No easy days

Stage 7 today. One of the easier stages on paper, with a significant chance of ending in a bunch sprint if the teams decided to control it. However, with still quite a bit of climbing, it also looked like a stage where a breakaway could have a chance. On top of that, tomorrow we have the TT, Saturday finishes on a steep climb, and Sunday is a long criterium-style race. Plenty of reasons for riders to bet there chances on today's stage.

It turned out Vorarlberg wanted to control the race for a sprint. That surprised me a little, as they still need to make up almost 4 minutes on the yellow jersey. (Yes, that’s basically the bill from stage 4, when all the other teams refused to help us chase. I have to admit there is some satisfaction in seeing them pay it now.) The yellow jersey’s team isn’t particularly strong, so I expected Vorarlberg to try and force a break with one of their two riders sitting in the top ten. They didn’t. That meant it was mostly up to the other teams to make the race.

I tried as well. After around 50 km we got away with a group of roughly ten riders. Unfortunately, a few guys refused to work because the rider sitting sixth in GC and I were both in the move. The collaboration quickly disappeared and, once everyone stopped pulling, we were brought back by 80km. After that two riders briefly rode off the front until we reached the second climb. I was sitting around P60–70, assuming the stage would stay relatively calm. I was wrong. The pace was upped and I suddenly found myself in the second peloton. Not willing to gamble, I bridged solo to the first group of around 30 riders. Naturally, everything came back together a few km later. It always does… until the one time you decide to gamble: you never see that 30-main group again.

Eventually the race settled. A small 5-man break went clear while Vorarlberg took control of the peloton for the expected sprint. At that point I was perfectly happy to sit in. We were already 100 km into the stage, I’d spent enough energy trying to make something happen, and realistically neither a stage win nor gaining time on GC was going to happen in the final 50 km.

So I stayed near the front, mainly to avoid ending up in the long line in the cross-tailwind, which is one of the worst places to be. I was actually feeling pretty good and was prepared either to sprint myself or help Denley if he still had the legs. Neither happened. 9km from the finish I dropped my chain. Not just a normal dropped chain either. It twisted itself around the bottom bracket and got completely stuck. I had to stop, get off the bike and the team mechanic helped me fix it. Once it was back on, the chase began. I went full gas trying to get back before losing time. The team car wasn’t much help because the jury quickly intervened as soon as I started drafting behind it. To be honest, I don’t see that happen very often after a genuine mechanical.

Nevertheless, I made it back to the peloton with about 2.5km to go and immediately moved back towards the front to avoid getting caught behind any splits. That wasn’t entirely straightforward either, because my chain kept skipping gears after the twisted links. Looking back, I’m actually grateful it held together. Had it snapped completely, it would probably have meant a DNF. We don’t have spare bikes on the cars here.

No easy days so far. And tomorrow certainly won’t be one either. Time trial day.