Stage six and Le Tour continued its march toward the Pyrenees on a hilly stage between Le Teil and Mont Aigoul in the Massif Central region.
Back in the studio SBS host Tomo was paid a visit by Commonwealth
Games champ Rochelle Gilmour. I must say there is something to be said for
having the commentary team here in Australia as opposed to France where there
are more opportunities to hear the perspectives of home-grown stars.
Racing got under way and unlike yesterday the likes of Nicolas
Roche (I’ll spare you the family tree lesson), Jesus Herrada, Remi Cavagna, Greg
Van Avermaet, Neilson Powless, the wonderful Edvald Boasson Hagen, Daniel Oss and
Kazakhstan National Champ Alexey Lutsenko formed a break.
We actually have an eight-man breakaway today. TV time! At
least we should see a more animated peloton today since they now had something
to chase.
Over to the Plat du Tour kitchen Guillaume Brahimi was
putting together the famous southern French classic, a fantastic looking Bouillabaisse.
Now that’s a recipe I can really get into.
Out on the road the eight-man break established a rhythm and
had a handy lead of over six and half minutes on the peloton.
In the pretend caravan of commentary Bridie, Mattie and
Robbie dissected the bidon incident that earned Julian Alaphilippe a 20 second
penalty and cost him the maillot jaune. New GC leader Adam Yates would have
preferred taking the golden fleece under different circumstances. We can all
understand how he feels about finding himself in yellow - it’s a bit like doing
a Bradbury.
Out on the road the peloton was happy to hold back on trying
to reel in the peloton when suddenly Roger Kluge attacked. Was he trying to
bridge the gap to the breakies? No one knew what he was doing. As it turned out
he was desperate for the meagre points remaining in the intermediate sprint.
Bridie thought it was an ‘intriguing move’ by a cyclist,
which is code for ‘batshit crazy’.
A scare for the other Quintana (Nairo’s brother Dayer) who
managed to hit a stray bidon and crashed negotiating traffic furniture. Another
reason, Bridie argued, why there is a ban on handing up food and drink within
the 20km to go zone on a sprint stage. You just can’t have rogue bidons on the
road amidst the chaos of teams battling to get their sprinters up to the front.
Dave Macka called in for his daily zoom meeting with Tomo
and the word of the day is ‘pivot’. I’m calling pivot out now as the cliche of
the year.
If only Herrada had taken the Sunday bike.
In the interest of safety we have seen some innovations on
the course, take those fancy digital flashing road furniture signs for instance.
But is this a bit of overkill or innovation for innovation’s sake? What’s wrong
with good old fashioned hay bales? Who says they don’t flash? They do when you
flick a match at them.
At 29.7km to go the Couch Peloton received the official
result for Bridie Bingo as she peeled off from the pretend caravan of
commentary team.
Back in the peloton we’d seen a fair bit of Mitchelton-Scott
and the Murder Hornets do a job of work driving the bunch. With so much black
and yellow and yellow and black I predict every team kit will be yellow and
black in 2021.
Robbie had some exciting news about Tasmania’s own Richie
Porte whose partner was going into labour with their second child. Would there
be a ‘rock the baby’ victory salute today? There was some work to do to reel in
the break for that to happen.
In the breakies on the climb up the Col de la Lusette birthday
boy Neilson Powless didn’t look powerless launching an attack but Lutsenko had
his measure.
It was clear that the breakaway would survive to the finish and
now there was a battle to get to Lutsenko.
Jesus Herrada rose to the occasion and to see the grimace on
his face was like watching The Passion of the Herrada. It’d be ironic if Herrada
was handed the combative award…
What Herrada really needed was a miracle to catch Lutsenko.
Fun fact: Alexey Lutsenko has been with Astana Team for so
long by now he was riding for Astana before there even was a team.
There was some good Astana Karma for Lutsenko who soloed
across the line notching up his first stage win at the Tour. Jesus Herrada
suffered as he crossed the line in second place…
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