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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Simon Burnton

Urán wins, Froome keeps yellow but Porte and Thomas crash out: Tour de France stage nine – as it happened

Rigoberto Urán
Rigoberto Urán of Colombia crosses the finish line to win the ninth stage of the Tour de France. Chris Froome kept yellow. Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA

And with that, I’m done. It’s been remarkable. Bye!

So today’s big GC losers, other than Thomas and Porte, are probably Dan Martin, who from 14sec behind in fourth place is now 1min 44sec behind in sixth, and Alberto Contador, who from 52sec behind and well poised is now 5min 15sec behind and out of contention.

Here’s an updated news story, on the Tour-ending crashes suffered today by Richie Porte and Geraint Thomas:

Here’s the top 10 of the general classification at the close of play – lots of churn, but not at the very top.

Warren Barguil cries after finishing second.
Warren Barguil cries after finishing second. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Porte’s injuries seem miraculously light, given how close he came to being flung off the side of a wooded mountain at 73km/h.

Today’s top five:

  1. Rigoberto Uran
  2. Warren Barguil
  3. Chris Froome
  4. Romain Bardet
  5. Fabio Aru

Updated

Dan Martin speaks. I missed a bit of it because my computer decided to play up, but even what I got was quite hard-hitting:

Richie just slipped up. It was so slippery out there. I guess the organisers got what they wanted, you know. I think adrenaline has covered up the pain so far. I was very lucky a couple of times, the first crash when Geraint came down his bike hit my handlebars, it was that close. I got through but my luck ran out in the end.

Rigoberto Uran just outsprints Warren Barguil for the win.
Rigoberto Uran just outsprints Warren Barguil for the win. Photograph: Robert Ghement/EPA

Updated

So a day that for a while appeared likely to end with a new occupant of the yellow jersey ends with Chris Froome’s lead extended (a bit) to 18sec.

An astonishing day’s cycling. We’ve had the beauty and the beast.

Some reaction:

Here is that photo. Three enormous climbs, 181.5km, and the difference at the end was this:

Rigoberto Uran actually wins stage nine!

We get a glimpse of the photo finish, and it looks like Rigoberto Uran has pipped it, by an inch!

I might have announced this a little prematurely – apparently a photograph is being studied – but he looked a winner to me, and to the TV commentators. Oh, hang on …

Warren Barguil wins stage nine!

Incredible, breathless stuff, and at the end of it Barguil nips just in front of Uran with a couple of metres to go!

Updated

Uran goes, with 400m to go!

Updated

Into the final kilometre, and Froome is in the lead, ahead of Fuglsang.

Uran is riding a messed-up bike, with only two working gears, so he is perhaps crucially disadvantaged.

Bardet has been caught. It’s any one of six for the stage win.

This is knife-edge stuff at the front. Bardet’s lead is perhaps 5sec, with five people behind him and going fast.

Dan Martin is fine, cycling smoothly – cut, grazed and bruised, to be sure, but inherently sound – and riding with Simon Yates and Nairo Quintana.

France’s Warren Barguil rides in the breakaway.
France’s Warren Barguil rides in the breakaway. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Barguil has been caught be Froome’s small group, and latched onto the end of it. Froome, Aru, Uran and Fuglsang are riding as a team, trying to reel in Bardet. The Frenchman has a 17sec advantage, with 6.5km to go.

Updated

So two of this morning’s GC top five are no longer in the race. Bardet was 47sec behind Froome, but with 8.5km to go today is in the lead – so, should he win the stage, a 10sec bonus is coming his way – with a 25sec advantage. So he would, if the stage ended now, be 12sec behind Froome and in second place.

Updated

Now Uran has a mechanical problem! Meanwhile Romain Bardet has caught and indeed overtaken Warren Barguil at the front!

The Porte crash was a bit gruesome, frankly. He was apparently going at 72.5km/h when he came off his bike.

Updated

Richie Porte is being loaded into an ambulance, but we’re told he is conscious. Dan Martin, meamwhile, is apparently back on a bike.

Jakob Fuglsang falls off the back of Froome’s group. He just avoided the Martin/Porte pile-up, and is now being understandably cautious.

