Blazin’ Saddles: Tour de Farce – Running with the Kenyan

Before the starter’s pistol sounds and we bound headlong into this blog let’s just take a moment to remember a man whose victory on Mont Ventoux – albeit six kilometres from the summit – will be largely neglected in the days, weeks, months, years to come.

Bravo, Thomas De Gendt – and apologies that you sequel to the Stelvio has been overshadowed by fans making complete prats of themselves on a mountain during a bike race.

Bah, don’t you just hate it when those very fans in fancy dress run alongside the action and get in the way of the riders? Well, moments after De Gendt had won at Chalet Reynard that very thing happened to Richie Porte on Mont Ventoux forcing the Australian to dodge a chap dressed head-to-toe as Chris Froome.

Wait… hang on… it WAS Chris Froome.

In quite incredible scenes – which surely everyone has seen by now, but in case you have been so engrossed by Pokemon GO or the continued meltdown in British politics – which we will show you again now, Chris Froome, the leader of the world’s biggest BIKE race, took the novel decision to try and RUN the closing moments of Thursday's stage 12 after a collision with a race motorbike bust the seat stay of his Pinarello.

The following video shows the incident in full – including the aftermath – but doesn’t show the moment Froome discarded his bike and broke out into a jog.

After all, if in doubt – run.

Isn’t that what kept Forrest Gump alive during his many trials and tribulations?

We won’t bring you the ins and outs of the situation – you can read the stage 12 report for that – but it’s fair to say that the episode divided fans and riders alike.

Some were quick to point out that running is only permitted provided the rider in question does so with his bike.

Others dug a little deeper into the rule book and uncovered the clause that requires any rider who makes a conscious effort not to complete part of the race by bike will be both fined and eliminated.

Thankfully, for everyone concerned, the race organisers saw sense and didn’t eject Froome from the race. They even made the decision to reinstate him as race leader – whereby ending surely the slowest reign in a yellow jersey ever (Adam Yates’s 40 minutes atop the standings coming after the same rider couldn’t pick up his white jersey the other day because of another bizarre incident – this time involving a collapsing inflatable arch).

Bauke Mollema, who crashed into the motorbike alongside Froome and Richie Porte, was exasperated by the latest run-in with race vehicles.

And once the dust settled, the Dutchman – who had finished 1:40 ahead of Froome after recovering and taking the ingenious decision of riding to the finish – felt he had been a little hard-done by, after Froome and Porte were eventually given the same time as him over the line, and then Nairo Quintana himself received an extra four-second bonus out of thin air.

Still, perhaps Froome will now have some inspiration for the next book on his bedside cabinet.

Team-mate Geraint Thomas certainly saw the funny side of things when approached in the finish enclosure after the stage.

It must be said, Froome running through throngs of fans on Mont Ventoux may have been the most bizarre image of the day – but it was not the only controversial incident involving the yellow jersey, who earlier in the stage pushed the notions of fair play to the limit after a crash in the pack saw two of his Sky team-mates hit the deck.

With Ian Stannard and Luke Rowe chomping concrete behind Simon Gerrans of Orica-BikeExchange, Froome ground to a halt for a call of nature – whereby forcing his rivals to slow in order to adhere to one of the unwritten rules of cycling.

Social media was split. Some thought the situation ridiculous…

Others thought it displayed yet another heroic facet to Froome’s personality following the recent revelations that he could both descend and ride fast in crosswinds as well as climb.

On Stannard, the old Chuck Norris-style tweets came flooding in…

But one rider was certainly not very happy about the peloton’s go slow which, in true tradition, seemed to have been implemented by Fabian Cancellara.

A controversial former star watching on TV certainly didn’t like what he was seeing.

But why the mention of Fabio Aru?

This is why. Moments earlier in the stage, Astana’s Vuelta champion needed to switch bikes and then employed the old magic spanner trick in a mid to rejoin the peloton.

If that wasn’t brazen enough then Aru’s subsequent ploy was surely enough for the UCI to dish out a 200 swiss franc fine…

The reaction on Twitter was as funny as it was inevitable, with Astana’s status as the bad boys of the peloton very much drilled home.

All in all, it was a torrid day for Aru – who needed so many bike changes it was a wonder the Mavic support car had any left by the time Froome hailed down for their services on Ventoux.

Meanwhile, up in the break De Gendt has sprinter Andre Greipel to help him out while French veteran Sylvain Chavanel (Direct Energie) could count on the climbing legs of, er, Bryan Coquard.

To finish on a more serious note, on a day when cycling was ground to a halt by yet another incident with a race motorbike, it was fitting that the stage winner and new polka dot jersey Thomas De Gendt – the forgotten man on this crazy day – dedicated his win to his team-mate Stig Broeckx, who is still in coma following his own collision with a motorcycle earlier in the year.

Here are the highlights...