Mont Ventoux - not as bad as you might think!

Phew, what a scorcher!

We watched this stage in our own personal heatwave - the UK is experiencing "summer" for a couple of days, and we are not used to it! - and golly, it was exciting.

All the expected things occurred -   Sky, in yellow, set a good tempo, no-one else did very much, some early breaks went away and were brought back until the "right" combination of breakaway riders assembled, ie no-one within several minutes of Froome. All went well until Pierre Roland, now sporting Polka Dot jersey, shorts, socks, gloves AND hat, tried to join them in order to stand a chance of getting the 50-odd points for the win.  He struggled for nearly an hour to catch them, but they kept speeding up, so in the end Europcar came to the front and started pulling them back, in retaliation.

However, this worked in Sky's favour, as they then sat there having a nice easy ride while Europcar did all the work.

Andy, meanwhile, continued to play his clever game of staying close to Froome, ie near the front of the bunch, out of trouble, and able to see what was going on.

The last two days, incidentally, have been Schleck-free days as far as the commentators were concerned - they did not mention him ONCE! Not once! They even failed to mention that Jakob was in the front bunch and came in the top 10 yesterday! huh! *flounces indignantly*

Today, alas, was not to be Andy's great come-back day, as he was soon seen, partway up the Ventoux, going backwards and wobbling into the gutter.

On our coverage, we keep getting really annoying interruptions from some bloke with a microphone, talking over our commentators. Today, he apparently tried to talk to Andy, while he was failing to climb the Ventoux. Huh, not the best time to attempt an interview!

However, although this looked pretty dire, and despite coming in 10 minutes down on the leader, Andy is still in the top 20 in GC, which is pretty impressive.

He may have lost 10  mins or so, but a lot of people lost a lot more - the grupetto came in more than 32 mins down, and one poor soul, Jonathan Hivert of Sojasun, came in a whopping 50 minutes down - more than 20 mins later than the rest! Poor, poor, man - can you imagine the stress of toiling in more than 20 minutes after the bus, all alone, everyone packing up and going home around you,  knowing that the podium presentations are long finished, and that some riders might even be back in their hotel rooms, while he is still struggling upwards. Brave, brave, man. And another week of it to go. Mind you, he's not last in the GC - no, that's our dear pet Schlecklander, Svein Tuft!

After the race, Andy tweets: "OK that was not good but its not the end of the world and not the end of the Tour."  Good man, Andy! Yes, we would all have liked to see you zooming up the hill, but if it's not to be, well, blimey, you are still in the top 20, after all!

Having just checked the RadioShambles website, they never cease to annoy me: they have a little report on the day, as you would expect, and they have a series of 7 photos: number 3 is "Tony and Lauren at the top" and number 4 is "Andy near the finish line". Andy came in 39th, Gallopin and Didier came in 56th and 57th, very nearly 17 mins down. So why do Shambles put the photos in such an order that they suggest that Andy came in after the other two?

I know it's a small thing, but it just seems to me that Shamble fail to praise, and seek to undermine, at every opportunity. The sooner Trek take over, the better.


Anyway,  that's one climbing day done, today we have a rest day, and then a few more climbing days to go, and there is still time for Andy to win a stage, and some UCI points, which might be useful to increase his value and salary for next year.

Yay!