Greig Leach

The team mechanics have an un-ending job in the Tour, or any other stage race. They must maintain the riders bikes (and the back ups), change gearing for different terrain and race situations (See the last entry from the previous stage), and then their is the on-the-fly work that happens during the stage. I don't know what Romain Bardet's (Ag2r La Mondiale) problem was, but he had is mechanic trying to figure out the issue as they descended off the Port del Canto. When Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) was trying to catch back onto this group on this descent, he was clocked at 100 kilometers per hour. Now Bardet probably isn't going quite that fast, but none the less, his mechanic is half way out of the car holding onto a bike and fiddling around spokes that could easily slice off a finger at the kind of rpm's the Frenchman's wheel are doing. It must be an incredible amount of pressure and require both intelligence and absolutely no fear.