2014 Tour de France Stage 7 Live Coverage
Welcome to our live coverage of Stage 7 of the 2014 Tour de France! Our live profile and commentary are below, followed by a preview of the technical aspects of the route.
Course Preview
At 234.5 kilometers this stage is the second longest of the race. It is almost entirely flat yet its finish means it’s unlikely to favour the pure sprinters.
After a day of predominantly flat roads, the riders must tackle two fourth category climbs. Don’t be fooled by the number – the second of these hitsa maximum gradient of eight per cent and it could be a chance for the likes of Cannondale to put the hurt on the more climbing opposed sprinters.
Peter Sagan shouldn’t have too much trouble with this type of finish, nor should Orica-GreenEdge’s Simon Gerrans. If it does end up with a sprint finish, then it is likely to be a battle between these two. Europcar’s Bryan Coquard is one of the smaller fast men and could also infiltrate the competition.
There will be little to interest the GC riders and their teams, with bigger fish to fry in the coming days, so it will be down to the sprint teams to take control. With this in mind, we could see a puncheur take his opportunity on this rolling finish. Gerrans’ team-mate Michael Albasini could also be a strong contender if he could make it into the break, as could IAM Cycling’s Sylvain Chavanel, who is bound to be very active early in the race.
Get our full coverage of the Tour de France and every race we cover with our mobile app! The apps have over 100 additional exclusive features, including our award-winning Time Machine feature that lets you pause/rewind/replay the entire app to sync with delayed race video, integrated Fantasy Cycling, push notifications, an integrated news feed, live GPS tracking, world-class commentary, and our animated interactive maps and profiles.
