IG Markets Rider of the Day Stage 10 - Philippe Gilbert
Philippe Gilbert failed to win the stage but his attack on the last climb blew open the race and created a thrilling finale that also set up team-mate Andre Greipel for the sprint. Therefore, he wins our Rider of the Day award, as judged by Stephen Farrand of Cyclingnews.com.
Gilbert celebrated the victory as much as Greipel as they crossed the line and their joint celebrations will have unified the Belgian team and blown away the talk of tension and internal rivalry
Judge: Stephen Farrand (Cyclingnews.com)
IG Markets Pro Cycling Index Stats of the day:
Andre Greipel breaks into the top 20 on our IG Markets Pro cycling index with his first Tour de France stage win.
Mark Cavendish cements his 4th places but has 156 points to defend today from his 3rd stage win last year so could fall back to 5th if a break succeeds and he doesn’t feature in the results. This is one of only 3 probable chances for the sprinters that remain so expect HTC to chase the breaks hard.
Cav clearly likes stage 11, last year he was victorious ahead of Petacchi, Farrar and Rojas while in 2009 he beat Farrar to the line again. In 2008 he was running late but managed to pick up stage 12 instead.
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Throughout the Tour de France our expert panel will pick out a performance of the day for each stage. The aim is to highlight the sterling work or exceptional performance of a rider who may not have grabbed the headlines.
Rather than rewarding a stage winner, we want to single out the great performances from his teammates who helped him win. This could be a domestique who spent many kilometres on the front closing down a breakaway, or a sprinter’s lead-out man who did his job so well that his sprinter coasted to victory