Geraint Thomas has made a useful habit during this Tour de France of staying out of trouble; he avoided a crash like Chris Froome’s in the opening stage, or a disaster on the treacherous cobbles to Roubaix, or a blow-up in the Alps, and this jaunt from Trie-Sur-Baïse to Pau near the Pyrénées might just have been his smoothest day yet. Eighteen down, three to go.
Two in reality, given the ride to Paris on Sunday will be nothing more than a procession, and with each passing day the chances of seeing Thomas sipping champagne en route to the Champs-Elysees in his now familiar yellow jersey increase.
Thomas is a strong time-triallist but he will almost certainly lose some of his advantage on the stage-20 individual time trial to his closest rival, the world champion Tom Dumoulin. Even so, he is unlikely to lose all of his two-minute buffer, meaning Dumoulin must go on the attack on Friday’s route over three summits which make up part of the Pyrénéan ‘circle of death’.
Thomas will approach it with slightly fresher legs after this steady ride, finishing safely in the pack behind the eventual winner in a sprint on the streets of Pau, Arnaud Démare. The French rider held off his compatriot Christophe Laporte and the Norwegian Alexander Kristoff to clinch the second Tour de France stage of his career, something which had seemed the most likely outcome from the start.
The day’s main breakaway was made up of five riders: Luke Durbridge and Matt Hayman of Mitchelton-Scott, Thomas Boudat of Direct Energie, Niki Terpstra of Quick-Step and Guillaume Van Keirsbulck of Wanty-Groupe Gobert. They did not pose a threat to Thomas’s yellow jersey but they did to those sprinters sniffing a stage victory, and it meant their teams were forced to do the heavy lifting at the front of the peloton to setup a bunch finish, allowing Team Sky to put their feet up.
The short cut-off times during this Tour, particularly in the Alps, have already shredded the sprint field, eliminating Mark Cavendish as well as double stage winners earlier in the race Fernando Gaviria and Dylan Groenewegen. And after the man wearing the green jersey, Peter Sagan, suffered a nasty crash yesterday which clearly held him back here, the stage was there to be won for the talented Démare.
His Groupama-FDJ team and Kristoff’s UAE Team Emirates put in almost all of the work through the 171km, finally swallowing the breakaway as the race entered the final 20km. From there they jostled to control the pace heading into the finish, with FDJ leading the peloton through the final corners.
Then it was over to the sprinters, or those that are left at the end of this brutal three weeks, and once Démare’s team-mates moved aside in the final 100m he never let go. On Friday the attention will again switch to the battle for the yellow jersey, and one more chance for a rival to wobble Thomas’s impeccably steady hand.
