Harrowing descents in the rain and fog. Hirschi looks spectacular.
The Cat1 climb will be intense. I don’t know if Yates will be able to fend off the attacks to hang on to his yellow jersey.
Whooofff. Close call.
And props to Valverde, in the fight.
Barring disaster, I suspect the podium standings are a foregone conclusion now.
As I was saying…
I don’t want to turn this into another Covid thread but there are reports of record number of cases in France, Spain and the UK. Tour organizers are expected to announce testing results today/tomorrow.
…anybody willing to speculate on whether we’ll see the race continue on through Paris?
Thanks. I wondered.
Well this is a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t sure they would even continue the race, let alone having all riders/teams pass the covid tests.
Staff on four teams have reportedly tested positive - AG2R, Cofidis, Ineos, and Mitchelton. And Christian Prudhomme has tested positive. I’m not overly optimistic on the chances of this race getting to Paris.
I read early on that “any” positives would be cause to stop the race. So that’s why I’m surprised it’s still on. But you’re right - I think they are racing on borrowed time. We’ll have to enjoy it while we still can.
I noticed that on many of the days so far, the average speeds of the peloton are higher than normally expected. I wonder if the riders/teams strategies are becoming ‘race like it’s the last day’ every day.
What the … is that crying? There’s no crying in professional cycling!
Interesting comment by Christian Vande Velde this morning about the proliferation of round-abouts in the tour over the years, and the unwillingness of the organizers to plan routes that avoid them. Tour riders hate them and I can understand why. According to CVV, they occurred every 1.4 miles in Stage 10 and the organizers believe it makes for good viewing so they are not motivated to plan routes that avoid them.
Don’t these guys ride criteriums anymore?
Well, Paris is a crit. 
Crits are usually 1 day races. The tour is dangerous enough with the dangerous mountain descents, etc. I think losing riders to ‘road furniture’ crashes on a 21 day race is something they want to minimize. At least that’s my understanding of the complaint. But yeah, they race on public roads. It may not be an entirely reasonable expectation.
Allez! Vive le Tour!
I get to watch a little of it with breakfast and enjoy the landscapes with colorful riders. Maybe the best thing in all of sports!
We also have a group of riders from a big local office/factory near here that ride almost every day around noon. During the Tour, i try to drag out a lawn chair, cow bell, wineglass, sunhat, and sometimes a lawn tractor and cheer for them. Fun times for me and them to celebrate le Tour…
Where do you live? I want to come and ride past your house. 
Whelp, seems Sagan can’t get his wheel in edgewise. He’s got two more sprint days left in this tour so it looks like the green jersey has slipped out of his hands. Stage 12 seemed quite pointless for the Bora team in the end, though Daniel Oss was heroic for much of the day at the head of the peloton.
It was great to see Herschi finally win the stage.
I’m annoyed by team Jumbo-Visma being all in yellow, obscuring the yellow jersey. I’d be okay if they changed the rules prohibiting the wearing of yellow as the dominant jersey color in the TdF.
Looking forward to seeing who shows their mettle in the mountains over the next three days. I assume Roglic will continue to play it safe and cover attacks as they come.
I was impressed by Sagan’s balls-to-the-wall attack on the sprint after being relegated for the Wout van Aert incident. However, I agree that the maillot vert is Bennett’s to lose.
Sagan has to feel demoralized. How long can Bora turn themselves inside out to send Sagan to a mediocre finish? I mean, there’s what… 2 more sprint days left? At this point, a stage win in Paris is the only way he can salvage this tour for himself.
He’s not completely out of the green jersey contest. There’s 7 intermediate sprints as well as the stage 19 finish and Paris, and he’s 43 points down. So, if he averages 5 points better than Bennett over all of those, he takes back green. That’s a really tall order, granted, but they got 23 points back today.
Awesome fun attacking by Sunweb, though. Almost not fair having so many credible attacking threats at the end of a stage to smash a 1-2-3 punch like that.
Gogl can descend like a missile.
Amazing that Jumbo-Visma is still 6 man strong. Question is, how did Ineos forget how to build a team?
Bernal has cracked. Very pleased to see Valverde, old man of the tour, hanging with the lead group.