Whoosh! Romain Bardet overtakes Froome, and just disappears!

I’ve heard no further update on Dan Martin. In front of him, though, Froome is at the front of a five-man group further down the mountain.

Dan Martin took a new bike but has apparently gone down again a little further on!

Porte is receiving medical attention, but that was a hard fall. It could have been worse – he headed off the road to the left, on the mountain side, but it was on a curve in the road so he ended up sliding back across the tarmac, taking out Martin in the process. Porte is surely out of the race.

Crash! Porte and Martin are down!

At last count, Barguil’s advantage at the front stood at 12 seconds.

Barguil has crossed the line at the top of the Mont du Chat, and will wear polka dots tonight.

Now just 35sec behind Barguil:

Barguil passes the sign marking 1km from the top of the climb. It’s all downhill from here (almost).

Six people now in the Froome group, Quintana having fallen off the back.

Jakob Fuglsang is now caught by Froome, so Warren Barguil is now all by himself with Froome a minute or so behind him.

A series of mini-attacks are launched, and Froome matches them all. Now, though, Froome makes his own move and only three men stay with him!

Alberto Contador has been dropped from the yellow jersey group, which is now perhaps 10 strong. Nairo Quintana, Romain Bardet, Richie Porte and Dan Martin are among them.

Attack! Aru goes, and then Richie Porte has a go, and Froome follows, now without any Team-Sky-shirted assistance.

It’ll be interesting to hear what Aru’s got to say about this at the end of the stage. Soon after Froome returned to the group he seemed to semi-accidentally pressure Aru towards a group of fans on the side of the road.

Somehow, Tiesj Benoot has contrived to put himself in second place on the road, a minute behind Warren Barguil.

Here’s that short-lived Aru attack:

Gallopin has run out of legs, and is practically going backwards.

Warren Barguil is now on his own at the front, with a 37sec personal lead.

As soon as Froome rejoined that group – as they now have – Jakob Fuglsang launched himself out of it.

And the attack has stopped! Froome needed a bike change, Aru went hard, everyone else went with him, and they told him to calm down.

There is some kind of Froome-shaped problem. He had a mechanical problem, and Aru decided it would be a fine moment to attack – and the entire remainder of that yellow jersey pack went with him!

The big names are on the Mont du Chat, and they are very significantly strung out along the road. At the very front, Gallopin is now away on his own.

And here’s a lovely picture of Mickey Mouse waving goodbye to stage nine.

Bakelants/Gallopin remain out in front, a couple of minutes away from the chasing peloton. There are only 25 or so riders in that group, including Chris Froome, with seven others somewhere between them, remnants of the once 12-strong leading pack.

Here’s Mickey Mouse getting towed:

Team Sky’s Michal Kwiatkowski has dropped out of the chasing Peloton. And Mickey Mouse has moved.

Here’s our news story on Geraint Thomas’s departure from the 2017 Tour:

Michael Matthews, whose victory in the intermediate sprint after cresting two mountains was a phenomenal achievement, has run out of fuel and been caught by the peloton.

Bakelants was first over the Côte de Jongieux, taking one King of the Mountains point.

This was the scene on the Mont du Chat nearly an hour ago. It has not yet been resolved, apparently. There is a problem with a giant Mickey Mouse.

Current key times: Jan Bakelants and Tony Gallopin are on their own, 1min 11sec ahead of anyone else. The remaining 10 members of what was the leading group are almost exactly two minutes ahead of the peloton now, with their advantage shrinking.

Apparently the publicity caravan is, or at least was a short while ago, stuck on the way up the Mont du Chat, the final hors-catégorie climb of the day. Because we need a bit of extra drama today.

Arnaud Démare’s race could end today: he and his small group – Ignatas Konovalovas and Mickaël Delage from Démare’s FDJ, and the Australian Mark Renshaw – are now 34min 20sec behind the peloton.

With 50km to go, the next notable obstacle is the Côte de Jongieux, a category four climb, the peak of which is 2.5km away.

After the sprint, Bakelants and Gallopin push on and are, at the moment, on their own at the front.

