Tour de France

Big day today with the cobbles, already been a crash before we reached them and Richie Porte is out of the race with what look she like a broken collar bone 

Bad new for the race overall

The 2 sky lads are very strong. Thomas is a lot more likeable than Froome, still not gonna covince many.

It would be a great TDF if there was no Team Sky

At least he had the balls to make a proper effort at it, the last few TDF's have seen lads fighting for podium positions as they know the win isn't possible. Though it also says a lot for Sky's dominance/arrogance/race knowledge that they let him get 4 minutes up the road and into the virtual yellow jersey, knowing full well they could catch him if & when they wanted to. 

Its turning into a bit of a dilemma for Sky, Thomas is marginally the stronger rider of the 2 and despite what he says about Froome being leader & all that nonsense, he will know that he might never get another chance like this. Not quite sure how Thomas will go about losing the time if those are the orders, the obvious one would be the time trial, but that's the 2nd last (effectively last) stage, I don't think you could trust anyone to lose the time at that stage. I don't think Sky particularly care who wins, especially if Dave forsees something PED/TUE/Test fail related thing coming down the road for Froome. 

Never a bother on Thomas at any point during the climb either, while Froome had some half sketchy moments, as did Dumolin, before recovering. I don't see Thomas losing the full 1.39 unless there is a contrived situation of some sort, or a genuine crash/puncture situation. The other thing is that Dumolin, probably the world's best time trialist, is only 11 seconds behind Froome, so as long as he remains there, Sky can't risk Thomas losing that time deliberately, as Dumolin could overtake Froome next Saturday. 

That would be the real world though, in the alternative reality that is pro cycling, we can probably expect Froome to just turn it on for one day next week and take 5 minutes out of both, thus rendering it all irrelevant. 

Think Martin might pick up another stage win too- he usually goes better in the Pyrenees than the Alps for some reason, and he won't have quite the same level of scrutiny on him from Sky as he is no longer a GC threat. 

I think UAE will try something in one or more of the next 3 days and have an effort at dropping or breaking Sky's rythm, other than that, I can't see why they went to the TDF at all, they have been absolutely nowhere in helping Dan for 2 weeks, he is just hanging onto Sky & Movistar before the front men make their move and following them, the lads are nowhere to be seen.  

Also, their director chap seemingly said last week they deliberately weren't putting anyone in the breaks because they didn't think they had a chance of winning stages with any other rider. Which means either they have a plan for the Pyrenees or they have brought a fairly useless shower with them for the TDF. They are 18th of 22 in the team classification too, so again that looks like they are taking it relatively easy so far, so they might be up to something. It could also be that they are generally useless, I'm not sure. 

Think there is going to be 3 good days ahead anyway, Wednesday will be interesting tactically to say the least, will the front lads wait for their backups to arrive or drive on amongst themselves & try break late on. You would think if team tactics come into play, it might favour those who have their full decks left, though on the other hand, some of them might be starting too far back to make much difference to their leaders.