I hope that if you are watching the World Cup Final in Britain that you are watching with the Radio 5 live commentary. This is available via Iplayer and is the best commentary by a mile. Still o-0, 18 minutes gone. You will have this commentary on the BBC World Service.
Chris Sutton is a Norwich boy.
Tonight the big news is that Vingegaard is out of the Tour because he crashed near the end of the stage and has a suspected broken collarbone. This is a horrible blow and something that nobody wanted to happen. But it means that the podium spots have just got very exciting.
Pogacar could have won the stage but it went to Evenepoel. Fascinating sportsmanship from Pogacar when he held back for his team mate Del Toro after the crash and once again when he could have won the stage.
First place went to Evenpoele, second to Pogacar and third to Del Toro.
The GC tonight is
1. Pogacar 55h 41' 31"
2. Evenepoel + 5'
3. Del Toro + 5' 58"
4. Seisax + 6' 23"
5. Lipowitz + 6' 48"
6. Ayuso + 7' 28"
7 Skjelmose + 9' 38"
8, Martinez +10' 28"
9. Pidcock +11' 19"
10. Jegat + 19' 26"
So there is the new GC with a 19 minute gap between Pogacar and Jegat at 10th. Jegat is a new name in the GC. The minutes and seconds are the gaps. I hope you are following and enjoying the reading of the GC, the General Classification.
I am sorry I have not done any illustrations this year but my life is very different now. It is a measure of many things whether I am drawing or collaging or not.
Here is an illustration from some years back but it could have been today's stage. The Green Jersey which is the award for the most points picked up in a day which is mostly from intermediate sprints is led by Pedersen and second is Philipsen and third is Kanter. This is where we used to look out for Cavendish, Greipel and Sagan. Pogacar is King of the Mountains with the polka dot jersey but as he is wearing the Yellow Jersey as race leader the King of the Mountains polka dot goes to Paret-Peintre who is second in that competition.
First day of holiday, the British father, bank official, is in jail in Cyprus for sitting his son on a hotel windowsill for a few seconds and didn't see the window was open and the son falls out to his death. The British Embassy have not visited him or his wife. He has a solicitor. He is distraught in jail. Of course. The son's body is prepared to be flown back to England. The prosecutor in Cyprus holds on to the man so that he can see "toxicology" reports. He was on his way down to dinner with son and father-in-law. Wife and daughter were to follow in a few moments, which they did to find the scene of tragedy. Sitting the child on the windowsill by an open window is possibly to be judged as neglect. The man is not a criminal. The British High Commissioner is on leave.
Oxfordshire village of less than 400 people, Piddington, prepare to fight the acceptance of 1200 asylum seekers in an abandoned Defence storage facility. There are no facilities for 1200 asylum seekers in Piddington, nowhere for them to wander except in country lanes to look, feel and be like fish out of water with nothing. The asylum system in England did not consult with the local councils, voices of the community, no permission is needed, no discussion. The Home Office do this. Piddington are seeking to become a independent state of Britain.
Thetford in Norfolk fight a similar case.
See this video and get your heads out of the sand if you continue to disbelieve vote fixing. Listen to this man at least for 15 minutes if not the whole thing.
Andrew Lawrence says it so succinctly.
Thank you for all the emails; keep them coming in time for the disappearance.
"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".
Please email me for the invitation link to the blog. This will go live as soon as possible. I will have Tour coverage as usual and the daily conversations. My email address is accessed through this blog and is public so I don't need to publish it here. Just click on the email link in the view complete profile link.
As soon as I receive the email request from you the invitations will be sent. (Please do not expect the invitation immediately by return though). Many thanks and looking forward to seeing you.
Thank you for the contacts I have had. Please just email me your email addresses so I can send the invitation. Thank you Simone, I got yours. I am not publishing any comments on the subject.
I am only going to put the GC, as at last night, here this morning. The stage 13 was good for British rider Tom Pidcock and saw him leaping up to 4th place in the GC.
The stage was won by Swiss rider Mauro Schmid.
1. Pogacar 47h 18' 31"
2. Vingegaard +3' 36"
3. Evenepoel + 4' 06"
4. Pidcock +4' 15"
5. Ayuso +4' 22"
6. Seixas +4' 35"
7. Lipowitz +4' 44"
8. Dell Toro +5' 08"
9. Skjelmose +5' 45"
10. Martinez +6' 34"
Stage 14 today is an unusual shape like a fish head with a tail and the riders will go around in a circle and cross the finish line once after 44 km and continue around the fish. It is Mulhouse to Le Markstein Fellering. It is a tough mountain stage of 155.3km and the finish is in the Vosges ski station. Pogacar and Carapaz are high up in the betting for the stage win.
