilometre to go to the summit of the penultimate climb of the day, Toms Skujins attacks but is followed by Lilian Calmejane. The Frenchman looks over his shoulder to see where Sylvain Chavanel is, but there’s no sign of him.
It’s all about BIKE THROWS for the stage 4 #TourDeGif. Re-live @FndoGaviria chucking his way to a second stage win ahead of @petosagan whilst waiting for it to kick off when it gets lumpy on stage 5 #TourdeFrance2018 #TDF18 #mograph #animation pic.twitter.com/CenzNEOXjs
— Grunshaw (@MrGrunshaw) July 11, 2018
51km to go: Things go from bad to worse for Mark Cavendish, who has now been dropped by his fellow struggling sprinters. He’s over five minutes off the pace being set by our four leaders. They are: Lilian Calmejane (Direct Energie), Sylvain Chavanel (Direct Energie), Tom Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) and Nicolas Edet (Cofidis). The gap from them to the main peloton is just 1min 37sec as they approach the beginning of the penultimate climb of the day.
54km to go: There’s been a crash in the peloton and it looks like Adam Yates (Mitchelton -Scott) and the current King of the Mountains Dion Smith (Wonty Group) were both involved. They’re back on their bikes but have lost over a minute on the bunch. This is bad news for Yates, who has now suffered three bad falls in five stages of this race.
61km to go: Chavanel is rejoined by his team-mate Lilian Calmejane, who has been unable to shake off Toms Skujins and Nicolas Edet from the original breakaway. In a perfect world, he’d have got rid of the duo and he and Chavanel would have controlled the rest of the stage between them, setting Calmejane up for the win and putting Chavanel in the King of the Mountains jersey. After that? Well, I like to think they’d have spent their dotage sanding boats together somewhere. It could still happen, but Skujins is looking strong.
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62km to go: Chris Froome has a mechanical, gets a bike change and is now being paced back on to the bunch by his team-mates.
66km to go: Sylvain Chavanel begins the third official climb of the day, the Cat 3 Cote de la Roche du Feu with a 2min 59sec lead over the bunch. Chavanel’s team-mate Lilian Calmejane is 25 seconds back in a group of three with the Latvian Toms Skujins and Nicolas Edet. Chavanel is first over the third climb, while Calmejane prevents either of the other two from getting any KOM points.
69km to go: The peloton is breaking up, as is the breakaway group ahead of it, while Sylvain Chavanel’s face is a mask of pain as he negotiates the latest in a series of punchy, steep, uncategorised climbs out in the Bretagne countryside. Chavanel has a lead of 3min 03sec over the bunch.
70km to go: It’s turning into bad day for Mark Cavendish, who has just been dropped again on an uncategorised climb. Marcel Kittel, who is also enduring a bad spell of form, is also in trouble. “If he’s struggling in Brittany, I shudder to think how much he’ll struggle when we get to the Alps and the Pyrenees,” says TV’s Ned Boulting.
77km to go: As things stand: Sylvain Chavanel is alone in front of the race with a 45 second lead over six riders: Julien Vermote (Dimension Data), Jasper De Buyst (Lotto-Soudal), Lilian Calmejane (Direct Energie), Tom Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) and Nicolas Edet (Cofidis). Their lead over the peloton is around 2min 50sec.
78km to go: Elie Gesbert is swallowed up by the peloton, but looks OK following his brush with the local foliage. He’s dirty, but not covered in the scratches and cuts I expected to see.
A fall up front: Breton rider Elie Gesbert, the youngest cyclist in the breakaway group has just overshot on the outside on a descent, gone off the road and into a grass margin, where he was dragged through some roadside shrubbery in his ultimately futile attempts to stay on his bike. It could have been a lot worse and he’s back in action. That might have been very painful, depending on what kind of brambles he’s just been effectively car-washed by in that ditch. Hopefully they were just leaves, without any spiky stuff. Gesbert is currently caught in no-man’s land between the what’s left of the original breakaway group and the peloton.
An email from Matt Cast: “Clever move from Direct Energie,” he says. “They will be hoping that Chavanel will hoover up some climbing points at the front while Lilian Calmejane sits quietly at the back of the chasing group conserving energy to make a move. Calmejane will fancy the final kms of this stage - he’s a great finisher with a nose for a successful breakaway.”
86km to go: Chavanel has opened a gap of 46 seconds on the other six escapees and is first over the second climb of the day, which puts him first in the KOM standings. He’s also in line to win his second combativity award, which is awarded by judges for the most attacking rider on each stage. He won it on stage two.
