That’s all from me. More fun to come tomorrow, from Limoux and Fois Prat d’Albis, with three category one climbs along the way. Bye for now!
Laurens De Plus speaks for a very happy Jumbo-Visma:
It’s crazy. Even if we don’t have the yellow jersey it’s like we’re living the yellow dream this year. Also for our team it’s a surprise that we are so strong. I said it already a few times, I think it’s a unique chance for Steven Kruijswijk to get on the podium of even more. I hope he can stay on his level like this and maybe wonderful things will happen.
Geraint Thomas has had a chat. He says he felt “quite weak” from the start:
I just didn’t feel quite on it from the start. Just quite weak. At the end I knew I had to try to pace it. I didn’t really attempt to follow them when they kicked. I felt it was better to ride my own pace and limit my losses that way, rather than trying to stay with them and blow up at the end. It was a tough day out there. I’m just a bit disappointed, but it is what it is. I just tried to limit the damage. Still a lot to come, and hopefully I’ll feel a bit better tomorrow.
Here’s a report on today’s stage, which ended with France celebrating both a stage winner and a yellow jersey wearer.
Thibaut Pinot is on the podium, collecting a bouquet, waving it about and looking a bit chuffed.
Updated
Julian Alaphilippe had never finished in the top 40 of a mountain stage before *. Today, powered somehow by the yellow jersey, he came second. Nobody is taking him lightly now.
* Actually he had. Sorry. Misinformed.
Updated
And here’s today’s top 10:
Top-10 on Stage 14 #TDF2019 pic.twitter.com/QXkFwt8c1s
— the Inner Ring (@inrng) July 20, 2019
All change in the GC:
New GC #TDF2019 pic.twitter.com/ftqkkh1EXw
— the Inner Ring (@inrng) July 20, 2019
Called it:
@Simon_Burnton surely a day for thrilling heroics as Pinot ascends the GC
— MaliciousA (@MaliciousA) July 20, 2019
Nairo Quintana completes the stage, 3min 23sec behind Pinot.
Geraint Thomas crosses the line, about 35sec behind the yellow jersey!
Thibaut Pinot wins stage 14!
A brilliant win for Thibaut Pinot, and Alaphilippe comes second!
Updated
130m to go: Pinot goes, and can anyone catch him?
400m to go: The stage winner will surely come from this group: Alaphilippe, Kruijswik, Bernal, Buchmann, Pinot and Landa.
1km to go: Geraint Thomas is left behind! Six riders are at the head of the race, with Alaphilippe among them.
1.2km to go: Jakob Fuglsang has also been dropped. Alaphilippe is still looking comfortable.
1.5km to go: Thomas has dropped back since last I mentioned him, with Alaphilippe right behind him once again.
2km to go: The camera cuts to Quintana, entirely on his own, nobody anywhere near him, slogging up the hill.
3km to go: Gaudu is dragged back innto the pack, and three Jumbo-Visma riders are at the front now. Steven Kruijswijk is perfectly placed.
4km to go: David Gaudu attacks! Where has that come from? He doesn’t get very far, mind.
4.5km to go: Geraint Thomas movess up to fifth, and Alaphilippe, who had been marking him, doesn’t immediately respond. He’s still clinging on to the leading group, with one rider behind him.
5km to go: Barguil has been caught, and this is anyone’s day.
5.5km to go: Richie Porte, 15th in the GC this morning, has also been dropped, we’re told.
6km to go: So it looks like the ambitions of Nairo Quintana, Adam Yates and Dan Martin, ninth, 10th and 11th in the GC rankings this morning, to win this race will end today.
6.3km to go: Julian Alaphilippe still seems entirely comfortable. He moves up the peloton to sit on the wheel of Geraint Thomas.
7km to go: David Gaudu tries to lead Thibaut Pinot away from the peloton, but they’re not allowed to break free.
8.3km to go: Barguil still leads, but by just 11 seconds. “They say every sports ground has its own sound. The Lord’s murmur and so on. But nothing is quite like the sound of the Tour,” writes Sandy Balfour. “I’m about 6km from the summit, so the Peloton is what, 20 minutes away? 30? It doesn’t matter. Around me people are bickering, laughing, joking in maybe 10 or 12 languages. And every now and then someone reads something in their phone or hears something and suddenly a hush of anticipation descends. People crane their necks. A couple shove to the front. But there is nothing to see and soon they are back to talking about other things. For riders it’s all about the end. For spectators it’s all in the anticipation. Because let’s face it, for 99.9% of the day there is nothing to see. But we wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Updated
9.3km to go: Gesbert is hauled in, and Warren Barguil attacks!
9.5km to go: A couple of Movistar riders have been sent back to rescue Quintana.
10km to go: Movistar presumably haven’t been pulling the peloton all day for Nairo Quintana: he has now been dropped. On Colombian Independence Day, he’s on his own.
10.5km to go: Andrey Amador, who seems to have been at the head of the peloton for about half the stage, finally drops off the pace. An immense effort from the Costa Rican today.
12km to go: Dan Martin, 11th in the GC this morning, is falling away as well. Adam Yates, coincidentally, was 10th.
Updated
12.5km to go: Patrick Konrad had to change bikes and thus finds himself behind the yellow jersey group, stuck with Adam Yates and his mates.
