Tour de France Stage 11: Geraint Thomas wins stage and rides into yellow

I noticed that Froome didn't wait for Nibali when he crashed, can you imagine if Nibali had done that, the Sky fan boys would be choking on their Rapha coffee

Stage 12 to Alpe D'Huez, deja vu, the borefest continues, looks like the Kenyan gringo mountain biker will win again

Will be interesting to see who has the legs today, especially amongst the Domestiques.

My thoughts are that Froome allowed G to win yesterday's stage by not going with him. That was pre-planned I reckon - if and when G gave the signal he felt strong enough then he would be allowed to go whilst Froome played games with any other GC contenders. 

They can ride together now, G as a Super Dom allowing Froome to catapult off for the stage win and bonus seconds today. Maybe....

Oh, and p.s. - Chapeau Cav, sad to see him out but completing the stage out of self-respect and respect to The Tour only earns him more respect from me.

And so here we go again, another Sky borefest, sit on the front and grind everyone down with power meter climbing, with a side order of salbutamol, the tour looks like its going to over before the end of the second week

Makes me wonder if they'll set it up for a big attack by Froome in the third week, with G hopefully having enough time in hand that he can just follow on those who are forced to chase and still end up in second.

I guess from the team's point of view Froome's not done the Tour follwing the Giro before so  knowing how he'll go in the third week is hard, having G as possibly his only major threat works great for them. Hats off to Kwiatkowski for burying himself yet again for the team, my wife thought they were showing the clip in slow motion when he came to a standstill, that can't have been a very pleasant last few km to ride.

I really expected better from some of the others, I thought Bardet might not be at full strength following his nightmare sunday, but Movistar really dropped the ball, three leaders who don't appear to be capable of leading isn't great, if Dumoulin isn't totally spent after this stage then maybe he's still there, but he did look like he was digging very deep.

Well done Geraint.

https://www.captiongenerator.com/1039122/G-takes-Yellow

meh salbutamol fuelled cheating no doubt  

Jeannie Longo was on the FR2 after-Tour programme and commented that if Froome were French they would have been no criticism of him over the past few months. This remark was met with stony silence ...

Fun stage. Must suck to get that close to a stage win and then some guy literally motors past with what looks like fresh legs. 

It's certainly narrowed the field of potential winners down. 

Really good stage, now let the fun begin on Alp D'Huez, 

This has similarities to the 2016 Vuelta, Froome coming off a heavy season including the TdF and the Olympics, was clearly still heavy legged and yet none of his competitors took advantage just sitting back and waiting to see what he was going to do.

Quintana still hasn't learnt, sending Valverde up the road just was not going to work, absolutely played into the hands of SKY. When G and then latterly Froome went he needed Valverde, except he'd used him up with some stupidly dumb sending him up the road nonsense.

Froome is most definitely the leader but it would be a real poke in the nose of everyone and absolutely fucking hilarious IF G was still there at the end of all the mountains and Froome let Thomas win by a second!

That was an absolutely amazing stage!  The way it all unfolded on that last climb was unreal!

Bloody brilliant stuff from Geraint!

"Thomas's attack laid to rest any question of whether he would be riding for Chris Froome in this year's race"

I don't think so. He told Matt Rendell on ITV that Froome is the leader and he will enjoy yellow while it lasts. Which IMHO is a shame as it was Thomas who had the best legs today (though that doesn't necessarily mean he'll have the best legs tomorrow or in a week's time). I want to see how far he can go with it.

Will tomorrow be a procession with a breakaway winning the stage or will Movistar go for it and try and close the gap on G and Froome....whichever way it goes one thing is for certain it will be a cracker.

The way Domoulin looked at the finish, he won't be a threat tomorrow. Sky blew away all challengers today. I still expect Froome to win overall, Geraint, does look strong currently.

Yet again another brilliant stage, delighted for him.

The question now is whether G can cope with week 3, or is he actually just there as an ultra-dom for Froome?