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Bora-hansgrohe at the top: "Then we left the sprinters behind on the mountain and then drove on."
Photo: Christophe Ena / dpa
The train is rolling:
it started normally and became spectacular.
At the beginning of the seventh stage, Benoît Cosnefroy stood out as an outlier, the wearer of the dotted jersey.
With a lot of effort he still scored mountain points in the first classification, but by then the Bora-hansgrohe team had long since sat in front of the field.
Seven drivers of the team were in the lead and formed the locomotive of the peloton for about 130 kilometers.
In the first hour the field reached an average speed of 46 kilometers per hour.
It shouldn't slow down until the end.
The result:
Wout van Aert took his second win of the day and the third for the Jumbo-Visma team on the 168 kilometers long seventh stage from Millau to Lavaur.
The Dutch team has dominated this year's Tour de France so far.
The yellow jersey is still worn by the Brit Adam Yates from Mitchelton-Scott.
Read the stage report here.
What the Bora locomotive for?
"Today the plan was that we would detach the sprinters," said Bora captain Emanuel Buchmann after the race on ARD: "Then we detached the sprinters on the mountain and then drove on."
That's how easy it can be.
The second team captain, Peter Sagan, was supposed to be sent into a breakaway group to recapture the green jersey from Sam Bennett.
But due to the high speed of Bora-hansgrohe, nobody dared to try to escape.
And so the locomotive just kept going.
Half a happy ending:
The German team invested a lot of energy in two goals - green jersey and stage win for Sagan.
In the intermediate sprint, the Slovak scored enough points to take over the dress.
But the final sprint failed: After a duel with Hugo Hofstetter, Sagan lost his footing, could no longer pick up the pace and was only 13th - a poor finish for Sagan's claims.
"I'm disappointed because we checked the whole race," said Sagan: "Everything looked pretty good, but then I dropped quite a few points in the final. But now: that's cycling."
In the points classification he now has a nine point lead over Bennett.
The battle for green has not yet been decided.
The double van Aert:
He is perhaps the best cyclist of the year.
Wout van Aert has already won the classics Strade Bianche and Milan-Sanremo this year.
Now there are two stage wins in the Tour de France.
The Belgian, who actually comes from the cross sector, can keep a high pace for a long time and at the same time has a quick start.
So it is made for both breakaway attempts and sprints.
Basically, he's a similar type of driver to Sagan, who has already won the green jersey seven times in the Tour de France.
You can currently see who could be Sagan's successor.
No TV show:
Before the stage, Marc Madiot, manager of the French team Groupama-FDJ, had to justify himself for the previously unspectacular Tour de France.
Madiot, known as an eccentric, reacted with little satisfaction.
"To those who see the Tour de France and think it's a show, I tell that it's primarily a sporting event. And there are ups and downs in a sporting event," Madiot said: "When it is a spectacle If you want to, you can watch a reality show on TV. Then you might be less disappointed. "
And action:
you didn't have to turn on Big Brother for entertainment.
At the end of the stage, other top teams like Ineos got involved in the management work.
The team around last year's winner Egan Bernal speculated that some drivers would lose touch in the face of the cross wind and the high speed.
The peloton didn't really deserve its name, only 40 of 172 riders were able to maintain the speed.
Even drivers from the top ten like Mikel Landa had to let go.
After bike defects, Tadej Pogacar, to date the best young rider, and Bernal's noble helper Richard Carapaz also fell back.
As a result, Bernal is now driving in the white jersey of the best young driver - he would soon like to drive in yellow.
Off to the Pyrenees: The
fact that some top drivers lost time gives hope for attacks at the weekend in the Pyrenees.
Two difficult mountain stages are ahead, on Saturday the tour has to cope with an increase in the most difficult mountain category for the first time this year.
"The bike race will really start then," said Bora captain Buchmann: "I think that the two Pyrenees stages are much more difficult than what we have ridden so far".
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