Eye-catching Bike of the Day: Sawyer

@Rendel Harris Interestingly, and it sort of supports my theory that UAE were being cunning, Pog has the mountains jersey today because he was the quickest up the final climb, which argues that he hadn't burnt all his matches when he got to the finish.

@JLasTSR It takes time. I got knocked off nine years ago in broad daylight on a roundabout, by a driver who was wearing very dark glasses, I'm suspicious that he was actually visually impaired. No prosecution. It took me a few years to get my confidence back. I wish you all the best in getting the enjoyment back.

@tomlew That sounds like someone who is thinking about GC to me. I don't think your comparison with 16-year-old footballers is particularly valid, ultimately football at every level is played on roughly the same size to pitch, the goals are the same size and there are eleven players on each team. If professional football was played on a pitch three times the size with goals half the size and for five hours instead of ninety minutes, that might be a good comparison. I have no objection to Seixas riding this tour for experience, I think it's a good idea, but as I've said, I don't think he's got any chance of winning unless something major happens to the big contenders (he's already shipped 39 seconds and 27 seconds respectively to the big dogs) and if he tries too hard he could receive humiliating setbacks that could damage him psychologically throughout his career. You say "If I were a prodigy cyclist youngster with a realistic shot at winning, I might take [the risk] even if I knew it might be the end of my career", but he doesn't have a realistic shot at winning and in taking the risk he might be putting in jeopardy the possibility of winning multiple Tours in future. I don't think this is a situation where a "death or glory" approach is suitable. We shall reconvene in three weeks time and see what happened, and I'm quite happy to be proved wrong and if he does win this year it would certainly mean we had had a thrilling Tour.

@Rendel Harris I absolutely know all that. But that's exactly what I said: he is risking a lot, but the reward might be worth it. It is only a matter of judgment. And by the way, AFAIK nobody said he's going to ride to win the GC. Maybe the plan is exactly to learn his lessons this year so that next year nobody can say he's too inexperienced to really go for victory. Of course, he could ride the Vuelta, but what better place is there to learn the TdF than TdF itself? Times have changed. No more pecking orders, 16-year-old footballers are already shaking the world (even though most of them do indeed get chewed and spat out badly, but again: that's a risk they take). Why wouldn't the same happen in cycling?

Sôme interesting comments from Wright and Stewart about 'losing' thé team élément a bit with thé new format

And I don’t know when you wrote this but I think it was published 9 days after Onley was confirmed out of the Tour.

Paul Seixas’ team is Decathlon CMA CGM

The best thing about the TTT as Stage 1 is that it emphasises the fact that cycling grand tours incl the TDF are a team sport.

If you click through and read the story you'll see that the first motorist hit the cyclist, and the second, following, motorist then also hit them while they were lying in the road - both were convicted of causing the cyclist's death.

I may be reading far too much into it, but I felt as though Pogacar and UAE weren't actually that bothered about winning today. Not having yellow to defend and all the extra press etc to do this early in the race is an indisputable advantage; I just got the impression that they were out to lose no more than a handful of seconds but not to bury themselves for the win. With about 2.5kms to go I thought that if Pogacar really wanted it he would have gone from there, but he stayed with Del Toro for nearly another kilometre even though the body language was saying that no way was Del Toro in as good shape as Pogacar. Even after the finish he didn't seem as wiped out as Ganna (whom I don't think I've ever seen quite so shattered) or Jonas. As I say, might be reading too much into it but I would not be surprised if UAE had played a very clever hand not to lose any meaningful time but to avoid the burden of yellow from the get go.