FTFDF Stage 9 - Sky Smash 'Em

I thought Wiggo would do well today, but he did better than that. He won the stage, and put nearly a minute into time trial machine Fabian Cancellara.

 

Chris Froome was impressive too, finishing only 35 seconds behind his team leader, and moving up to third overall.

 

And behind the Sky duo, it was time losses all around. Evans now sits about 2 minutes off the race lead, with Froomey breathing down his neck. Nibali did a pretty good ride, but is now in forth spot, just ahead of Menchov. Frank Schleck didn’t quite lose the 5 minutes that I predicted, but 4:32 isn’t good either. If Bradley can keep going like this, then he may well win the Tour De France, and if he has anything left in the tank afterwards he might be able to add to his Olympic gold medal collection too.

 

Best league score of the day went to Temple of Froome, who now have the top 3 on GC in their line-up - if they had a better sprinter they’d be doing nicely by now. I think there might be some worried faces in the Flamin’ Nadgers team bus, as there's a few teams who look like they might be closing in on the league leaders. As you might be able to see from this chart what I made.

MINI LEAGUE SCORES

Tour De Pance

Rank		Team	Directeur	Score
1		Flamin` nadgers	Andrew Windrum	3890
2		Return of Reflex	Karl	3531
3		temple of FROOME	Tom	3305
4		Bile Beans	Vestan Pance	3262
5		Hell of the North	Vincent Lavallee	3087
6		The Charmers	Craigatron	3072
7		Drews Riders Using Genuine Supplements	Drew Stephenson	2933
8		TheFastMenOnBikes Part II:THE SEQWHEEL!	Teagan	2892
9		Velo raptors	Warwick Anderson	2840
10		ENRICO 666	Erik Mortier	2837
11		TEAM ITV4	Andrew Danson	2827
12		Evil Chanbots	Danny Chan	2804
13		15	Joe Danson	2749
14		RaboBrad	Brad	2737
15		Team Awesomeness	William MacKenzie	2578
16		Rouleurs	tdm911	2549
17		Cejay`s Vanguard	Cejay	2537
18		Its Sky Time	Mark	2489
19		Crazy Uncle Vince	Baby Lavallee	2440
20		To Infinity and Beyond	Nick Cuthbert	2142
21		10 minute team	dspeck	2106
22		Mungo Cycling	Mungo	2078
23		Haxby Group Pharmacy	Richard Harrison	1899
24		Ph.Dizzles	Ben	1899
25		Ned`s Boys	Elizabeth MacKenzie	1838
26		The Hopalongs	Dave	1777
27		Looking Good in Lycra	Catherine Windrum	1584
28		Marmite Men	Alasdair MacKenzie	1534
29		Dexter`s Midnight Wheelers	noj	1524
30		Smugblokes	Mark Philo	1406

No racing tomorrow, as everyone gets a well deserved rest day. I know I deserve a rest. The action will resume on Wednesday with Stage 10. There’s some climbing to be done, some descending to be done, and then it will be the finish. Now that Wiggins has a good lead on GC, there’ll be a lot of people looking to get some time back and put some pressure on Team Sky.