Tour de France Stage 14 - Cav holds up four fingers, Kittel only has one

Before you say anything, no, we haven't forgotten about Stage 12's time trial. But time trials are boring and rubbish, so while Andy did live tweet it, it boiled down to the predictable "X sets off, B finishes, Y sets off, C finishes" and you can see the results by looking at the GC classifications at the bottom of the page. Spoiler alert, today's stage didn't change them.

Because yes, it was a sprint stage, and one which actually resulted in a bunch sprint, rather than Tinkoff and Sky catching everyone napping like stage 11. Once again Andy was your Twitter eyes and ears, and he was seemingly still so bored by the time trial it was affecting his counting.
It's 14, mate. His boredom wasn't looking like being lifted any time soon, either, the poor lamb.


At least you get specific updates with TLG, many lesser sites would have just rounded the distance to 100km. It was a flat stage into a headwind, so let's all be honest with ourselves and admit nothing happened for a long, long time, and press the skip button to nearer the end.
No word of a lie, that VT snapped Andy out of a little snooze. Just in time, too.


Well, it was better than nothing. SKIP!

Praise the cycling Gods! We have a sprint on, once the breakaway is finally caught anyway.
Bingo. Now, the first proper sprint finish for about a week meant the return of a long lost friend.

Etixx-QuickStep were doing their best to prove me wrong, and Kittel still had his final lead out man Sabattini, with Cav on his wheel. As the line approached, the German apparently morphed into former Neighbours actor Mark Little, but would that faze Cavendish in his slipstream?

No. A fourth win of this year's Tour for Cavendish, but Kittel was not happy about it. And Andy wasn't quite sure why.
As it was, the commissaires kept up their trend of being unnervingly sensible, took no action, and Cav retained the win from Kristoff and Sagan, with Kittel left languishing down in fifth. It's really not been his Tour so far, after what was expected to be a glorious return to form after a disastrous 2015, while Cav keeps up his old blistering form, already eyeing up more stage wins.

There won't be one tomorrow, but Gary Imlach sprung a surprise by announcing Cav would be in The Laughing Group for the hilly stage 15. It's news to us, frankly, as we'd expect to see him still riding in the Tour de France, but the only way to know for sure is to follow us on Twitter for updates!

 Stage results:
1. Mark Cavendish (DDD) 5:43:49
2. Alexander Kristoff (KAT) + :00
3. Peter Sagan (TNK) + :00

General Classification
1. Chris Froome (SKY) 63:46:40
2. Bauke Mollema (TFS) + 1:47
3. Adam Yates (OBE) + 2:45
4. Nairo Quintana (MOV) + 2:59
5. Alejandro Valverde (MOV) + 3:17

Sprint Classification
1. Peter Sagan (TNK) 340
2. Mark Cavendish (DDD) 278
3. Marcel Kittel (EQS) 228

King of the Mountains
1. Thomas de Gendt (LTS) 90
2. Rafal Majka (TNK) 77
3. Daniel Navarro (COF) 68
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