Live updates from the medium mountain stage to MendeSagan wins stage 13 as appeal for calm goes up in smokeEmail John or tweet @JohnBrewin__ with your thoughts 12.25am BST Yesterday’s would have been a regulation transition stage, the type collected by Peter Sagan as a matter of course, had it not been for actual fireworks, namely the flare thrown into the peloton towards the finish. This is a race being ridden within an atmosphere of insurrection. The UK TV broadcasters try their best to gloss over it, but you would need a tin ear not to notice that Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas and Team Sky are riding under a hail of boos from the watching public at the side of the road. And Vincenzo Nibali had a vertebrae broken in the hubbub up Alpe D’Huez. This is expected to be a stage that splits the pack, though probably not the GC contenders. The dual leaders sub-plot of Team Sky may be played out for a while yet, and though there are no questions over Thomas’ form, Froome is not the cannibal of old with the caveat that we said this during the Giro and he ate the GC up in one mountain attack. That may have to wait for the Pyrenees, which was where Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond fought out their internecine war in 1986, though the finish today is a 3km climb with a 10% gradient which may see precious seconds won and lost. Here’s our pre-Grand Départ stage 14 preview as penned by William Fotheringham. Expect Bardet and Alaphilippe to feature today. One of the few days when the break is highly likely to stay away, so the tussle to get in it will be intense. The second half of this is brutally hilly, and the steep finish climb up to the airport is made for Julian Alaphilippe, although British fans remember this as where Wirral’s finest Steve Cummings outwitted Romain Bardet and Thibaut Pinot for a tactically perfect win back in 2015. Continue readingread full article
