Tour de France 2023 ***spoilers*** Warning in OP

JV shedding riders ATM. Wonder if they are really goosed or just pretending, with the intention of saving them to batter UAE over the weekend.

Peloton havent even taken a minute out in 10k or so, UAE will need to get the finger out if they want to win the stage.

Gap is holding he'll probably do it

Awesome ride by Kwiatkowski.

Pog takes more seconds back. I think it's down to 9 seconds now.

ASO not doing the French riders any favours with that stage setup for Bastille Day.

I think POG knows he has vgg number now for definate. He knows where and how he can beat him.

He got 4 bonus seconds as well, so a total of 8

What I mean is that all the team work today only yielded those 4 bonus seconds - he would have got the other gap regardless.

He'd probably have to ditch the CX and MTB if he wants to make a concerted GC push.

So what did we learn today:

UAE domestiques aren't very good at burning themselves off at a high pace. It looked like Pogacar was asking for more speed and they couldn't give it to him, yet were able to all stay at the front for ages. Except for Yates of course. Maybe he should have gone to the front a lot earlier.

Vingegaard could only keep up with Pogacar for 20 seconds. Is Pogacar able to accelerate like that many kilometres from the end and settle into a high tempo? Does he have the confidence in his fitness to try it?

Maybe, just maybe Pidcock is capable of going for a Grand Tour in the future. He's doing better than I thought. This weekend will reveal all I think. We'll see if he can recover from these efforts.

The current generation of French cyclists are shite.

It's been set up for a potentially epic weekend. Really am quite excited to see how it unfolds.

Stage 14

This might be the most critical stage of the Tour.

The breakaway could have all the riders from 4th to 15th in it I think outside of those needed for the GC teams.

I was just thinking back to today's stage and Jumbo didn't do much while UAE did a whole lot. I'm thinking now that Jumbo rested riders and have a plan for today.

I think they'll take it up early and try and burn off as many UAE riders as they can, they have to be tired after all their efforts today.

Adam Yates will be crucial on this stage if Jumbo turn it up early. There's two cat 1's on this stage and you know Kuss will be there on the second one. Yates has to be there too.

There's a treacherous downhill finish to the stage and it's anyone's guess how that'll work out.

I can see UAE sending someone in the break, possibly Majka, and Jumbo will of course send WVA.

So I expect Jumbo to make the first cat 1 tough and then Kuss to really turn it up on the second one. If Yates is there he can play spoiler but if he's not then Jumbo have control and Pog has to sit on the wheel of Vingegaard as breaks will be hard to make with Kuss there willing to burn up all his energy to defy it.

If Vingegaard sees any cracks in Pog it'll make for a huge gap.

Having said all that I think Pog is back to his best and better than Vingegaard.

The Jumbo riders looked like they took the day off but Vingegaard couldn't and didn't. Vingegaard looked tired on the second rough day last week.

I'm predicting Yates is still there on the second cat 1 and spoils the well thought out plans of Jumbo.

I'll take Pog for the win and the yellow jersey.