Stage 15 - LOL!

So, as expected, Team Sky dialed up the juice on Sunday - and just like at Ax-3-Domaines dished out a complete flogging to the rest of the peleton. Chris Froome won the stage and increased his unassailable lead in the general classification. Indeed, it is hard to decide who is least deserving of their victory - Froome, or the English cricket team. In fact I can't remember the last time I was so disillusioned with two sports as I am at the moment with cycling and cricket (maybe we should make that three given the laughable situation the AFL finds itself in with Essendon.

Anyway, back to the cycling, and as stated, the race to Mount Ventoux on Bastille Day played out exactly the same as that to Ax-3-Domaines. The black stain that is Team Sky sat on the front all day and put the hammer down one-bye-one until only a handful of riders remind. Once Richie Porte (the last lieutenant left) dropped off, Froome exploded away from Alberto Contador with the force of a hydrogen bomb. He easily rode up to breakaway leader Nairo Quintana, and after taking some time to break the plucky Colombian, finally put the nail in the coffin with a final attack under the flemme rouge. Froome's performance was so other worldly that he managed to put 30 seconds into Quintana in the final kilometre.

At the finish - Froome had 30 seconds in hand over Quintana with the rest of the main GC contenders around 1-2 minutes further back. As a result, Froome erased all the deficit he conceded on the flat stage earlier this week, and now leads the overall by an Armstrong like 4 minutes from Bauke Mollema and Alberto Contador. The Spaniard had looked like climbing to second on the podium after staying with Froome for the first half of the climb (after Mollema had been dropped), but the pace proved too much and he fell to pieces over the final kilometre (as opposed to Froome who seemed to get stronger and stronger....nothing suss). The big losers on the day where Pierre Rolland and Michal Kwiatowski who lost their leads in the polka dot jersey and white jersey competitions respectively. An injured Rolland was dropped early on the warm up climb to the Giant of Provence and scored no points on the day, allowing Froome to take the lead in the competition by earning a massive 50 points at the finish. Kwiatwoski gave up his youth classification lead after he was dropped halfway up Ventoux, with the lead passing to Quintana by over 2 minutes after he finished second on the stage. Peter Sagan (can rider) got into the days break so he could win the day's intermediate sprint and increase his stranglehold on the green jersey.

But the main theme of the stage was the laughable ease with which Chris Froome rode away from the rest of the Tour de France on one of the race's hardest mountains. As I've said earlier in the race, we haven't seen climbing performances like this since the days of Pantani and Armstrong....and you know how that turned out. I would like to give Froome the benefit of the doubt...but after the Brad Haddin's dismissal at Trent Bridge this afternoon, it seems the benefit of the doubt no longer exists in sport.

Yellow Jersey - Chris Froome
Green Jersey - Peter Sagan
Polka Dot Jersey - Chris Froome
White Jersey - Nairo Quintana