Real life:John Degenkolb took a sprint win ahead of Davis and Swift.

Jeremey Roy and Thor Hushovd open the attacking early on.

In the end 10 strong riders from 10 different teams get away and build a gap of 6 minutes with 100 km to go.

The break held as much as 8 minutes at one time, but then the sprinters teams went to the front working together and with 25 km to go the gap is down to 1’45’’.

15 km to the line. Everything is shattered to pieces with Hushovd alone on front with 1’30’’ to the peloton. In between are Sé. Chavanel and Renshaw.

With 6 km to go the break has been reeled in of a strong looking Omega Pharma – QuickStep. It costs in the back though where the high speed cause a major crash.
Apparently none of the main GC guys are involved.

Boonen starts his leadout with 3 km to the line. Probably a bit too early?

1,5 km it’s Boonen – Cavendish – Greipel – Goss – Guardini – Demare – Farrar.

800 m to the line. The Gorilla goes past the Cannonball with Goss trying to do the same.

From that moment there was only one possible winner today!

Real life: Valverde took the win ahead of Purito and Froome.

A bunch of the usual suspects get in the break: Moser, Riblon, Rojas, Westra, Bak, Millar and Thomas.

They hold just over seven minutes going in to the final 80 km.

Surprisingly the break still holds three minutes with 15 km to the line. Sylvain Chavanel and Albasini are now in between the break and the peloton.
10 km to the line and pretty much nothing has happened to the gap.

As soon as the final climb begins Riblon is off chasing glory.
He’s not anywhere near strong enough to get away though.

Sammy Sánchez is the first to attack out of the peloton 2’30’’ behind.

He is quickly followed by Rodriguez and Nibali, while Contador and Froome wasn’t quite awake.

3 km to the line for the front 7. They have 1’23’’ to Purito, Nibali, Sánchez and Albasini, a further 20 seconds to Contador, who has 36 seconds to the group with the rest of the big names.

Things are really closing up inside the last 2 kms, but Moser and Rojas hold on to a small advantage.

Moser is first in to the last km followed by Rojas 12 seconds later and small groups of favourites further behind. Once again Nibali has built a small gap to Contador.

A brilliant win for the young Italian!

Contador loses a bit, but Froome seems to have given up on the GC.

Real life: Simon Clarke took the stage win ahead of Tony Martin and Assan Bazayev.

Roy, Charteay, Montaguti, De Kort and Albasini go away early and easily gets a big gap. With 88 km to go they have just over 8 minutes.

50 km and it’s down to 4’44’’

25 km left. The gap is still close to three minutes, but Saxo – Tinkoff and Astana looks determined…

Contador is eager to win back some time and attacks from the peloton already 15 km out. That makes Sky Froome go to the front helping Astana.

None the less Alberto enters the climb with a 25 second gap to the peloton.

10 km to go and it’s Fuglsang pulling the favourites group against Contador.

Just as everyone had forgotton about Wiggins he attacks and with 7,5 km to the line he is alone in front 15 seconds ahead of Contador, Sánchez and Purito with Nibali and Froome in a group 31 seconds further behind.

Nibali catch up with groupe Contador thanks to great work from his team, but with 5 km to go the Spaniard is off again.
He still can’t get rid of Nibbles though.

The final km. Wiggins still has a decent gap while the five chasers are starting to fire at everything.

A strong effort by the Brit to regain a bit of his honour, while nothing of importance happens behind except for Froome loosing even more time…