Tour de France 2024: race resumes with stage 10 to Saint-Amand-Montrond – live | Tour de France 2024

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Big blow to Primoz Roglic, robbed of his mountain lieutenant.

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Some interesting insight here on Big Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos-Grenadiers team.

The Welshman is ostensibly ­racing in a support role to the designated Ineos Grenadiers team leader, ­Carlos Rodríguez. The team have yet to win a Grand Tour since their former team principal, Dave Brailsford, was appointed as director of sport to Ineos in December 2021.

Asked if he was comfortable with a series of further changes to the team’s management structure, Thomas paused and said: “It’s challenging.”

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Great piece from Jeremy Whittle here.

The Cadillac doesn’t have fins, but it does have an iPad, a TV, several phones, a hand towel, multiple short-wave radio channels in multiple languages, packets of mints, spare wheels, a cool box, a bumper load of Bounty bars that the mechanics picked up on special offer and, handily for Southam’s stress levels, an in-built back massager.

It can also accelerate from 30km/h to 100km/h in the blink of an eye, which is much needed as the race splits apart and Southam is forced to cover events at both the rear and front of the peloton. The team has every member of staff out on the course. Chefs, press officers and bus drivers are standing at the roadside, lugging spare wheels and bidons back and forth. The biggest issue, Southam says, is likely to be wheel changes. “Basically, if you have a problem today, then you’re out of it,” he says as we roll out of Troyes ahead of the peloton.

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Here’s one of Cav’s best rides on Le Tour from 2013. After reading the break so well, there was no doubt who was going to win the small bunch sprint, even with Peter Sagan in there.

Bit of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen here.
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Preamble

The rest day is complete and Le Tour’s return to the roads sees a stage that bridges the race towards the mountains, the Massif-Central in this case. With not even a categorised climb on the day, it’s mostly flat as a pancake, and that suggests a sprint finish, though as we are in the second week, there will be teams and riders planning and plotting a breakaway. Oh, and there’s wind, too. Prepare for crosswinds and echelons making it a day of anxiety for the road captains and GC contenders.

Per William Fotheringham:

Flat and innocuous on paper, but when the wind blew here in 2013 the race split to bits, with Alberto Contador putting Alejandro Valverde on the rack. With three changes of direction on the exposed roads in the final 30km, this could happen again. A chance for the hulking Norwegians of Uno-X to engineer a stage win for the seasoned Alexander Kristoff, but the winner here on that windswept day in 2013 was none other than Cavendish.

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