Tour de France Stage 18: All In on Izoard
Stage winners and general classification contenders alike have one last chance to realize their ambitions: Will they?
Six men have finished the Tour de France as the overall winner without winning a single stage. It happened last in 2006, when Óscar Pereiro was awarded the victory after Floyd Landis was disqualified for banned substance use. Three-time winner Chris Froome looks like he may become the seventh to earn this dubious honor.
With a twenty-seven second advantage over Rigoberto Uran and Romain Bardet, respectively in second and third with the same time, Froome has a comfortable lead on overall victory, but hasn’t won a stage. Tomorrow will end in a sprint or a breakaway, Saturday is a time trial, and Sunday it’s over in a final bunch sprint on the Champs-Élysées. If Froome wants to win a stage, he has to do it today.
And it’s not going to be easy
Small breakaways coalesced into one massive group of fifty-four men. After the flats, they led the peloton by nearly eight minutes. Team Sky led the peloton, defending their leader Froome and seeming indifferent to chasing the break. They had no real reason to; they lead the best team competition by more than ten minutes, and all their rivals were behind them in the peloton.
Bardet’s AG2R La Mondiale had multiple riders in the break, looking to support their leader as the pace picked up. A few Astana riders sat in, possibly hoping to support Fabio Aru and redeem an otherwise disappointing tour for their squad. At the rear of the break, American Andrew Talansky, once a general classification contender, now a support rider for second place Uran.
The break of the breakaway
While the peloton rolls along, the tension is growing on the front. Fifty-four men will not find themselves in a bunch sprint at the end; they’ll either splinter into smaller breakaways, or they’ll get passed by the peloton.
The first real split comes on the first real climb. Twenty-five riders lead the way, and then splinter into factions. AG2R’s Jan Bakelants and Cyril Gautier take their time, waiting for Bardet, setting up the tactic.
At the summit, it’s an elite group of four in the lead: Alexey Lutsenko of Astana, veteran Frenchman Tony Gallopin, Colombian rider Darwin Atapuma, and young Frenchman Romain Sicard. Behind, it’s Bardet’s team that takes over, putting pressure on the peloton to try and shake Froome’s Team Sky. With 14 kilometers left for the breakaway, they attack on the descent, and right into the base of the Col d’Izoard.
Can AG2R La Mondiale break Team Sky?
It’s Bakelants doing the work. Rider after rider get shelled until it’s just Bakelants and Bardet on the front. Simon Yates and Louis Meintjes, first and second in the best young rider competition, are dropped; then it’s Fabio Aru and Sky team members Mikel Nieve and Michal Kwiatkowski.
The pace is incredible. Froome looks like he’s on the ropes; last man, Mikel Landa, seems spent. Bakelants cracks, job done, but Bardet’s done too. He slots behind a fresh-looking Froome. If this was the move, it failed.
Landa sits up and Kwiatkowski returns, followed by Nieve. The two take over the lead and let Landa recover. The dropped leaders slowly crawl back, and Bardet is forced to fall in behind a triumphant Team Sky. AG2R has failed.
What’s the break doing?
It’s every man for himself. Lutsenko still leads, but not by much; the AG2R attack has reduced his lead to nearly two minutes. On the slope of the Izoard, though, he has a more immediate problem: Darwin Atapuma.
He’s not won a stage yet, but today, on Colombian Independence Day, he’s riding in his finest form. His fans line the roadway, cheering on a countryman in the middle of an incredible attack, and Atapuma zips past Lutsenko and never looks back.
Back in the yellow jersey group, it’s Warren Barguil who attacks next, followed by Alberto Contador. They escape Team Sky, and bridge to Bauke Mollema, a former break-away rider who is waiting to assist Contador, his Trek-Segafredo leader.
In the pack, it’s Nieve, Kwiatkowski, Landa, Froome, Bardet, Uran, Martin, and Aru, all the way in the back with Nairo Quintana, Meintjes, and Yates.
Barguil drops Contador
At 5.5 km the group is 1'50" behind Atapuma. down to 1'50" and Barguil keeps going, dropping Contador and company as he chases Atapuma. He pulls in the broken breakaway one by one and ejects them.
Contador falls in, Martin attacks, and Kwiatkowski takes over, reeling him in without a visible effort. Aru is dancing on the back, and he and Quintana get dropped with every attack. After Martin is back, they slow down again, and the two former contenders rejoin.
