Here is the situation after 3 days of apathy and hospitalisations in Bulgary:
General time classification
It was only determined by the punchy 2^nd^ stage and a couple of time bonuses.
- Guillermo Silva ๐บ๐พ Astana
- Florian Stork ๐ฉ๐ช Tudor: +4โณ
- Egan Bernal ๐จ๐ด Ineos: '
- Thymen Arensman ๐ณ๐ฑ Ineos: +6โณ
- Julio Ciccone ๐ฎ๐น Lidl-Trek: '
- 29 riders: +10โณ ... and about the same number at 1โฒ
Points classification
- Paul Magnier ๐ซ๐ท Soudal-QS: 105 pts
- Jonathan Milan ๐ฎ๐น Lidl-Trek: 64
- Tobias Andresen ๐ฉ๐ฐ Decathlon: 42
- Madis Mihkels ๐ช๐ช EF: 32
- Diego Sevilla ๐ช๐ธ Polti: 28
Mountain classification
- Diego Sevilla ๐ช๐ธ Polti: 42
- Manuele Tarozzi ๐ฎ๐น Bardiani: 12
- Jonas Vingegaard ๐ฉ๐ฐ Visma: 9
- Mirco Maestri ๐ฎ๐น Polti: 8
- Allessandro Tonelli ๐ฎ๐น Polti: 6
Teams classification
- Astana ๐ฐ๐ฟ
- Tudor๐จ๐ญ '
- Uno-X ๐ณ๐ด '
- Movistar ๐ช๐ธ '
- RB Bora ๐ฉ๐ช '
- EF ๐บ๐ธ '
Stages (TODO: I shall add them progressively)
Stage 4, Tuesday 12
138 km, low difficulty (50 pts), 5 km sprint zone, 3โณ splits
An even shorter course than stage 1, with the same profile as stage 3, but a nastier last mile. A sprint is to be expected again, favouring the sprinters who can handle an uphill finish; even though a breakaway could have its chances in theory, as the line is closer to the climb than it was in stage 3.
Stage 5, Wednesday 13
203 km, medium difficulty (25 pts), 3km sprint zone, 1โณ splits
This stage is made for breakaways or punchers-climbers, but will they take their chance this time?
divulgรขche
Stage 7, Friday 15
Summary: no racing for 5ยฝ hours, and a final climb that went more or less as expected.
The organiser has setup everything to stimulate both breakaways and attacks over what should have been a tappone, but the riders didn't use anything.
J. Milan (๐ฎ๐น Lidl-Trek) left at km 0 (after yesterday's sprint, he needed Cyclamen points). After a few seconds, he was joined by 3 riders, including the Blue jersey wearer Sevilla (๐ช๐ธ Polti). 1 extra joined a bit later. And that was it: no fight, no chase. FDJ and Unibet didn't bother, they have too good GC leaders for that ๐
Nobody tried anything in the little humps placed on the course in case a breakaway had not succeeded to form. Nobody tried anything in the 2^nd^ category climb or the hills after it. The stage turned into a simple one-climb race, with a slower-than-expected average speed before that last climb, the record of which was then beaten.
In that final climb, there weren't many surprises, the expected weakest riders dropped, the expected good riders were at the front, Vingegaard (๐ฉ๐ฐ Visma) did what was expected where it was expected.
If we sum up the surprises:
Hindley (๐ฆ๐บ Bora) sprinted in front of his teammate Pellizzari๐ฎ๐น and deprived him of the time bonus, in pure New Bora style.
Despite Sevilla๐ช๐ธ going in the breakaway again and scoring the 18 points of the 2^nd^ category climb again, as it was the only climb with points before the end, and there were 50 bloody points awarded on the finish line, he loses the Blue jersey to Vingegaard๐ฉ๐ฐ. For 1 point...
Nevertheless, he also scored points for the I.S. classification, for the RB classification, and the Fuga classification with already 721 km of breakaway! It wasn't all for nothing.
Eulalio (๐ต๐น Bahrain) keeps the Pink jersey with a still significant margin of more than 3 minutes. He lost about 3 minutes today; as he hanged to the top guys as long as he could, he lost time quickly when he dropped, but then kind of stabilised (as, ahead, Vingegaard๐ฉ๐ฐ was perhaps paying his efforts too) and he lost a bit more in the end again.