I was busy yesterday and had the car brakes relined. It is impossible to save money; the news continues to be grim and Indian workers are to benefit if they come to England and will be cheap labour for British companies because of the latest Indian/British trade agreement reducing 5 years of NI contributions for Indian employees. English unemployed will not be helped by this if employers can take an Indian for £5000 less per annum than one of us.
The result of the Police Commission poll in Norfolk yesterday was Reform with the winning candidate and the Conservatives second. The victory for Reform was resounding polling over 32,000 votes with the Conservatives nearest with 18,000 votes and Labour trailing after Greens and Independents. The vacancy occurred because the Labour post holder stepped down, reason stated "for family reasons" and went to Leeds and took another job.
In two by-elections for local council vacancies on Norfolk County Council, also held yesterday, the Conservative candidates won both.
Sadiq Khan has been made a peer to sit in the House of Lords.
Britain is to send £153M aid money to Pakistan.
Pakistan refuses to take back Pakistani grooming gang manager and rapist and he must stay in Britain.
Stage 14 result
At the end there are two gruelling climbs on Col du Haag :
3.9 km at 9% gradient
1.6 km at 10% gradient.
and then 7 kms to go to the end.
A great stage win for Pogacar going out front to win and he launched his attack on the steepest bit I described above. He is a great rider.
He is now 4 minutes 30 seconds ahead of Vingegaard in the GC.
Pidcock dropped time and is now 9th in the GC, 7' 59" behind Pogacar. The boy Seisax is now 4th and 5' 19" behind Pogacar.
I hope you enjoy my Tour placings etc. and you learn a little about the great riders of today.
The stage 15 is on Sunday, tomorrow. Champagnole to Plateau de Solaison. In the Jura Mountains with a gruelling mountain climb. 183 km. difficult mountain stage towards the end. 11 km with an average of 9% gradient.
(Don't forget to email me for the invitation to the blog when it will be private.)
As I said in last night's post, today is Stage 13 of the Tour. I mention it again because it is so easy here to get the days muddled with posts appearing late and stage numbers confusing me so I write to remind myself as much as you.
I said last night that I once went to Basel for a holiday. I was with P at the time. We went by Eurostar from London, stayed overnight in Paris, and travelled onwards to Basel on a train from the Gard De L'Est. Our hotel was a two minute walk from the station. It was all very convenient. We travelled in July as was the regular time for my two weeks annual leave before the schools broke up in England. I would leave the school holidays to the two men in my office who had children and I would always take my break in the first two weeks of that month.
I had a German client at the time who thought it most bizarre to take a holiday in Basel. (I know Basel is in Switzerland but it is on the borders of where Germany meets Switzerland and France and she spoke of the city from knowledge of going there). She was in fact quite dismissive of it even being a holiday destination. I assured her that we would find lots to do and, of course, we did. I had always wanted to visit the city since school days where the different spelllings and pronunciations had fascinated me. Of course the different spellings are because of its proximity to Germany and France.
Apart from being on the Rhine, where we spent many hours just sitting and watching the river (a "wire" ferry point was particularly fascinating), it also has trams and I would organise out tram schedule at the end of each day for the next day. It is important to know how to get from A to B in my eyes if you have places you want to see and limited time and not just blindly standing at a tram stop wondering which tram to board and what direction they go in. I like to be organised.
There are also many restaurants if you want to eat out somewhere different each night. For us we also like to eat in our hotel room and there was a food market near the station, next to our hotel, where we could obtain a variety of foods, picnic style, for our evening feasts. The hotel we were staying in was more of a bar/restaurant with rooms, the kind that you find in France, and we would also eat there some evenings. Breakfast each morning was in the bar area and I don't remember much choice but it was adequate for what we were paying.
Then Basel is also a cultural centre and there were several art galleries on my list to visit. I remember there was one major exhibition of contemporary art on whilst we were visiting.
And finally there is the main line station adjacent to which we were staying which enabled us to have days out and we visited Zurich and Chur which included a long train ride through the Swiss countryside and mountains.
In conclusion, Basel was the perfect place for a holiday for us. The train ride was quite an adventure too with harvest going on as we passed through France and of much interest to me and P. There was also an incident when the train stopped at Troyes when a family became separated when the train doors shut when only half the family had boarded. Troyes station is a very long curved station so we were able to see this happening a long way further down the platform on the bend. Fortunately, if anything can be fortunate in such an occurrence, one parent and one child had boarded and one parent and one child were left standing on the platform. French trains do not wait and the stops are very quick. The family had a pushchair and luggage. They were Indian and she wore a sari. I could see her distraught on the platform as the train left without her.