Stage 7- First day in the Mountains!

July 10, Stage 7: Tournus - Station des Rousses 165.5km


1 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Quick Step 4:22:52

2 Rafael Valls Ferri (Spa) Footon-Servetto 0:00:57

3 Juan Manuel G.rate Cepa (Spa) Rabobank 0:01:27

4 Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Bbox Bouygues Telecom 0:01:40

149 Daniel Lloyd (GBr) Cervelo Test Team 0:22:17
 
Daniels comments - "Quite a grippy day today. A break of 5 went after around 10km, got up to 8 minutes, before Saxo and later Bbox started controlling from behind. We had 6 GPM's, the pace wasn't excrutiating but it was certainly a solid tempo, and the high temperatures made it feel even harder. Eventually I went into the groupetto on the 2nd last climb, having stayed with Carlos as long as possible. My legs were actually quite good. Towards the end we had to ride a little bit harder to make sure we got inside the time limit, which was only 7% on today's stage. We made it by a minute! We were in a large group so we wouldn't have been eliminated, but we would have been deducted points as a penalty which would have been a disaster for Thor, especially as Pettachi was a couple of minutes ahead.
Hunter's Comments- 6 climbs. This was a deceptively hard stage. Over 2 hours of climbing today for Daniel. The 4th climb was very hard and Daniel had to ride near his threshold for much of the climb to stay in the group and help out Carlos Sastre. Daniel's job in the Giro and also the Tour this year is to do as much as he can for Carlos before the mountains and through the mountains as much as possible. On the next to last climb, Daniel was only able to handle the first 4 minutes of the climb before turning off the turbos and riding in the last group to the end. For Daniel, to ride in the 'gruppetto', it allows him to save energy for the next stages and since he's not concerned with his overall time, he can relax a bit in the back.


Download Stage 7 file here