Matthews wins the intermediate sprint with ease.

Sure: there are 12 riders in the leading group, currently 3min 35sec ahead of the peloton. And they are:

Movistar: Carlos Betancur
AG2R: Alexis Vuillermoz, Jan Bakelants
Sunweb: Simon Geschke, Warren Barguil, Michael Matthews
Cofidis: Daniel Navarro
Trek-Segafredo: Jarlinson Pantano, Bauke Mollema
Lotto-Soudal: Tiesj Benoot, Tony Gallopin,
LottoNL-Jumbo: Primoz Roglic

Updated

A couple of Lotto-Soudal riders are having a go here, attempting to deny Michael Matthews maximum sprint points, so even though Matthews is the only green jersey aspirant in the leading group, he might not have this mini-race all his own way.

And the lead has reduced by another 30sec in the last few minutes, so 3min 38sec now.

The leaders lead now by 4min 10sec, a lead that has shrunk considerably over the last 20minutes. They have 67.5km to race, including another enormous hill.

The front five have been joined by another six, including Carlos Betancur, who is now the as-it-stands race leader, and Michael Matthews, who will be aiming squarely at the day’s sprint to Massignieu-de-Rives.

In popping out for lunch when I did, I totally missed a double-pronged AG2R attack that sounds absolutely legendary. It will be discussed at length this evening, and possibly for some time to come.

A minute further behind there’s a further five-man group. I believe they are: Jan Bakelants, Daniel Navarro, Jarlinson Pantano, Tony Gallopin and Michael Matthews.

Bauke Mollema, Tiesj Benoot, Warren Barguil, Primoz Roglic and Alexis Vuillermoz are the five at the front. If they stick together and retain their lead over the peloton Vuillermoz will end the day in yellow.

France’s Warren Barguil climbs in the breakaway group.
France’s Warren Barguil climbs in the breakaway group. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

Updated

The front two is about to become a front five. Meanwhile, here are the full results from Grand Colombier:

1. Warren Barguil, 20 pts
2. Tiejs Benoot, 15 pts
3. Alexis Vuillermoz, 12 pts
4. Primoz Roglic, 10 pts
5. Bauke Mollema, 8 pts
6. Jarlinson Pantano, 6 pts
7. Dani Navarro, 4 pts
8. Michael Matthews, 2 pts

Thomas Voeckler is among the members of the original breakaway being gobbled up by the peloton now, but the leaders remain six minutes away.

Warren Barguil rides away from Benoot in the final 50m to take the 20 points at the top of Grand Colombier.

The mountain is simply strewn with cyclists, in little clusters and all alone. Tiesj Benoot and Warren Barguil are the two at the top.

Chris Froome climbs towards the Grand Colombier pass.
Chris Froome climbs towards the Grand Colombier pass. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

Updated

The leaders are nearing the top of the Grand Colombier, and it’s been absolutely wild.

I’m back! I picked a good 15 minutes to pop out, it seems. Not much has happened.

And the Mont du Chat is still to come ...

Now Alberto Contador seems to be in trouble. It’s thought he’s already been down once, and he falls again here, and he’s shaking his head and all sorts. Nairo Quintana is with him there, with the riders swinging from left to right as they battle the gradient.

Emanuel Buchmann is back in the yellow jersey group but his team, Bora-hansgrohe, say Rafał Majka is in “trouble”. It doesn’t sound good, does it?

A bonkers 15 minutes or so then has left us with a depleted pack, and with Geraint Thomas’s Tour over. Four riders now are left in the lead, 5km from the top of the Grand Colombier.

Updated

So, now confirmed that Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas’s heavy crash on the Col de la Biche descent has left him in an ambulance with possible collarbone damage and he’s out of this race. He was of course the leader for the first five stages of this Tour.

As the riders again climb, now’s a good chance to see the damage of that descent. Meanwhile, reports that Geraint Thomas has abandoned with a fractured collarbone after crashing moments ago ...

Updated

Jesus Herrara is still in fact in the race, but battered and bruised, ITV4 say. Not so disastrous for Movistar, after all. Meanwhile, the aerial images show that AG2R have ripped this race to pieces by breaking away in the descent.

