[jyl]

So what do we think, going into the rest day?

The GC battle is over, unless something takes Pogacar out of the race. He could lose his entire 5 or 6 or 10 minute lead over any GC rival, and in this form, he’d just trouble himself to replace it with a new 5 or 6 minutes on the next convenient mountain stage.

I guess there will be a battle for 2nd, 3rd, the mountains jersey. And there will be terrific stage wins off breakaways, like O’Connor today. Otherwise, the excitement will be the green jersey and sprints.

But . . . Merlier climbed off and Demare missed the time cut. While Cav managed the time limit pretty well. So who other than Cav is left to contest the sprints? Griepel, Matthews, Colbrelli, Phillipsen, Bouhanni, who else? Sagan, if it’s an uphill sprint.