Stage 14 Analysis:
An early breakaway contained riders like Tim Wellens, looking for the polka dot jersey points, and of course Peter Sagan, who wanted green jersey points. However, on the second climb of the day, Peter Sagan got dropped, but it looked like he anticipated that, as he was able to hang with the peloton until the intermediate sprint point, where he picked up 7 points without a contest. After that, riders started steadily dropping off the back after the start of the HC climb. From then, it was quite a war of attrition, and teammates got slowly dispatched until it was just the main GC contenders. Team Ineos looked rather exposed, as many of Bernal’s and Thomas’ teammates dropped rather quickly. For Thibaut Pinot, David Gaudu had an amazing ride, and protected his team leader, while still putting out a really good pace, and dropping some of Pinot’s rivals in the meantime. We saw Quintana dropped earlier than pretty much anyone else, which is a surprise, because we expected to see him send some fireworks off in the stage, maybe attacking, but that didn’t happen, and he lost around 3 minutes. However, near the end, all teammates were dropped from their GC contenders, and it became a full-on GC battle. Probably the biggest talking point from this stage is that at this point, Geraint Thomas himself was left behind, and he went backward quickly. With Thomas dropped, a very elite group of Egan Bernal, Steven Kruijswijk, Julian Alaphilippe, Thibaut Pinot, and Emanuel Buchmann were left. Once near the end, David Gaudu’s work paid off, and Thibaut Pinot attacked with apparent ease. He would go on to win the stage in an attack that was very pretty, around 6 seconds in front of Alaphilippe. And Alaphilippe himself is the big surprise in this stage. No one expected him to be in yellow for this stage, but we saw him very spectacular in the time trial, which allowed him to keep the yellow for another stage. Once we were in the stage, Julian Alaphilippe did great, and his climbing look very good as well. As many GC contenders were dropped off steadily, Alaphilippe looked comfortable, almost climbing with his mouth closed. Even as the reigning champion Geraint...