Stage 6 - No Triple For Greipel

So another flat stage, and things went pretty much as expected:

• Early break up the road
• Big crashes
• Remains of break caught just before the line
• Sprint finish

Big crashes indeed! Four men were too broken to carry on. So farewell, Tom Danielson, Wout Poels Davide Vigano and Mikel Astarloza. I hope you all get well soon.

 

Plenty of other riders were hurt or delayed too, and some boys with GC hopes saw them as good as disappear today. Ryder Hesjedal lost a massive 13 minutes (as did Bile Beans dark-horse hope Lieuwe Westra – grrr). Robert Gesink finished 3:31 down, while Frank Schleck, Valverde, Brajkovic, and Scarponi all lost around 2 minutes.

 

Andre Greipel was also caught in a crash. He soldiered on to the finish to contest the sprint, but when he got to the line, it turned out that “The Tourminator” Peter Sagan had already been there slightly earlier.

 

No huge changes in the minileague  today, although the Charmers earned the best score, and moved up to second behind those Flamin' Nadgers. The effects of today’s crashes will start to show as the race goes on however, as some riders people were relying on to score some points, won't be scoring many points.

MINI LEAGUE SCORES

Tour De Pance

Rank		Team	Directeur	Score
1		Flamin` nadgers	Andrew Windrum	2875
2		The Charmers	Craigatron	2322
3		Hell of the North	Vincent Lavallee	2312
4		Evil Chanbots	Danny Chan	2257
5		Return of Reflex	Karl	2054
6		Bile Beans	Vestan Pance	2019
7		Velo raptors	Warwick Anderson	1925
8		Cejay`s Vanguard	Cejay	1889
9		TEAM ITV4	Andrew Danson	1871
10		Drews Riders Using Genuine Supplements	Drew Stephenson	1862
11		temple of FROOME	Tom	1809
12		RaboBrad	Brad	1737
13		ENRICO 666	Erik Mortier	1720
14		Crazy Uncle Vince	Baby Lavallee	1632
15		Rouleurs	tdm911	1622
16		TheFastMenOnBikes Part II:THE SEQWHEEL!	Teagan	1583
17		Team Awesomeness	William MacKenzie	1529
18		Its Sky Time	Mark	1454
19		Mungo Cycling	Mungo	1422
20		To Infinity and Beyond	Nick Cuthbert	1331
21		10 minute team	dspeck	1320
22		15	Joe Danson	1241
23		Ph.Dizzles	Ben	1203
24		Looking Good in Lycra	Catherine Windrum	992
25		Marmite Men	Alasdair MacKenzie	983
26		Dexter`s Midnight Wheelers	noj	940
27		Haxby Group Pharmacy	Richard Harrison	909
28		Ned`s Boys	Elizabeth MacKenzie	899
29		Smugblokes	Mark Philo	839

At last! It’s time for a bit of a hill tomorrow, as the race will be finishing atop La Planche des Belles Filles, (or The Plank of Beautiful Girls, as I like to call it). It’s about 6km long and has some steep bits, so we should get a chance to see how well the big boys are climbing. We might see someone try and sneak back some of the time they lost today, but I suspect everyone will just watch each other as they ride up in a select group, shelling the weaklings out of the back.