Friday 25 July 2014

Second Place Battle

Yesterday saw the last major mountain day in the Tour and it was a biggie. The Toumalet featured heavily, followed by Hautacam.

There was a solid break from Sky rider Nieve who hung on hard to get the combative rider prize, chased down by the yellow jersey group. Horner attacked and was marked hard by Nibali, who continued to dominate the race, and then hammered him with an acceleration.

Nibali caught Nieve and left him behind in a manner that showed that the Italian really has this Tour wrapped up, as he imperiously headed to the top of the climb. He was chased down by Majka who wanted the mountains jersey wrapped up, overtaking Nieve to try and cement his position. The other big names chased hard, but were nowhere on the road, trying to gain time before the time trial from each other more than anything.

Pinot and Peraud attacked Valverde in a move that would put them both ahead of the Spaniard at the end of the day. Valverde is a strong time triallist and may make the time back as he finished 15 seconds away from second place, but Nibali has all but sewn up the race now, barring tragedy on the road.

The race this year has shown exactly why there are so many competitions at once as riders fight for the different jerseys behind the leader. Majka fought up the road for the polka-dot jersey in amongst the GC contenders. Nibali won his fourth stage with Majka sprinting for home behind him but beaten to second on the stage by Pinot.

Amazingly there’s a lot to play for in the last days. However I’m off to get some summer riding in so we’ll all catch up here, same time, on Monday when I imagine you’ll know the results.

A

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