Laissac-Sévérac l'Église / Le Puy-en-Velay

Stage 15 - Sunday, July 16th - 189.5 km

< Stage 14 - Rest Day 2 - >

The Stage

Hard to characterise this stage; it won't be for sprinters or GC riders. Expect some attackers to open up their turbos.

With tomorrow's rest day looming teams who haven't been doing well will give their eyeteeth to have one or more riders in the breakaway. I'm hoping to see Primoz Roglic here. Other likely contenders: Tony Gallopin, Philippe Gilbert, Tim Wellens, and a whole raft more.

Winner: Bauke Mollema!!!! :D

Tour Touristique

The Beast of Gévaudan (La Bête du Gévaudan) is the historical name associated with the man-eating gray wolf, dog or wolfdog which terrorized the former province of Gévaudan (modern-day département of Lozère and part of Haute-Loire), in the Margeride Mountains in south-central France between 1764 and 1767. The attacks, which covered an area stretching 90 by 80 kilometres (56 by 50 mi), were said to have been committed by a beast or beasts that had formidable teeth and immense tails according to contemporary eyewitnesses.

Victims were often killed by having their throats torn out. The Kingdom of France used a considerable amount of manpower and money to hunt the animals; including the resources of several nobles, soldiers, civilians, and a number of royal huntsmen.

The number of victims differs according to sources. In 1987, one study estimated there had been 210 attacks; resulting in 113 deaths and 49 injuries; 98 of the victims killed were partly eaten. However, other sources claim it killed between 60 and 100 adults and children, as well as injuring more than 30.

Descriptions of the time vary, but generally the beast was said to look like a wolf but be about as big as a calf. It had a large dog-like head with small straight ears, a wide chest, and a large mouth which exposed very large teeth. The beast's fur was said to be red in color but its back was streaked with black.

The killing of the creature that eventually marked the end of the attacks is credited to a local hunter named Jean Chastel, who shot it during a hunt organized by a local nobleman, the Marquis d'Apcher, on June 19, 1767. Writers later introduced the idea that Chastel shot the creature with a blessed silver bullet of his own manufacture and upon being opened, the animal's stomach was shown to contain human remains.

According to modern scholars, public hysteria at the time of the attacks contributed to widespread myths that supernatural beasts roamed Gévaudan, but deaths attributed to a beast were more likely the work of a number of wolves or packs of wolves. In 2001 the French naturalist Michel Louis proposed that the red-colored mastiff belonging to Jean Chastel sired the beast and its resistance to bullets may have been due to it wearing the armoured hide of a young boar thus also accounting for the unusual colour.

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