Stage 7 (Saturday)

Coming back to Decathlon’s attitude, Del Toro🇲🇽 didn’t lose an inch to Seixas🇫🇷. If it goes the same way in the real mountain this week-end, Decathlon may come back home empty-handed, as they scorned the first 6 stages (!) and all secondary classifications (there are still a ton of Mountain points to grab, though, but considering that they never ride at the front…)

And here we bloody go! 😡

Seixas🇫🇷 crashed and it took him several minutes to restart...

It may be up to Bisiaux🇫🇷 to save the boat. The same whom they didn't put in the breakaway yesterday... in spite of the fact that he was in good position thanks to the breakaway of the first Sunday. They only envisioned a domestique role for him, whereas they could have made him play the co-leader, or have him aim at secondary objectives.

It turned out that Decathlon, as a team, handled the situation pretty well: despite a gap of 4 minutes with the peloton, they never panicked, got 2-3 riders to pull Seixas🇫🇷 on the flat sections, while keeping Bisiaux🇫🇷 in the peloton, where he could pull Seixas in the last climb(s) – and could still have played his own chance, should Seixas give up on the pursuit or withdraw.

Naturally he was unwell and lost time again in the terribly hard end, but neither his team nor himself panicked. They could have ridden too fast for him and cook him for the final part, or he could have relayed and blown his teammates up and then be alone, as we often see it happen in such situations (in the Roglitch years, Visma was famous for that).

Caja Rural managed to place 2 guys in the top-10 of the stage (they came together with Tuckwell (🇦🇺 Bora) who was completely abandoned by is team but managed to keep his Yellow jersey), and they weren't even in a breakaway. That was better than Bisiaux🇫🇷, Jasch🇩🇪, Tullett🇬🇧, Martin🇫🇷, Vauquelin🇫🇷 and so on. Let's see if they can survive again on the last stage, Sunday.