Holy Collapsing Arches, Batman!

Stage Seven of the Tour was exciting for many reasons: the break was huge, 29 riders, with all but two of the teams represented in it: Greg van Avermaet, in Yellow, already five minutes ahead of everyone else, was in the break - IN THE BREAK!!! - and the peloton still let them go: Steve Cummings made a fantastic lone attack and won the stage for Dimension Data; and the Flamme Rouge collapsed.

What a ridiculous thing to happen - apparently a spectator innocently killed the inflatable arch, by accidentally pulling out the cable connecting the generator to the pump. "It caught on his belt" a witness said.

Psssssssss! down goes the arch, just as Adam Yates, having leapt off the chasing group and looking like a dead cert for the White Jersey, came up to it. It slaughtered him, and ate his bike, leaving him hobbling around on the course with blood dripping off his chin, while the marshalls frantically tried to hold up the soggy sausages of the arch, allowing riders to duck under it and forcing the moto passengers to limbo themselves backwards in order to get clear.

 Here's Frankie, trying to push the wobbly sausage out of his way...

And here's Alex Howes being eaten by it.

What a shambles!

ASO said that they have emergency back-up plans in place for this sort of problem, but there just wasn't time to get it up and running before the unfortunate Adam Yates and then the chasing bunch ran whee-splat right up against it.

Other news from this stage includes a lovely row in Stinkoff: apparently, back in Stage Five,  Roman Kreuziger failed to wait for Bertie, despite being told to do so four times.  Whoops! Unusually, Mr Stinkoff did not rip him publicly limb from limb, but made this very reasoned and calm statement:

 "I've not seen the situation to be honest," he said in relation to the moment Kreuziger rode away from Contador. "I tried to check on Youtube but not found it. I can't see that situation with Roman and Alberto but my observation is that once dropped on the final climb there's not much a teammate can do. If it's two or three climbs to go and in the wind then it's different but again I've not seen the situation."

I'm impressed, this is not what I expect from him. Perhaps his PR manager has slipped some sedatives in his lemonade?

So moving swiftly away from the unlovely Mr Stinkoff, how are we doing so far?

Pierre Rolland, Schleckland pet, came in with the main bunch nearly 4 mins down on Stevo, and is sitting at 9th in the GC on the same time as Froome, Dan Martin (and his teeth), Onion Barguil and Quintana, which is nice company to be in.

The lovely Jakob continues his low-key race, 36mins down in 93rd place:  Frankie is in 41st position, only 13mins down, while his doppelganger, Brice Feillu, is 27mins down in 66th place.

Tibbles didn't have a good day, and is now 27th, 9 mins down, but Nibbles is feeling better, came in all alone in 4th, and has risen to 39th overall, 13mins down. He was given the award for Combatative rider, so he got to stand on the podium, but he barely managed to smile.

We're all set for another hilly day today, with the full 198 riders due to start, which is pretty amazing in itself - despite some bad crashes, and some quite serious injuries, we haven't lost a single rider yet. Long may it last!