AG2R remain in the, er, driving seat, after impressing on these descents. They are on the attack and their tactics have left others with work to do.

Updated

Cyril Gautier gets lucky as he flies around a corner. He appears to be pushing all the boundaries on a wet, bad quality road with quite a few damp patches. Romain Bardet has created a nice chunk of breathing space between he and Chris Froome.

Geraint Thomas is down, on the same corner as the Astana riders earlier blundered. He’s gone down pretty hard but he’s not the only one and about half a dozen others are down too.

Updated

Simon has just run off for some lunch, so you have me, Ben Fisher, for a bit. So, the riders are just ripping down a very wet descent. Movistar’s Herrada has abandoned, involved in a crash with two Astana riders. It is not clear if those two riders are still in this race. Six riders at the front continue to have quite the gap ...

Updated

Second over the Col de la Biche was Alexis Vuillermoz, with Pinot third. The leaders are now six and a half minutes ahead of the peloton.

It’s expected to take about 40 minutes for the race to reach the top of the next big clumb, the 1,501m Grand Colombier.

That was wildly impressive by Roglic, who made the last 700m of the Col de la Biche look very straightforward indeed. And he’s kept pushing, stretching out the leading group.

And Roglic wins the climb, by a very emphatic margin. That’s 20 points for the Slovenian.

And whoosh! He’s overtaken again! Primoz Roglic is leading the way now, with Thibaut Pinot not far behind.

Whoosh! Pierre Rolland of Connondale-Drapac is going for the top of the hill!

Richie Porte’s prediction that today “will blow the GC apart” seems, with 115km grisly kilometres to go, to be coming to pass. There are 33 riders in the leading group now, and if the stage ended now the top three in the GC would all be among them.

Jakob Fuglsang has just had a puncture, and been handed a wheel by one of the Astana domestiques, who is now being sorted out by the team car.

If you’ve got a spare moment, you may consider signing up for our weekly roundup of the finest sportswriting in the known universe.

It is raining on our cyclists.

The lead is now approaching five minutes, and still it grows. Sky remain at the front of the peloton, doing their best.

Laurens ten Dam is leading the breakaway bunch up the hill, hitting it hard, with a couple of AG2R riders on his shoulder.

Updated

The breakaway continues to break away. Their lead is now four minutes, and rising.

It’s been six years since there were three HC climbs on the same day of the Tour.

I’m tired just reading about the Col de la Biche, and it’s not even the hardest climb of the day.

Today’s weather forecast, as if anyone needed this stage to get any harder:

The leaders are soon to head up the Col de la Biche. A biche, fact fans, is a doe.

Here’s some more reading for you:

Hay-bale arrangement of the day:

Carlos Betancur is now far enough ahead of Chris Froome, and indeed the other 26 riders who started the day ahead of him, to wear the yellow jersey if the stage ended now.

The leaders have just reached the top of the third climb of the day, up the Côte de Franclens. Pinot was third over this line, with Thomas de Gendt pipping him, and Bakhtyar Kozhatayev second.

If you see someone on a suspiciously smart bike:

The leaders have just cycled over the Génissat Dam, a big hydroelectric thing.

One big climb they’re not attempting today is Mont Ventoux. William Fotheringham thinks that they should be.

Meanwhile at the very back, three FDJ riders: Arnaud Demare, Ignatas Konovalovas and Mickaël Delage. Demare only just finished yesterday’s tage before declaring: “I do not feel sick, I’m just terrible. Today I was very bad. Again thanks to my two guardian angels, the way they rode, it was not work, it was love. Hat off to them. Tomorrow we’ll see.” He has his guardian angels with him again today, but clearly he’s struggling. They are 5min 35sec behind the peloton, and eight minutes off the cyclists out in front.

Stake Laengen has also gone down, apparently.

Team Sky are all together at the front of the peloton, putting in some hard work.

Chris Froome and Team Sky ride at the front of the peloton.
Chris Froome and Team Sky ride at the front of the peloton. Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

Updated

Thomas Voeckler, meanwhile, is trying to catch up with the leading group. Vegard Stake Laengen of UAE Team Emirates has gone with him.

