Tour de France, Stage 18 – Live Blog

Friday, July 23, 2010

Today’s stage starts at 13h00 CET | 7:00 AM EDT

Salies-de-Béarn to Bordeaux – 198 km

Tour de France Stage 18 Profile

It’s out of the Pyrenees mountains and onto the flat plain in stage 18. Teams will try breakaways for team GC standing, and leaders of the individual GC race will not let pretenders away.

Should be a sprint finish in downtown Bordeaux.

10:32

A late start for me today.

The riders are 3/4′s of the way through stage 18. Here’s a quick summery of events so far – taken from the Tour de France Live “widget thingy”, comments section.

Right off the start, at the 3 km mark (1:11 CET | 7:11 AM EDT), 7 riders tried a breakaway that the Peloton quickly re-assimilated after only 4 km.

Soon after that, at 7:20 AM EDT, a group of 4 riders tried again – this break has sustained.

Tour de France Stage 18 Live 10:38

The four escapees are:

1. Matt Breschel (Saxo Bank)
2. Daniel Oss (LIQ)
3. Benoit Vaugrenard (FDJ)
4. Jerome Pineau (Quick Step)

Of the four I think I recognize only Jermone Pineau as having any bearing on the individual time, general classification. The other riders in the break represent teams, and that too is important in the overall race for team standing.

Let’s see who’s from where, and where they are…

General Classification:

66. PINEAU Jérôme QUICK STEP 85h 25′ 55″ + 1h 53′ 16″

Hmmm…. not a threat to any of the leaders on individual time.

Here’s the Team General Classification after yesterday’s stage 17 – who in the lead four is the biggest threat to overall team standing?

Tour de France - Team General Classification after stage 17

Team Radioshack (RSH) is out in front of it’s nearest rival team Caisse D’Epargne (GCE) by 8:30. Neither are represented in the breakaway.

11:11

The Peloton are chasing down the breakaway as we come to the last 20 km of today’s stage.

Tour de France Stage 18 Live 11:11 The Peloton will not abide any longer...

11:27

Daniel Oss is the only surviving breakaway-er and Andy Schleck is right on his tail. Poor Daniel.

Tour de France Stage 18 Live 11:27 Schleck and Co. ready to take over

At the bottom of the image, note the top 6 riders in the “Virtual Leaders” tab.

11:40

At the 2 km to go mark the riders are averaging 76 kph!! Daniel Oss has been eaten. The Sky Pro Cycling team is dominating the tip of the Peloton.

Calvendish boots it into over-drive with 500 metres to go (in a rather dis-organized finish) Cavendish wins the stage “easily”.

Stage 18 Finish Order

Stage 18 Individual Finish

General Classification after Stage 18

Tour de France, General Classification after stage 18

Team GC after Stage 18

Tour de France, Team General Classification after Stage 18