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Sprinting to the Top
Although most of the King of the Mountain points had been collected by those up the road, Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) and Nicolas Edet (Cofidis) fought it out in a hard sprint for the final KOM point on offer at the summit of Le Markstein, the first Category One climb of the 101st Tour de France. Rodriguez was the victim of a rather spectacular crash in the rain during the 2014 Giro d'Italia, roughly two months earlier. He was carried off of the road by ambulance having suffered three broken ribs. Not surprisingly he has not been at his best in the first days of the Tour, starting Stage 9 almost an hour down on the Yellow Jersey. The leader for Katusha has had to change his goals for this Tour from overall podium finish, watching him sprint for the KOM points seems to show that the new goal is the Polka Dots in Paris. Edet did all he could to nip the points from the Spaniard, but it wasn't to be for the Frenchman just now.