Le Tour de Crash: Big names come tumbling down on another day of carnage

[Baclava]

2. Glad to help, 1st day in the mountains, La Planche des Belles Filles, was a nutcracker

The big boys came to play, Bradley Wiggins and Cadel Evans...and the peloton crumbled.

Wiggins takes Tour reins, Froome wins stage

Chris Froome burst ahead late to finish two seconds in front of BMC leader Cadel Evans and Sky leader Brad Wiggins




Saturday's Stage 7 finished atop a not overly long (six kilometers) but appallingly steep climb called La Planche des Belles Filles, which translates, roughly, to "The Plateau of Beautiful Girls" but is in fact an ugly ascent averaging an eight percent gradient (deeply painful), but kicking up, over the last few hundred meters, to 20 percent (beyond obscene). It was at the base of that steepest section that defending Tour champion Cadel Evans launched an attack, slingshotting himself from yellow-helmeted Team Sky riders Wiggins and Chris Froome.

Bradley Wiggins was the favourite to pull on the maillot jaune at the end of stage 7 from Tomblaine to La Planche des Belles Filles but even the Team Sky leader was surprised the damage he and his team did to their rivals.

After just the first mountain top finish in this year’s Tour de France, the battle for the overall looks to down three – four if you count Wiggins’s teammate Chris Froome – riders with Cadel Evans and Vincenzo Nibali still in the hunt and able of challenging Wiggins.


http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/wiggins-and-sky-surprised-at-stage-7-damage




should be interesting when they hit the high mtns.