Over the previous kilometer, Barguil has gained more time on the yellow jersey, and he’s only 55" behind Atapumo. With 4.5 kilometers remaining, Kwiatkowski cracks on the front, coming to a complete stop, and Aru gets dropped again. Martin keeps attacking, hoping to improve his finish over Aru, but he’s not the only one who will benefit in that group.
Landa launches the next attack, and absolutely no one can go with him. Even Froome sits back, marked by Bardet and Uran, as Aru slips even farther back. They are now 1'20" behind Atapuma, who leads Barguil by a mere 30". The gap holds steady for a second as Barguil catches and then passes Lutsenko and Gallopin.
In 400 meters, Bardet attacks, catches Gallopin, and blows past him. He doesn’t look back, but Uran and Froome are there, bridging a tiny gap and sticking with the third place rider.
And then the setup for Froome
At 2.2 kilometers remaining, Froome launches an attack, and opens a significant gap. Uran leads the chase effort, Bardet on his back wheel, and the two rivals work together to catch Froome as he takes the wheel of increasingly loyal Landa.
While the top four overall battled it out, Barguil has found and passed Atapuma, who takes his draft and hangs on. Froome’s attack has resulted in a stable foursome, only thirty seconds behind the lead duo, with 1.2 kilometers remaining. Aru is behind Barguil by a full minute and seven seconds; if the race ended right now, Landa would be in fourth overall.
The race for second — and third
Uran and Bardet share the same time gap to Froome: Twenty-seven seconds. Uran is in second, and Bardet in third, and the time bonus on today’s stage will put one of them in the lead. Ahead of them, Barguil attacks again, leaving Atapuma as the two cycle under the 1 kilometer remaining banner.
Barguil has already won the King of the Mountains competition; he’ll wear the polka-dot jersey in Paris. There aren’t enough points left for anyone else to take it from him. He’s not looking for mountain points. He’s looking for a second stage win.
It’s the underdog story of this Tour de France. Michael Matthews and Barguil, friends, roommates, teammates at Sunweb, have ridden an incredible race. They’re young and relatively unheralded, but Matthews has taken two stage victories and the green jersey for best sprinter, and Barguil has won a stage and the climbing jersey.
And he’s going to do it again
None of them can catch Barguil. They’re all-out over the last kilometer and even drop Landa as they pull in just behind Atapuma, but Barguil is already on the spin bike, twenty seconds ahead of them all. Atapuma is second, Bardet is third, and Froome is fourth, two seconds ahead of Uran. Landa is another ten seconds behind them all, but far enough ahead of Aru to edge him out for fourth.
Bardet is second overall at a new time of twenty-three seconds behind Froome, and Atapuma is second on the stage; it’s no consolation to either man. Atapuma wins the prize for most combative, but he’s lost his second shot at a stage victory, and Bardet has seen his chance of winning evaporate.
No stage win for Chris Froome
Legend holds that the yellow jersey must win the Col d’Izoard. Barguil’s moved into ninth position overall today, but with a deficit of 8'22" to Froome, the legend will only prove true if the top eight riders abandon or crash. Barguil sits behind Meintjes, at 6'52" in seventh, following Yates with 4'46".
Froome has one shot left for a stage win, and it’s a long-shot. Tomorrow is slightly hilly, and I expect we’ll see puncheurs and others fight it out in a small sprint finish after a successful breakaway. It appears that he’ll be the seventh man to win the Tour de France but not win a stage.
Where are the jerseys now?
Technically, no one ‘wins’ the jersey until Paris; they just wear them so long as they are in the lead. They all seem locked down, though: There are no longer enough points to see Matthews out of green or Barguil out of polka dot, and Froome has shown better form than anyone else in this last week. It’s inconceivable that he’ll not widen his lead in the time trial on Saturday.
The white jersey too looks stable with Simon Yates. He and his closest challenger, Louis Meintjes, are both 25; this is their final year to compete for the best young rider jersey. They’ll age out of the category next year at 26. Yates looked weak yesterday, but he’s re-established the status quo today, and leads by more than two minutes.
