Key events
28km to go The counter group is not gaining any more time, but with a small climb categorised coming up maybe we’ll get a further attack?
33km to go Ooooo, we have a counter-attack! A decent size group have gone off the front and joined Veistroffer. The peloton looks like it’s not working too hard to catch this, there’s 14 riders who have gone and they’ve got 20 seconds and counting. This changes the mathmatics at the finish line.
36km to go Philipsen is working his way back to the peloton after dealing with a mechanical. A bike change, we’re told. He has about a minute’s worth of catching up to do.
38km to go Absolutely gorgeous shots of the peloton as they wind past a river, the road narrowed and the riders had water either side of them. That is we’re watching, right there.
40km to go Veistroffer is clearly gunning for today’s combativity prize, he’s back on his own again after Costiou dropped back.
Sean Farrell emails in from LA on the Pogacar dominance question: “I started watching cycling in 2010, so I wasn’t around for the Lance Armstrong era, it was a bit before my time. was there the same kind of animus towards him during his seven Tour wins? Didn’t he have the same level of peleton command that folks are asserting that Pog has now? As well as Miguel Indurain (happy birthday by the way) in the 90s? they won dominatingly, and largely controlled the peloton in similar ways as we are seeing now?
“So the question is, is this just a part of cycling that comes around every decade or so and Pog is just the guy for the 2020s?”
To an extent I think that’s true, but the difference is that with Armstrong and Indurain is that their teams would let other riders have their day.
54km to go The cameras are focusing on Vingegaard, who has had to drop back to deal with an issue. He has a couple of teammates with him and it doesn’t look like it’s a significant problem.
58km to go Vercher and Caruso have had enough of idling away up the road and dropped back to the peloton. Hard to blame them.
64km to go The sprint teams are controlling the front of this race, the gap is 40 seconds or so. We have one more categorised climb to go and then I imagine that will be the end of the breakaway.
“Enjoying your reporting on the tour as I’m working away on my masters dissertation,” writes in John McGovern. “Regarding Pogacar’s dominance, it does make great watching and you would think that it makes the riders around him work harder and get more out of themselves, however, it was a shame to see reporting surrounding Vingegaard considering retirement. Despite successes at the Vuelta and Giro in the last year, it’s hard not to imagine his frustration that, with Pogacar around, his own triumph is still overshadowed.”
Chapeau on your masters, John.
78km to go Veistroffer has taken the second mountains point of the day. Pogacar will be quaking in his polkadot boots.
Some insight here from Roland Marshall on the role of French media on setting the narrative around Pogacar. He writes in: “Some of that may well be a trickle down from the French broadcasters, whose commentary team haven’t held back from criticising the way UAE often let breakaways on an only limited leash even for stages they aren’t necessarily challenging for or for the bumpier rather than full-on mountain stages that they don’t ‘necessarily’ need to win (but do anyway – which is fair dos, a bit like the cycling equivalent of scoreboard pressure in my view).
“It reminds me of when they called Chris Froome’s credibility into question during Sky’s domination, notably Laurent Jalabert (who then – allegedly – conveniently took a year off from broadcasting when discrepancies were raised about his historical test results).
“Whilst many of the French people I know over here are fair-play, gracious and in admiration of Pogacar’s excellence, there is a sizeable moronic minority for whom national pride stokes umbrage at ‘their’ race being dominated by foreign riders, rather just enjoying seeing one of the greats of the sport.
“It’s always existed, for example, Eddy Merckx was famously punched by a French spectator in 1975 when battling with Bernard Thévenet for victory on the Puy-de-Dôme…”
86km to go It is hammering down on the race now, no need for the riders to chuck bottles of water over their backs. The lead for the break has been cut to less than a minute, tough on those riders up front but quite typical of what we’ve seen from the peloton so far in this Tour.
Matthew Lysaght has emailed in more thoughts on Pogacar negativity. He writes: “I don’t particularly like the booing of, let’s be honest, the greatest GT and classics rider we’ve seen since Eddy Merckx and a man who will, if he feels like it, win seven Tours and any other GT he takes a fancy to. However, do UAE need to shut down everything on a medium mountain stage? Does he really need to hunt down a rider looking for a stage win so he can gain an extra 15 seconds when he already has three minutes? He’s going to win it in the Alps, despite what the lads on TNT say, so I don’t see the need for him and his team to hoover up everything in sight. In that respect, you can understand fans frustrations roadside.”
I think you have hit the crux of the issue here. It is annoying other riders and the fans who want to see a bit more racing.
94km to go Tim Merlier puts his hand up, looks like he has a flat. Quick bike change for the Soudal–Quick-Step sprinter.
Philip Terry is the first to respond to my question on booing riders. He says: “I don’t recall Cavendish ever being booed. Perhaps, even though he was a prolific winner, he always had to compete for every win?”
It’s a good point, but Cavendish was also a sprinter, which I think is a bit different. Any more for any more? Email link at the top of the page.
102km to go Veistroffer takes the single mountains point on offer as the break pass go over the top of the category four Côte de Lanty. I’m not sure he’ll be catching Tadej Pogacar at the top the polkadot standings in, the race leader has 42 points, 15 clear of Jonas Vingegaard in second.
