ALL THE SCORES ON THE DOORS
If you’re wondering how Tim Merlier isn’t closer to the green jersey despite winning three of the sprint stages so far, it’s because he climbs like… whatever is the opposite of a mountain goat. It’s reasonable to expect Mads Pedersen to be there or thereabouts today,
Most combative yesterday, for the third time, was Baptiste Veistroffer, who has now spent more than 400km up the road at the Tour. Some say this basically makes him nailed on to win the prize for the entire race but, unless they’ve changed the way it works, I’m not sure it does. More likely is it ends up with a rider whose combativeness has been a little less… shall we say “optimistic”?
Something you might not have realised is that Veistroffer also won the “best team-mate” prize which, honestly, I had no idea was a thing, but which is sponsored by the Department des Hauts-de-Seine.