La Course by Le Tour: The Women’s Race
The ascent of the Izoard this morning by the women racing La Course made for a thrilling double-feature. Coverage started late, around the 36 kilometer mark in a 67 kilometer event, with commentary by Sharon Laws and Anthony McCrossan.
When the two were audible over the poorly mixed audio feed, they provided a wide-range of insights and analysis, covering years of women’s racing and laying out the stakes. A few minutes in, the first televised attack came from Linda Villumsen, a Danish-born New Zealander who won the 2015 UCI world time trial championship in Richmond.
Villumsen established a small but stable gap of ten seconds and extended it to twenty seconds by the 12 kilometer remaining mark. Three chasers attacked, seeking to catch her lead, while the peloton picked up the pace behind world champion Lizzie Deignan.
Deignan set the tempo into L’Eglise Saint-Laurent, shredding the peloton without ever attacking. Her seemingly effortless work quickly killed the breakaway, catching two of the chasers over the next kilometer, just as one of them joins Villumsen.
Her name was never announced, but the last surviving chaser passed Villumsen, who Deignan reeled in with 9.3 kilometers to go. She stayed out front for nearly a whole kilometer as the solo leader until Deignan caught her, too, sending her to the back of a splintered 18 woman peloton.
One of the favorites for today, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, saw her chances slip away at the 7.5 kilometer mark. Ferrand-Prévot is a five-time world champion and the only cyclist in history to simultaneously hold the World road title, World cyclo-cross title and World mountain bike title, but she just couldn’t follow Deignan.
It was incredible to watch Deignan just sit at the front, never attacking, never looking in difficulty, simply shredding the race with a tempo effort. She finally sat up to let someone else work, after the 5 kilometer mark, and the first big attack came from Annemiek van Vleuten. Deignan held her wheel and the two battled head-to-head up to 4.4 kilometers remaining, when van Vleuten opened the gap and settled back into tempo.
Shara Gillow, an Australian, stayed with Deignan, showing some of the best form of her career. They dropped Italian Elisa Longo Borghini, but she recovered and bridged back to this very elite group of two, and the three kept chasing van Vleuten, who’d manage a forty second gap over the next 2 kilometers.
Deignan goes solo
Longo Borghini can’t stay with the group, and Deignan goes solo, followed by Gillow. The latter woman cracks, though, and tries to grab Longo Borghini’s wheel as she passes her to follow Deignan.
In the lead, on one of the steepest climbs, van Vleuten runs into difficulty. It’s 1.8 kilometers to go, and she’s looking down at her gears, clearly experiencing a mechanical. The advantage drops to thirty seconds and Deignan is standing, chasing her up the mountain.
It’s looking very precarious for van Vleuten with 1.2 kilometers remaining. The penultimate 1 kilometer banner is in sight, and just then, things snap together. She stands up, she shifts, she goes; by the banner, she’s pushed her lead back to an amazing forty seconds.
She’s raced at an average speed of 32.9 kilometers per hour, and she’s not slowing down, despite the snaking, winding final ascent. Behind her it’s Deignan, then Longo Borghini, and in fourth Gillow, who seems to be slipping farther back by the second.
A long-shot pays off
Van Vleuten isn’t a natural climber; she says she first climbed well at the Olympics in Rio, after years of racing. Her attack was timed perfectly to gain crucial seconds before the final steepest grades, and it’s paid off, bringing her first across the line with a forty-three second advantage over second place Deignan.
Longo Borghini finishes third, five seconds ahead of American Megan Guarnier, and Gillow is fifth by another five seconds. They’ll join fourteen other racers on Saturday for a 22.5 kilometer pursuit time trial in Marseille. It’s an identical course to the one the Tour de France covers the same day, but a different format; the riders will be handicapped by their time climbing the mountain, meaning van Vleuten will start last. The unusual format makes it hard to predict a winner, especially as we don’t know who held back on the climb to gain a tactical advantage on Saturday.
What’s up next?
A long nap. Wait, no, that’s Monday, when this whole business is finally over! We still have three days of racing until then. See you tomorrow for an unexpected day in the hills!
Thanks for reading! I write about cycling and am currently blogging the 2017 Tour de France here on Medium.
Visit my personal website at davidstreever.com.
Did you miss yesterday’s recap? Look, I found a video of Taylor Phinney interviewing John Kerry. Yes, Secretary of State Kerry. Go watch it!
