2017 ​Tour de France Stage 11 Daily Dish

Stage 11 featured another small breakaway and sprint finish, with relatively sedate racing otherwise— leading some to question the race organisers' course choices.


Joe Lindsey |

Stage 11 featured another small breakaway and sprint finish, with relatively sedate racing otherwise— leading some to question the race organisers’ course choices. – By Joe Lindsey

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With just over half the 2017 Tour de France in the books, just under half the stages have been won by a single rider, Quick-Step sprinter Marcel Kittel. Kittel’s finishing speed this Tour is unparalleled. He is clearly the race’s superior sprinter, on a team built to support him, and riding a wave of confidence to his best results ever.But what’s been happening in the 180-odd kilometres before Kittel’s virtuouso finishes is, well, less than compelling television (Tour promoter ASO picked a heck of a year to start broadcasting all stages start to finish).So far, on the flat stages, breakaways have been small affairs and the pack has been cautious about letting them get a lead of even a handful of minutes. The break is inevitably caught, although Bora-Hansgrohe’s Maciej Bodnar gave it a solid go today by staying clear until well inside the final kilometre. The question is why. Several theories:The 2017 Tour field was initially heavy on sprinters. FDJ, Quick Step, Dimension Data, Sunweb, Katusha-Alpecin, Lotto-Soudal, Bora-Hansgrohe and Cofidis all came to the race either solely or primarily backing their sprinters. With over a third of the Tour teams focused on sprints, that dramatically decreased the chances of any breakaway holding clear to the finish and also lowered the number of teams that would be interested in joining the break to begin with.RELATED: How a Tour de France Breakaway Works

As attrition has stripped away some of those contenders, their teams have been slow to accept Kittel’s dominance and change their tactics. FDJ’s Davide Cimolai was sixth in the sprint in Stage 11 – not bad, but not even close to the bump they will get from a stage win. As Kittel inexorably pulls away in the green jersey competition and proves himself unbeatable in sprints, teams may shift focus and we should see riders like Sunweb’s Michael Matthews abandoning hope of the green jersey and jumping in a break to try to win a stage.

Breakaway artists could also be saving their powder for better opportunities. We saw a big break on Stage 8, a medium mountain stage that was really the only good shot at a breakaway win of the race’s first 11 days.

The back end of Week 2 is far more conducive to an early move staying clear. Stage 12’s mountaintop finish isn’t a classic long summit climb, so the race for the GC may neutralise if riders can’t shed Chris Froome. Stage 13 is short and hard and ideal for riders whose hopes for the overall have taken a hit and are refocusing on stage wins (looking at you, Alberto Contador). And stages 14 and 15 have lumpy profiles that fairly call out for a big, aggressive break.

Quite honestly, the early part of the Tour route was pretty uninspiring. We always like to see sprint finishes because almost nothing in sports matches their excitement. But with six of the first 11 stages so long and flat, the route feels like a throwback to the sleepy, predictable first weeks of the Jean-Marie Leblanc era. This is easily the most boring course in the relatively new reign of Tour director Christian Prudhomme, who succeeded Leblanc in 2007. Repeated flat, featureless, 200+ km grinds across the French landscape discourage breakaways and add little to the race. Some riders and directors dispute that, and we respect those opinions even if we disagree. Our sense is that the Tour is far better served to attract and keep fans by offering shorter, more creative stages that inspire creative racing.

Bouhanni Still Punchless in Sprints, But Not Before

French sprinter Nacer Bouhanni is an amateur boxer and a good one. But he might think twice about showing those skills in the pack again. Toward the end of Stage 10, Bouhanni was fighting for space with Quick-Step’s Jack Bauer when Bauer bumped him. In response, Bouhanni took his right hand off the bars and smacked Bauer on the shoulder. Later, in the sprint, Bouhanni looked back twice before swerving out and chopping another Quick-Step rider.

The race jury fined Bouhanni 200 Swiss francs and also gave him an inexplicable and toothless one-minute time penalty (Bouhanni was already an hour and a half down, and times don’t matter to sprinters anyway). This, of course, after the jury disqualified Peter Sagan for essentially defending his position in a less aggressive fashion from a more aggressive move, by Mark Cavendish. (Again: do. not. hit. other riders.)

RELATED: Peter Sagan’s DQ Was Wrong, and Bad For the Tour

Fair? We’ve certainly seen worse dustups in the pack, but most fans on social media seemed to think not. But Bouhanni got an early birthday present (he turns 27 on July 25) and continues on, where he will notch yet another not-quite-top-5 in the sprints. Bauer brushed off the commotion at the start of Stage 11, but Bouhanni wouldn’t talk about the issue at all.

#TdF133 Is The Best Thing on Twitter

We spend hundreds of words recapping the Tour stage, but if you’re looking for more brevity, hop on over to twitter dot com and search the hashtag #tdf133. It’s a poetry competition started about four years ago by Aussie cycling fan @tourdecouch, who judges the entries and picks winner and runners-up for every stage. Sum up the day’s stage in 133 characters or less and tag it #tdf133 to enter. Some of our faves:

@meowclank’s Stage 9 couplets of the Saga of Cat Mountain

https://twitter.com/meowclank/status/884161588659453952

and @ben_m_berry channels the @nihilist_arbys account to sum up Stage 4’s DQ controversy:

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