Lotto-Soudal’s Tim Wellens has attacked coming down the hill, and a few other riders have gone with him.

Eduardo Sepulveda didn’t go down carefully enough, and has come off his bike. He’s back on his feet, but examining the damage to his right buttock.

Argentina’s Eduardo Sepulveda restarts after falling.
Argentina’s Eduardo Sepulveda restarts after falling. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

It doesn’t look like it’s currently raining, but the roads have certainly been recently refreshed. The leaders are coming down the Col de Cuvery currently, and being careful about it.

The front group is now two minutes ahead of the peloton. Carlos Metancur of Mivostar, the highest-ranked of the 38, is still 1min 17sec away from being in a yellow-jersey-stealing position.

Pinot was indeed first up the cole de Bérentin, claiming two more points in the process.

So, who are these 38? I hear you ask. Well …

Jan Bakelants, Axel Domont and Alexis Vuillermoz (AG2R-La Mondiale), Jesus Herrada and Carlos Betancur (Movistar), Bauke Mollema and Jarlinson Pantano (Trek-Segafredo), Alessandro De Marchi and Amaël Moinard (BMC), Bakhtiar Kozhatayev and Alexey Lutsenko (Astana), Kristjian Durasek and Vegard Stake Laengen (UAE), Thibaut Pinot (FDJ), Michael Albasini (Orica-Scott), Zdenek Stybar (Quick-Step Floors), Pawel Poljanski (Bora-Hansgrohe), Robert Kiserlovski and Tiago Machado (Katusha-Alpecin), Thomas De Gendt, Tony Gallopin and Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Michael Matthews, Nikias Arndt, Warren Barguil, Simon Geschke and Laurens ten Dam (Sunweb), Nicolas Edet and Dani Navarro (Cofidis), Primoz Roglic (LottoNL-Jumbo), Thomas Voeckler (Direct Energie), Pierre Rolland and Dylan Van Baarle (Cannondale-Drapac), Javier Moreno (Bahrain-Merida), Brice Feillu, Pierre-Luc Périchon and Eduardo Sepulveda (Fortuneo-Oscaro)

Every significant team is represented, except for Sky.

They’ve finally properly counted the breakaway group, and there are 38 of them.

Today brings us one category two climb, two category threes, a category four and three hors-catégorie climbs, plus an intermediate sprint. Col de la Biche, a 10.5km, 9% slog, is one of the literally high lights, though the Tour will conquer two peaks higher – Grand Colombier (8.5km, 9.9%) and Mont du Chat (8.7km, 10.3%).

It’s an action-packed stage today – “a grandissima stage”, as Alberto Contador called it this morning – and they’re already on the second climb of the day. Thibaut Pinot was first over the first, just 3.5km into the day, and he clearly wants maximum points from the second as well.

Team LottoNL-Jumbo’s Robert Gesink, who came second in yesterday’s stage 8, was also involved in the Mori crash, and has also abandoned.

France’s Angelo Tulik tends to Italy’s Manuele Mori after crashing with Netherlands’ Robert Gesink.
France’s Angelo Tulik tends to Italy’s Manuele Mori after crashing with Netherlands’ Robert Gesink. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

Updated

TV viewers are treated to lingering shots of Manuele Mori, the Italian UAE Team Emirates rider, in absolute agony on a stretch of tarmac. He has abandoned.

Hello world!

Well, they’re already 10km into the race, and there’s a 40-man breakaway with a minute’s lead at its head! There could be 60 people in it. It’s a big ‘un. And there are no Team Sky people on board.

Updated

Simon will be here soon. In the meantime here’s what stage nine looks like:

Stage nine

And this is what William Fotheringham thinks about the stage:

There are only six hors-catégorie climbs in the Tour – so hard they are unclassifiable – and half of them are in this stage. That makes it critical for the polka-dot climber’s jersey. Mountain men will make the break, and a selection of the riders who will win the Tour should emerge on the final climb, Mont du Chat: Froome, Porte, Simon Yates, Fabio Aru, Nairo Quintana and so on.

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