Gérardmer – Mulhouse

Distance: 170 kilometers.

This stage begins with a Category 2 climb, then two Category 3s, followed by another Category 2. Then there is 20 km of hills before the first Category 1 on this year’s Tour which has a Category 3 climb and then about 40 km of downhill to the finish. The sprinters will be pushed even further back in the General Classification.

A Frenchman, Tony Gallopin, will be wearing the Yellow Jersey on Bastille Day. Nibali’s team needed to save their energy for tomorrow’s stage where they think that Contador will make his move in the General Classification. By protecting Nibali so long the Astana team has been stretched fairly thin chasing down escape groups.

The other big winner was Tony Martin who repeated Blel Kadri’s win of yesterday – taking the stage, the Polka Dots, and the Red Numbers.

Tony Gallopin ( Fra – LTB – 134 ) [Yellow] 38h 04′ 38″
Peter Sagan ( Svk – CAN – 051 ) [Green] 267 points
Tony Martin ( Ger – OPQ – 075 ) [Polka Dot] 18 points
Michal Kwiatkowski ( Pol – OPQ – 074 ) 6 [White]

Team: Astana Pro ( AST – 041-049 ) [Yellow numbers]
Stage winner: Tony Martin ( Ger – OPQ – 075 )
Combative: Tony Martin ( Ger – OPQ – 075 ) [Red numbers]

Top Ten:

1 Tony Gallopin ( Fra – LTB – 134 )
2 Vincenzo Nibali ( Ita – AST – 041 ) + 01′ 34″
3 Tiago Machado ( Por – TNE – 206 ) + 02′ 40″
4 Jakob Fuglsang ( Den – AST – 042 ) + 03′ 18″
5 Richie Porte ( Aus – SKY – 007 ) + 03′ 32″
6 Michal Kwiatkowski ( Pol – OPQ – 074 ) + 04′ 00″
7 Alejandro Valverde Belmonte ( Esp – MOV – 011 ) + 04′ 01″
8 Pierre Rolland ( Fra – EUC – 151 ) + 04′ 07″
9 Alberto Contador ( Esp – TCS – 031 ) + 04′ 08″
10 Romain Bardet ( Fra – ALM – 082 ) + 04′ 13″

The Rest of the Top 30:
[Read more →]

If they haven’t forgotten how to play football in the last few days, this should be another German win. They have a solid team that knows how to play both offense and defense and it would really be rubbing salt in the wound if Argentina won Brazil’s World Cup.

Lionel Messi is a great player, but he can’t be expected to do everything. Teams need to stop depending on ‘stars’ and start building teams.

The German team add the fourth star to their patch:

Germany 1-0 Argentina

An Andre Schurrle cross to Mario Gotze who left-footed it into the lower right corner of the net ended the game. The Argentine keeper came out, probably expecting a header, and had no chance of stopping it. Argentina was unable to respond in the 7 minutes left in Extra Time. The game was a 0-0 tie at Full Time.