Heh, it's a decent Tour de France so far all things considered. There's 6 racers within 2 minutes at the top of the rankings (and 3 within 30", all looking very solid), including a real French contender for once, with still 2 Alps stages to go. Common wisdom is that Froome should dominate the penultimate stage (an individual time trial in Marseille) and that his challengers need to attack him in the hope of having enough of a lead before that. The only downer is that none of the contenders (none of the teams ?) is really up to par with Sky. Somber shades of the USPS train... In fact Bardet is the only Yellow Shirt challenger with a functioning team at all. Aru and Uran teammates are MIA. Uran is impressive in its defense (he never was dropped) but it's unclear he has it in him to attack, he's looking like the quintessential second.
Most enjoyable riders at the top of the ranking is Dan Martin who's always on the offense (he made up for a dozen seconds twice in the Pyrenées). Froome's teammate Landa looks very strong (better than Froome so far). Apparently he's a "super domestique" not too content of playing second fiddle (did the same at Astana) and not the best at discipline. His contract is up and he'll probably move to a team who can promise giving him a leader role in some GT races.