96km to go: The peloton breast the summit of the first climb of the day, the Category 4 Cote De Kalifton, with Mark Cavendish pedalling solo, having become detached from the back. He’ll make up the ground on the way down, no doubt.
98km to go: BMC lead the chase up the first climb with the gap to the breakaway group at 3min 23sec. Meanwhile, Adam Becket has this to say about Peter Sagan’s chances of ever winning a Grand Tour.
“While the GC remains dominated by time-trialling and high mountains, it seems that GC might be out of Sagan’s reach,” he says. “It has been suggested, however, that one of the Grand Tours could change their route to make it medium-mountain dominated, a more punchier course, so that riders like Sagan or Greg Van Avermaet could challenge for the win – a course for all-rounders, rather than time-trial or climbing specialists. Don’t know if this would ever actually happen, though.”
Sylvain Chavanel attacks: The French veteran jumps off the front of the breakaway group with a kilometre to go to the top of the first climb, presumably with the idea of bagging himself the King of the Mountain point on offer and possibly getting his hands on the polka dot jersey. There’s no reaction behind him as his six fellow escapees leave him to it.
Intermediate sprint results
- 1. Sylvain Chavanel 20 points
- 2. Nicolas Edet 17
- 3. Jasper De Buyst 15
- 4. Elie Gesbert 13
- 5. Julien Vermote 11
- 6. Lilian Calmejane 10
- 7. Tom Skujins 9
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At 3min 50sec
- 8. Fernando Gaviria 8
- 9. Peter Sagan 7
- 10. Alexander Kristoff 6
- 11. Arnaud Démare 5
- 12. André Greipel 4
- 13. Max Richeze 3
- 14. Marcel Kittel 2
- 15. Ilnur Zakarin 1
John Suitor has a question: “Writing from Boulder, Colorado,” he says. “Can you explain the stature of Peter Sagan to me? If he’s among the best in the world, shouldn’t he be competing in the general classification of a grand tour or two? Or, is the GC so specialized that the truly best riders don’t compete for it?”
Off the top of my head I would say that Peter Sagan couldn’t compete for a GC win as he’s not good enough at climbing or time-trialling. He’d need to lose quite a lot of weight without losing power to even give himself a chance and that’s a dangerous road to go down, in every sense. If any cycling experts out there know better than me and have any other gems of wisdom to impart on the subject, please feel free to get in touch. How are they all in Boulder, John? Isn’t that Lance and Floyd’s neck of the woods?
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109km to go: Having been first past the post in the intermediate sprint, Sylvain Chavanel enjoys a spot of lunch. The Frenchman is 39 and currently participating in his 18th Tour de France. He takes the record outright from Stuart O’Grady and Jens Voight, who are on 17 each but have both retired.
Intermediate sprint: The breakaway complete the intermediate sprint, with none of them looking particularly fussed about contesting green jersey points that don’t matter to any of them. I think Sylvain Chavanel, the elder statesman of the group of seven riders, was first across the line. The gap is 4min 13sec.
119km to go: The breakaway group lead the bunch by 4min 23sec, with the peloton happy to let them enjoy their lead as they approach the intermediate sprint at Roudoullec, where the seven men in the escape party will hoover up most of the points on offer. After that they hit the lumpy stuff, with two Category 4 climbs, followed by three Category Three climbs before the finish. Sharp climbs and narrow roads mean the second half of today’s stage will be attritional.
Controversy! An interesting post from the Twitter feed of PA Sport writer Ian Parker.
Bit of needle around the start. This family had a ‘Sky Go Home’ banner but it was ripped off them by a Sky rider on his way to sign on. Luke Rowe denied it was him #TDF2018 pic.twitter.com/jg46bIH9DR
— Ian Parker (@iparkysport) July 11, 2018
Mitchelton Scott’s Stage Four video diary: The Aussie team have released this footage of their day’s fun yesterday, which provides an interesting insight into life behind the scenes on the Tour de France..
127km to go: The gap goes out to 4min 30sec, with BMC rider Simon Gerrans towing the bunch along. These are the men in front: Elie Gesbert (Fortuneo-Samsic), Julien Vermote (Dimension Data), Jasper De Buyst (Lotto-Soudal), Lilian Calmejane (Direct Energie), Sylvain Chavanel (Direct Energie), Tom Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) and Nicolas Edet (Cofidis).
