Details: Published on Thursday, 11 July 2013 23:04

Stage 13: Tours to Saint-Amand-Montrond, 173KM

The tour heads south-east in to central France on another day similar to stage 12. Flat for the most part, bar a short Cat 4 climb that most of them will not even realise they are on.

Well what a stunning victory for Kittel over Cavendish today - as Phil Ligget wrongly called it (again), and we all thought it to be fair, 'no one gets past Cavendish' as he launched himself towards the line. But Kittel did, with an awesome turn of speed just like he did on Wednesday against Greipel. I've long been a fan of Kittel, had earmarked him as one to watch in the Tour last year but he became ill. He has a super physique and is a real nice guy too, that's him signing an autograph for my boy before winning the Scheldenprijs in April 2012!

Tomorrow looks like it will probably end up the exact same way with a major showdown between the top 4 guys again. As predicted today Cav traded down to odds-on with 2 or 3 kms to go, so I hope if some of you backed him you traded out of some or all of it for a profit as suggested. He incredibly actually traded to 1/100 (1.01) on Betfair as some punters obviously thought the same thing as Phil!

Greipel I thought was unlucky again, as I think his leadout would not have made the same mistake as OPQS, Cav effectively playing final lead-out man for Kittel! The effect of today's result though is that the prices are vastly different than if you had priced this stage up a week or so ago. Cav is still favourite, but is as big as 9/4, then Kittel is just under 3/1, with Greipel 7/1 and Sagan just 10/1 (he was 16/1 to win today).

So which way to go now then? Cavendish I think will not make the same mistake again - he has to hold for a lot longer than he has been doing, then making that kick that gives him 5 metres, with not enough time for Kittel to wind it up and pass him. Maybe leave Lotto-Belisol take it up tomorrow and sit on Greipel, then jump. Either way, I think the 3.3 available on Betfair is a great trading price, it will be much shorter with 3 or 4 kms to go. So again, it is a back to lay bet for me.

Lotto also need to be a bit more careful.. they were caught in a bad position and Greipel was back too far for me with less than 3km to go - expect them to get it right tomorrow too, although Sieberg and Henderson and Roelandts were all caught up in that crash today and may not be so strong tomorrow. If they are close to 100% though I can see them take the lead in the last 2kms, then Greipel goes with 300m, Cav comes around him and a late charging Kittel just fails to get there! He is about 4/6 to be top three and I think that is worth taking again. I wanted to back him at 1.8 for today's stage but it never traded at my back bet and tumbled to 1.6 on the off and I wasn't interested in that. Instead, as I tweeted several times this morning, Sagan was my other place bet at 6/4.

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There is a tricky deviation they take inside the last kilometer with the riders having to almost take a u-turn bend before another left hand bend with just 400m or so to go. A break will go again, Flecha or Boom or some Sojasun rider will probably be in it, but I'm not interested in picking lottery numbers tomorrow! It will end in a sprint and it should be a battle royale again.