Sports briefs
In the majors
Brandon Crawford went 5-for-6 with two homers and tied a San Francisco team record with eight RBIs, and the Giants scored a season-high in runs in a 19-2 rout of the Colorado Rockies in the first game of a split doubleheader. Mike Yastrzemski went 4-for-6 with a homer and Buster Posey also went deep for the Giants.
Tour de France
Geraint Thomas and his teammates don’t need a mountain to deliver a hammer blow on their rivals at the Tour de France.
They can do it on the flat, too. With a little help from the wind.
The defending champion was the big winner of a chaotic Stage 10 in southern France on Monday when French rival Thibaut Pinot and other title contenders were caught napping by a treacherous combination of winds and narrow roads.
Unable to all ride at the front, Pinot and other riders got left behind when the winds first stretched and then shattered the peloton into groups over 35 frantic final kilometers (20 miles) of a 217.5-kilometer (135-mile) trek from Saint-Flour to Albi in south-central France.
Perfectly positioned at the front when the pack took different routes around a traffic circle, triggering the first split, Thomas and his Ineos teammates put pedal to the metal to make the gap on Pinot and other contenders caught behind as big as possible.
The bill for the French podium finisher in 2104, as well as Rigoberto Uran, Jakob Fuglsang, and Richie Porte was costly. They rode in a whopping 1 minute, 40 seconds behind Thomas.