Another transitional stage today - starting at altitude, a bit of a climb, a long descent, then a flat bit, one spiky hill, more flat stuff and a more-or-less straight run in to the finish.
Watching the Eurosport coverage to start with, firstly I should say that I am growing less displeased with Greg Lemond who, last year, was terrible, but who, this year, is getting a lot more lucid and is almost starting to sound interesting. I still think Andy would be worth a try-out as a commentator, though....
It's always nice to see Juan Antonio Fletcha doing the interviewing, it's so funny that most of the riders clearly know him and like him, so he can lean in very close without them flinching, and can ask quite penetrating questions without causing offence.
Big story of today is the attack on Chris Froome yesterday: some moron through a cup of urine over him, while shouting an allegation about doping. How very unpleasant. Mr Prudholme himself issued a statement today expressing the UCI's displeasure at such behaviour, and let's hope we don't see any more of that sort of thing.
Watching today's race, it's a lot of nothing much for most of the day.
We have a bit of bad behaviour from Sagan - he pulled over for a bike change, and someone from the team car threw a full bidon at the camera bike, causing him to flinch,
Screams of 200 euro fine! It seemed like inexplicably bad behaviour - then we see another replay, the camera bike in question was clearly very close behind Sagan just as he pulled over, as we see their footage of Sagan pulling over, unclipping, and swinging his foot back to kick out at the camera bike. Were they too close to him do we think?
Here's another question - LLB has been fascinated by the Data tracking that is being trialled: you can select a team, or a few individual riders, and the tracking programme shows you where they are on the road. I watched it for a while on the first few days of le Tour, but I found that I would rather concentrate on watching the race (said she, typing a blog and tweeting while also watching the race). Will the riders start to swap bikes more often, in order to throw off the tracking programme? It would be a way to deprive anyone watching of info about their speed and so on, and maybe stop them extrapolating from your data. Just a thought.
As predicted, it ended in a bunch sprint with Gummy Greipel grabbing the stage win very narrowly, and Sagan failing to come second, despite changing his bike, and despite a despicable shoulder-barge to a Europcar rider, Cocquard, who glumly put his hand up in protest.
Ah well, *sigh* just another few days to go, and it will all be over...
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