The beauty of tactics: Sacrifice on a mountainous altar
Sometimes the riders dictate the tactics on the course; other times, the course decides the tactics. In today’s 197km stage from Castelsarrasin to La Mongie, the peloton headed into the Pyrénées, racing over the Col d’Aspin and finishing with the famous Col du Tourmalet. It was the first real test of fitness, a race of man against man, and man against gravity. The peloton rolled along until it approached the fury of a rainstorm and the looming mountains ahead. Little attacks here and there meant nothing in what everyone knew would be a decisive stage, a day on which the field would shatter,