14 DAY TRIAL // The final might be flat, but this is not a stage for the sprinters but for those mountain men who have no ambition to take the Yellow Jersey when the race reaches Paris.
The rather imposing Col d'Aubisque sits about halfway through the stage meaning that a group of riders should try to get an advantage on the climb, keep the rest of the group at arms length on the descent and then contest a small sprint for the final win.
It will be a clear test of how smart the A.I. can be when it comes to establishing goals and working towards them and it will be interesting to see whether Soler again takes off in search of points.
The stage was pretty interesting and, although I did not expect the mountain to be very important, it did manage to create a selection between the big favorites and their helpers and the sprinters and their own domestiques, meaning that I was in a good position to control the race and maybe make a move toward the end.
You can see how the mountain climb went in the video below and a piece of the descent and you can note that again there were quite a few attacks happening, although none of them too successful.
There was a group of 40 people who went on to reach the end of the stage pretty much together and from that group, after pushing the pace with Frank Schleck I attacked with Andy in the final 3 km, managing to gain a few seconds on a group lead by Vinokurov from Astana and get that elusive stage win while also extending my Yellow Jersey lead.
Take a look at how the climb over the Col d'Aubisque played out in Pro Cycling Manager 2011 and then compare them to the real world race: