I says to my wife, I says, “Didja notice the rock solid chopper shots? There must be some excellent high-tech gimbals on the camera mounts.” 
Any idea if they’re used on the motorcycle cameras? Those are my favorite segments.
Powless is now only 15 points ahead on Pogacar, and 18 ahead of Vingegaard. (for the polka-dot) he wasn’t even in the peleton today (114th place) . An interview I saw said he was concentrating on stages with multiple climbs (so not today with only one scored climb) – we will see tomorrow.
The gap between the leaders is now NINE seconds
Sepp Kuss is back in the top 10
Brian
Beautiful stage today, that climb was brutal and the riders did a great job.
I don’t know! They have truck-mounted ones, but I think the gimbals are a bit large for a motorcycle. I’ve seen some pretty elaborately balanced rigs, so it’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t want to try riding a two-wheeled vehicle with one attached!
Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but the smoothness of these heli shots as a very small lead group of favourites comes to the top of the second last climb of a monster day is quite striking.
Jumbo Visma taking no prisoners today. Gave the breakaway absolutely no consideration and obviously plan to shred things for Jonas to attack on the last climb.
Good reminder, just turned it on.
Mano a mano battle for yellow here.
I’m biting my nails here, though I don’t even have a favorite.
Oh shoot, a camera moto blocking Pogacar. That shouldn’t happen.
Which gave Vingegaard the bonus seconds at the peak.
Pog’s fault. Should have waited a bit for where they had ropes up to hold the fans further back making for more space on the road.
It’s a shame that the motos were a factor here. Great climb, and Vingegaard showed what he’s got. Now a killer descent with a group.
What a stage! All that work by Jumbo Visma, and what have they won? One measly second.
So, really not much to separate these two. I’m not sure I can remember a Tour where the top 2 looked so closely matched.
Everybody said that this Tour would be decided at the mountain stages. But as close as they both are there, maybe the time trial on Tuesday will be the real decider.
Col de la Loze on Wednesday has a good chance of being decisive. Monster long climb and hits 2300m elevation coming after two cat 1 and one cat 2 climbs, kinda like the Hautacam stage last year but without the flat bit at the beginning. Historically Vingegaard has dropped Pogacar almost every time on similar profiles, though Pogi has looked good on the long hard stages this year. But it’s likely to feature bigger gaps than the ITT, I should think.
Happy for Rodriguez and Ineos, he’s now in podium position. Tomorrow’s race should be fun, again.
I didn’t see the crash early in the stage, sounds like a bunch of riders were forced to withdraw. How did that impact UAE and Jumbo?
I think Wilco Kelderman from Jumbo was involved but not seriously injured (and he didn’t seem to have been handicapped judging from the work he did for Vingegaard), and noone from UAE.
ETA: the race was stopped and neutralized after the mass crash so the not so seriously hurt riders could be taken care of by doctors and their bikes by mechanics, so noone lost time on it.
The crash happened before I woke up, but Jumbo and UAE were mostly ahead of the crash. Withdrawals of note are Estaban Chavez (EF) and Louis Meintjes (Intermarche), also Guerreiro and Pedrero from Movistar and Sinkeldam from Alpecin. Then later Romain Bardet (DSM) and James Shaw (EF) crashed on the first descent and also abandoned.
Rough day, though it should be noted that there’ve actually been relatively few big high-speed pileups at this year’s Tour. Usually there are a couple absolutely horrific ones in early sprint stages.
Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon in 1986. I was eighteen at the times and don’t remember many stages, but I’ll never forget LeMond beating Fignon by 9 seconds at the final in Paris which was an ITT for a change.