Le Tour de France on Ten Pounds — Stage 11

“ I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a small group break away and try to take a stage win before the going gets really tough towards the weekend.”

If that’s the case, why didn’t I take my own advice and back that outcome? Ah well, another day, another stage — that’s the thing with a grand tour, they are relentless, an average of over 100 miles a day for 21 days with just two rest days in between means thoughts turn to the following day almost as soon as a stage ends.

Stage 11 takes the riders from Carcassonne to Montpellier, a pretty flat stage generally referred to as a ‘transition stage’; that’s one that essentially shifts the race from one place to another with little expected impact on the general classification.

I visited Carcassonne back in 1991 and it is a terrific place, well worth a visit.

However, tomorrow it is all about the road out of Carcassonne and the 162.5km parcours is one of the shorter distances the riders will cover in any particular day. There are two category 4 climbs and one intermediate sprint, so the chances are once again that a bunch sprint is likely. It’s perhaps more likely, i.e. a breakaway is less of a threat, for the fact that the following day’s stage is so hard, ending on the summit of Mont Ventoux, the Giant of Provence. With that in mind, which particular rider will I saddle with the burden of being my nominated stage winner? I’ve £8.88 in the kitty, a sum that the Chinese would think lucky, so how lucky will it be for me? Here are the odds:

Marcel Kittel (Etixx-QuickStep) 2/1

Mark Cavendish (Team Dimension Data) 2/1

Andre Greipel (Lotto Soudal) 9/2

Bryan Coquard (Direct Energie) 11/1

Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) 12/1

Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) 12/1

Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNL-Jumbo) 25/1

On such a short stage a bunch sprint seems inevitable, and it may come down to whose lead-out train performs best. Mark Cavendish’s chances have been hurt by the abandonment of Mark Renshaw; the Australian Prince Harry lookalike piloted the Manx Missile to win after win after win in the colours of HTC — Columbia before departing for the now defunct Rabobank and a shot at being their main man in sprints. However, to date Cavendish has profited from riding on the wheel of other teams and then taking advantage of his rediscovered finishing speed, in much the way Robbie McEwen did in the early 2000’s. Andre Greipel has yet to win a stage and ‘The Gorilla’ will want that monkey off his back soon. Greipel took the stage win the last time the race visited Montpellier in 2013, a day that saw Simon Gerrans of Orica GreenEDGE (as they once were) pass the yellow jersey to team-mate Daryl Impey. Returning to 2016, other sprinters like Bryan Coquard will see their chances of a stage win in this edition of Le Tour reducing as the race nears the Alps and will surely be racing very hard with that aim in mind.

I’m going to back Mark Cavendish for another stage win. The parcours is ideal for a sprint and he just seems to have the edge on Kittel and Greipel at the moment.