Gallopin Away

The Tour got going again yesterday with a rolling stage that was lined up for a break to survive. One went out and was added to with various combinations, dangled about half a minute in front of the yellow-jersey group for much of the day.

At the other end of the race Talansky looked about to abandon, perhaps feeling it was the only way to still be counted amongst the favourites in this race, but then got back on the bike and ground onwards around 20 minutes removed from the race.

Out front Nicholas Roche started Tinkoff Saxo-Bank’s quest for stage wins as he hung on ahead of the pack.

The race was all about the dowhills and it was here that names such as Rui Costa were dropped off the pack, as Tony Martin, again, put pressure on the pack to catch Roche. Next to have a go was Gallopin, who dug in to put some time in, chased by Cannondale, working for Sagan, who in turn plummeted off the head of the race after Gallopin in a helter-skelter drop on fast roads. Gallopin was caught and a group including the Frenchman and Sagan formed off the front of the pack. Nibali kept a check on them, but it was all going on in the lead group as Gallopin went again and got a gap that looked likely to stick. He led under 1km to go and was being chased hard down the last 1000 metres, keeping his gap and making it to the line to take a solid opportunist’s win, with the pack sprinting to finish right on his wheel.

All the major contenders were in the yellow-jersey group so there were no changes in the GC standings. Galliopin was pleased to take a second win and Nibali stayed sensibly in charge. Sagan stays in green but once again failed to win a stage, perhaps as everyone worked to not finish in a group with him. Talansky rolled in over half an hour later with a 20 second time penalty, inside the time limit, but in pain and with some debate about whether he’d wanted to stop and was told to man-up by his team, or whether he wanted to ride and went against the suggestion of his team to stop. We’ll know in today’s start, but my money is on him going home.

In other news I’m sure you’re very interested in my mechanical problems so I couldn’t not bring you this story. I have had a bad time with the chainring bolts on the commuter bike and (not for the first time) lost one entirely out of the crankset on the way home. Lacking a spare and, in fact, finding that no local shops had any in stock, I had to put together a bit of an emergency fix.

This seems to be remarkably successful so far and I’m sticking with it until I can take delivery of replacement bolts.

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