137km to go: The gap between the seven-man breakaway and the chasing posse, which is quite strung out, is 3min 47sec as they roll through the Brittany town of Saint Yvi. All five of today’s categorised climbs are in the final 100 kilometres of the stage, but the intermediate sprint comes first, 111 kilometres from the finish. The riders are currently having to negotiate several punchy, uncategorised climbs.
George Young has a question: “What is the rationale for Greg van Avermaet having the yellow jersey over Tejay van Garderen?” he asks of the two BMC riders who have the exact same time. “Is there some sort of count-back or has Greg van Avermaet simply accrued fewer yellow cards? Or have I just been watching too much sport this month?”
Well George, while the two riders have the same time for the four stages they’ve completed, Van Avermaet got the yellow jersey because he’d finished ahead of Van Garderen in the first two stages (albeit in the same finishing groups, hence the identical times). This, from the Tour rulebook:
“The general individual time ranking is established by adding together the times achieved by each rider in the 21 stages including time penalties. In the event of a tie in the general ranking, the hundredth of a second recorded by the timekeepers during the individual time trial stages will be included in the total times in order to decide the overall winner. If a tie should still result from this, then the places achieved for each stage are added up and, as a last resort, the place obtained in the final stage is counted.”
BMC could, if they wanted, come to an arrangement whereby Van Garderen gets a career first day in yellow, but it’s a risky strategy.
145km to go: The riders are back out the country, with the peloton currently riding through the dappled shadows of some narrow roads sheltered by a canopy of tree branches.
Fun fact: Didier Deschamps, manager of the France football team, and his wife Claude have a holiday home in Concarneau, which is where she was born and reared. I’m guessing they’re not in today.
152km to go: Our seven man escape party has increased their lead to just under four minutes as the peloton pass through the attractive looking town of Concarneau. To Wikipedia ... and don’t spare the horses ...
The town has two distinct areas: the modern town on the mainland and the medieval Ville Close, a walled town on a long island in the centre of the harbour. Historically, the old town was a centre of shipbuilding. The Ville Close is now devoted to tourism with many restaurants and shops aimed at tourists. However restraint has been shown in resisting the worst excesses of souvenir shops. Also in the Ville Close is the fishing museum. The Ville Close is connected to the town by a bridge and at the other end a ferry to the village of Lanriec on the other side of the harbour.
163km to go: The gap from the Magnificent Seven to the bunch is 3min 15sec and we bring you news of another couple of withdrawals. Team Sunweb’s Australian rider Michael Matthews was forced to pull out overnight with illness. Lotto Soudal rider Tiesj Benoot also withdrew this morning after dislocating his shoulder in a crash yesterday. The 176 strong field that started the Tour on Saturday has now been reduced by six.
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Sylvain Chavanel the virtual leader: The Direct Energie rider is highest placed in the breakaway and began this morning with a deficit of 1min 48sec.
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173km to go: The gap between the seven-man breakaway and the bunch is out to 3min 11sec. Earlier in the stage, there was a crash involving Sky rider Gianni Moscon and Katusha-Alpecin rider Robert Kiserlovski, apparently involving a race motorbike. Kiserlovski has come out worst and has been forced to abandon, while Moscon has rejoined the bunch. More news on Kiserlovski’s condition as we get it.
Stage four report: Jeremy Whittle is the Guardian’s man gadding about France, eating too much service station food and not getting enough sleep. Here’s his report on Fernando Gaviria’s win in yesterday’s sprint finish. It was the Colombian rookie’s second win in this year’s Tour.
Racing is under way: The roll-out is over, race director Christian Prudhomme has given the signal to start racing and the field have 25 kilometres behind them with another 180 to go. A group of seven riders have opened a gap of exactly three minutes on the peloton.
Our breakaway group: Elie Gesbert (Fortuneo-Samsic), Julien Vermote (Dimension Data), Jasper De Buyst (Lotto-Soudal), Lilian Calmejane (Direct Energie), Sylvain Chavanel (Direct Energie), Tom Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) and Nicolas Edet (Cofidis).
Stage five: Lorient to Quimper (204.5km)
William Fotheringham’s stage-by-stage guide: Day two in Brittany, and a final 100 kilometres with five climbs, none long but all steep, with the bonus sprint on a further short ascent near the finish. A good day for a break as the finale will be hard to control, or for a sprinter who can climb like Sagan or Arnaud Démare. A classic tense stage when the Tour won’t be won but it could be lost.
