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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Peter Sagan arose on Friday morning full of hope, tweeting: \u201CWill today be THE DAY?\u201D&amp;nbsp; Stage 7, a 234.5-km (145.7-mile) slog from Nancy to Epernay \u2013 the second-longest day of this Tour \u2013 set up especially well for the Slovak\u2019s skill set. Sagan, aka The Terminator, is a brilliant all-around rider. He can climb, though not with the true mountain goats. He can sprint, but can\u2019t quite hang with the pure speedsters. Today\u2019s mainly flat stage featured a couple of Category 4 (nuisance) climbs in the final 15 kilometers \u2013 nothing dramatic, but enough to dislodge the sprinters, making Sagan the alpha down the final stretch.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It almost worked. BMC\u2019s Greg Van Avermaet complicated matters by attacking off the final climb. Sagan marked the move, but burned valuable matches to do it. Those two were soon overtaken, forcing Sagan, already depleted, to engage in a field sprint. It almost didn\u2019t matter. In the final seconds he pulled even with Italian rider Matteo Trentin. There was the Tour\u2019s website trumpeting the news: \u201CThe winner is \u2026 Peter Sagan.\u201D Then, a minute later: \u201CCorrection: the winner is Matteo Trentin.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a photo finish. After riding 146 miles, Sagan lost by several centimeters. Or roughly 140 characters. Today was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the day.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Five Thoughts on the Tour So Far&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; The day\u2019s biggest loser \u2013 through no fault of his own \u2013 was BMC leader Tejay van Garderen, who was taken down in a crash near the top of the penultimate climb. His bike trashed, TVG hopped on that of his teammate Peter Velits, and began the tortuous process of trying to catch the leaders. Leapfrogging and slingshotting himself through the convoy of team cars, riding in a paceline with teammates Peter Stetina and Michael Schar, he vainly tried to catch the lead group. Not helping in the least was Van Avermaet, whose attack at the front of the race \u2013 at precisely the same moment that his team leader was fighting not to lose the Tour \u2013 could not have been more poorly timed. TGV lost a little over a minute to race leader Vincenzo Nibali, dropping from 11th in the standings to 17th. There might be a few strained moments at BMC\u2019 dinner table tonight.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Compounding their misery, van Garderen lost a teammate in the same crash that took him down. John Darwin Atapuma, a Colombian climbing specialist who would\u2019ve shepherded TGV through the high mountains, abandoned shortly after that pileup. (The day\u2019s most courageous rider may have been BMC\u2019s Marcus Burghardt, who trashed a shoulder in a Stage 6 crash, and was given a 50-50 chance of taking the start today. He did, finishing 142nd out of 189 riders.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BAtapuma\u2019s departure continues the curious pattern of climbing domestiques crashing before the race reaches the mountains. Abandoning yesterday were Team Sky\u2019s Xabier Zandio and Jesus Fernandez of Tinkoff-Saxo, the latter leaving Alberto Contador without his most trusted lieutenant in the cols.&amp;nbsp; Hernandez, significantly, is also Contador\u2019s best friend \u2013 \u201Ca big problem,\u201D NBC\u2019s Phil Liggett pointed out during the horse latitudes of today\u2019s broadcast, because the two were also roommates, leaving Contador with \u201Cno one to speak to at night, and that can be a serious problem when you want to unload your problems at the end of the day.\u201D To the Spaniard\u2019s list of challenges in this Tour \u2013 Nibali, Team Sky\u2019s Richie Porte, Andrew Talansky of Garmin-Sharp \u2013 add this one: loneliness!\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, that was Talansky slamming the deck &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt; 400 or so meters shy of the finish line today. With the field sprint reaching full boil, the 25-year-old from Florida realized that maybe he didn\u2019t need to be in the thick of things. As he looked right, drifting ever so slightly left, Australian Simon Gerrans swung right, just in front of him, hoping to grab a wheel and get in the mix. The Orica GreenEdge rider ran over the front wheel of Talansky, who executed a nifty tuck and roll into the barriers.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt; You gotta love Talansky, who despite his tender years marched up to the Orica team bus afterward, declaring: \u201CI want a personal apology.\u201D Orica sports director Julian Dean, himself a former sprinter, shook his head and replied, \u201CYou looked the wrong way.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gerrans, not surprisingly, was quick to forgive himself, telling &lt;em&gt;Cycling Weekly&lt;/em&gt;, \u201CI don\u2019t think either of us really did too much wrong. It was just an unfortunate thing that happened under the circumstances.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BTalansky came away with nothing more serious than some deep abrasions. \u201CHe\u2019s more pissed off about how the crash happened,\u201D Garmin-Sharp manager Jonathan Vaughters told NBC. \u201CThe first thing he said to me was, \u2018I want a personal apology from Gerrans.\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CDo you think he\u2019ll get it?\u201D followed up NBC\u2019s Steve Schlanger.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CNo,\u201D replied JV, with a laugh.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4.&lt;/strong&gt; Schlanger, btw, is having an excellent Tour, extracting from his subjects multiple nuggets of gold, including one this afternoon from BMC\u2019s Stetina, a terrific American talent riding his first Tour de France. Riffing on the subject of the frequent crashes and almost unbearable tension in the peloton, Stetina shared that male pattern baldness runs in his family. This first week of the Tour, he feared, was accelerating the inevitable for him. \u201CI haven\u2019t started going bald yet,\u201D he said, \u201Cbut I\u2019m wondering if I need a T.U.E.\u201D \u2013 a therapeutic use exemption from Tour doctors \u2013 \u201Cfor Rogaine.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5.&lt;/strong&gt; Despite that tumble, Talansky bumped up from 9th to 7th in the general classification, while van Garderen dropped to 17th. Expect more comprehensive upheaval on Saturday. Stage 8 comes with a delightful sting in its tail: three categorized climbs in the final 30 kilometers. Watch for Contador, who trails Nibali by 2:37, to go on the attack.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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