113km to go As we have a little lull in the racing, here’s a question for you the readers, what do you make of the roadside booing of Pogacar? It reminds me of the animosity Chris Froome used to get when Sky were dominating. Should we be a bit kinder to our cycling greats?
119km to go The speculation on TNT is Pedersen will be demoted for his swerve to the right in the intermediate sprint. No confirmation either way, yet.
121km to go Veistroffer’s company has arrived, so the breakaway is four-strong.
123km to go That trio has nearly caught Veistroffer, but more interestingly Pedersen is chatting to the race officials. Is there a problem with the sprint perhaps?
127km to go That mini sprint has cut Veistroffer’s lead down to less than a minute and a number of teams trying to get a bigger break going. Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious), Ewn Costiou (Groupama-FDJ) and Matteo Vercher (TotalEnergies) are currently off in pursuit of the man up the road.
132km to go Veistroffer does go first under the intermediate sprint banner but behind him thare was a nice battle for the rest of the points. Lidl-Trek put in a place a tidy lead out train for Mads Pedersen, who duly delivered ahead of Philipsen. There was a sharp shift to the left from Pedersen towards the barriers that boxed out Philipsen, but there was a shake of hands after, so all good between those two. Girmay was the real loser there, he could only finish sixth for 10 piints, losing further ground to Pedersen, who bagged 20.
141km to go Veistroffer has eeked out a lead of 1min 50secs on the peloton. He looks likely to take the 25 points on offer for winning the intermediate sprint.
147km to go The pace has really dropped in the peloton and plenty of riders are taking ‘comfort breaks’. Tricky camera work from TNT to avoid indecent exposure pre-watershed.
151km to go Baptiste Veistroffer of Lotto Intermarche has gone off on his own, he’s got the most significant gap so far, nearly 50 seconds. He’s been agitating since the flag drop.
155km to go They are still working away at the front of the peloton as the intermediate sprint starts to enter the riders’ minds. We may well not see a break until we’re through that now.
165km to go Michael Hessman (Movistar), Thibault Guernalec (TotalEnergies), Mike Teunissen (XDS Astana) and Xabier Azparren Irurzun (Pinarello-Q36.5) did manage to establish a small gap, but they’ve now been reeled back in.
170km to go Tudor’s Michael Storer has had an early technichal and is racing back solo to get back into the bunch. No break as of yet.
174km to go The bunch is still together as the teams feel eachother out. Currently the peloton is strung out after a sharp left into a roundabout and then a big sweeping right turn.
Kilometre zero
Rollout complete, let the racing begin.
And we are off!
The peloton is doing a couple of laps of Magny-Cours circuit, before Christian Prudhomme drops the flag and the stage begins proper.
You can watch the start of the rollout on the Tour’s X account, it’s always quite a fun mixture of baffling sponsor presentations and local dignitaries, narrated by an enthusiastic man speaking in French. I have no idea what’s going on, but everyone looks like they’re having a nice time.
Have any thoughts you want to share on today’s stage or the Tour in general? Feel free to drop me an email via the link the at the top of the page.
I hope you are planning to stick with the blog all day, but in case you’re not here are the key timings:
William Fotheringham
William Fotheringham’s stage guide
Nevers/Magny Cours to Chalon-sur-Saône, 179.1km
The penultimate sprint stage, with nearly half the race left. Today may have a little twist in it however; the three ranked ascents are fourth category, but team managers with sprinters who can climb a bit will look closely at the lumpy roads between 141 and 162km. The obvious tactic would be to pile on the pressure at this point and see if Merlier, Pedersen and Philipsen can be dislodged or discomfited so at least they burn up some matches before the finish – Girmay’s NSN are the best candidates depending on what reserves they have left.
Read the full stage-by-stage guide to this year’s race:
Here’s a quick look at today’s stage:
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Preamble
A farewell to the fast men. It’s stage 12 and there is every chance some of the sprinters knock it on the head after flogging themselves for a final time in Chalon-sur-Saône. From tomorrow it’s all about the climbers and the rouleurs, which means this is the final opportunity for the likes of NSN’s Biniam Girmay and Jasper Philipsen, who was bailed out by his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Mathieu van der Poel in Ussel on Sunday, to break their ducks at this year’s tour. Nothing in the route map should particularly worry the sprinters, even if there is 1800m of climbing in the back-end of this stage. Should they be succsessfully delivered to the final kilometre then it will be all about who has the speed in their legs after yesterday’s effort and 11 days of draining riding in the heat. Tim Merlier has looked the best of them so far and is the favourite, according to the bookies.
The breakaway will be another talking point, UAE Team Emirates have not won any friends with the level of control they have exerted on the race. Tadej Pogacar’s approval ratings are slipping as his dominance becomes boring, especially with the French public on the roadside. There is an unwritten code to cycling which his team seems to care little for. Having a rider who is so clearly better than everyone else, yet still insisting that the team do not afford the break any kind of threatening time gap is a fast way to lose friends in the peloton. Kévin Vauquelin of Netcompany Ineos said it well to Jeremy Whittle: “We too would also like to play at bike racing.” Let us hope they get a bit of playtime today.
