Never mind Peter Sagan’s third stage victory, today’s flat stage had a big impact on the general classification. ‘General classification’ isn’t a particularly catchy way of referring to the overall times, so we’ll be tagging relevant posts “yellow” from now on.
The Tour de France is rarely won. It is more about who loses last. The cyclists line up to be picked off one by one and then the last man standing is branded ‘the winner’ – but basically he’s just happy to have survived.
Some of the overall contenders sustained major-to-fatal injuries to their dreams of yellow today after being caught up in the various crashes. The Schlecks lost two minutes and so did Alejandro Valverde. Perhaps most brutally, the Giro d’Italia winner Ryder Hesjedal lost 13 minutes.
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