Speaking before today’s stage, Simon Pellaud was already talking about tomorrow’s: “The stage starts with 40 Ks on the flat, so we have a chance. Tomorrow, with the start on the climb, it’s hard.” In other words, it was one of those stages that aren’t self-contained races at all, but preambles, hors d’oeuvres, panels in diptychs or triptychs: single elements in greater wholes.