13km to go: Gesbert is now on his own, 30 seconds ahead of the yellow jersey group, which is still being led by Movistar, with a gaggle of Ineos riders tucked in behind.
14km to go: Adam Yates is having a very bad day, and is struggling again with a lot of climbing still to come.
15km to go: Elie Gesbert has joined Romain Sicard at the front, 45 seconds ahead of anyone else.
17km to go: The first couple of dozen mentions of Tourmalet in the Guardian all concerned a horse of that name, which apparently did quite a lot of winning in the 1860s. The first mention in a cycling context was in a report on the 1924 race: “...Then come, in the Basque country,, the Justices of the Peace, those calm, inhuman shoulders of the great Pyrenean range; Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin, which no car can climb without resting to cool, which separate and inexorably classify the racers ... the hardest test humanity has invented for the ultimate strength of legs.”
19km to go: Sicard goes through Esquièze-Sère, and from here there is nowhere to go but up.
20km to go: Whooosh! Sicard is now 1.30sec ahead of the peloton. Gesbert and Calmejane are about 30sec closer.
25km to go: We have a new leader: Romain Sicard has gone on his own!
Updated
27km to go: All but two of the Movistar team are in the peloton, helping Nairo Quintana as best they can.
30km to go on the way to the top of the Tourmalet. So many sub-plots to be enjoyed, starting with Nibali attacking from the gun. This is the Tour de France at its richest and most fascinating, riddled with tension.
— Richard Williams (@rwilliams1947) July 20, 2019
30km to go: The route almost immediately heads uphill, gently at first, towards the Tourmalet. “Just saw a gendarme herding cows to keep them off the road,” writes Gareth Thomas (a while ago, back when there were cows milling about). “Why don’t farmers herd their own cows to keep them safe if they know the TDF is coming through? Happens every year.” They presumably think that if the Tour didn’t want to run the risk of rider-bovine interactions they would make sure the route didn’t go anywhere near their cows.
31km to go: Wellens is first to finish the sprint, with the front three about to be caught by a chasing five.
interesting to watch Alaphilipe ride so far on stage - riding conservatively & well in the wheels just as a rider without a mountain climbing team should
— William Fotheringham (@willfoth) July 20, 2019
33km to go: Sagan might have dropped out of the breakaway but he’s still got some fuel in the tank, and he’s been leading the yellow jersey group as they haul in the remainers. They’re now just 45sec behind the leading trio.
34km to go: There is an intermediate sprint to Pierrefitte-Nestalas, with the finish line just a couple of kilometres away now.
35km to go: Adam Yates, thanks in no small part to his brother Simon, has been dragged back into the yellow jersey group.
38km to go: The leaders pass Argelès-Gazost, home of the Pyrénées Animal Park, apparently very much the place to go if you want to feed a marmot.
42km to go: Of that 17-strong breakaway group, only eight remain. The front three (Nibali, Wellens and Gesbert) have a 30-second lead over the other five, with the peloton 1min 15sec back.
47km to go: The leaders pass through Aucun. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is a town called None.
49km to go: The riders descend at wild pace. Here is the confirmed points distribution from that category four climb:
⛰ Col du Soulor (cat.1) ⛰
— Maillot jaune LCL (@MaillotjauneLCL) July 20, 2019
1️⃣🇧🇪@Tim_Wellens, 10 pts
2️⃣🇮🇹@vincenzonibali, 8 pts
3️⃣🇫🇷@ElieGesbert, 6 pts
4️⃣🇷🇺@IlnurZakarin, 4 pt
5️⃣🇫🇷@sicard_romain, 2pts
6️⃣🇪🇸@Carlos_Verona, 1pt
Wellens remporte le sprint au sommet face à Nibali et conforte son @maillotapois. #TDF2019 pic.twitter.com/PHN7Bptu06
52km to go: The next 25km or so are mainly descent, before the big stage-concluding climb.
55km to go: I haven’t really mentioned Julian Alaphilippe, but he’s looking fairly comfortable in the peloton.
56km to go: Nibali tries to stick with Wellens, and fails. Another 10 points for the polka-dot jersey wearer.
56.5km to go: It’s Wellens and Nibali, side by side with 400m to go.
57km to go: The leaders are just 1km from the top of the climb, but behind them the peloton, still being dragged uphill by Movistar, is on the hunt. They are just 1min 23sec behind now.
58km to go: There are a lot of cows grazing on the edge of the road. One of them has to be shepherded away by spectators to prevent a potentially horrific if milky pile-up.
The latest episode of "Things interrupting the Tour de France" looks like a good one...#TDF2019 #TheBreakway pic.twitter.com/vh4T53K7xJ
— Eurosport UK (@Eurosport_UK) July 20, 2019
Updated
58km to go: Three go alone at the front, looking for the points at the top of the climb. Nibali, Wellens and Gesbert are the leading trio.
59km to go: 2.5km of climbing still ahead of the leaders. Adam Yates is also now struggling.
60km to go: Meanwhile at the back of the race, Romain Bardet has been dropped by the peloton.
60km to go: The leading group has fractured, with eight riders now at the front. Nibali and Gesbert are both there, along with Zakarin, Sanchez, Sicard, Kamna, Wellens and Carlos Verona.
61km to go: This is intriguing now. The peloton is strung out, with a couple of Movistar riders at the front, dragging it uphill. The leaders are 5km from the top.
63km to go: Guillaume Martin, not exactly a shoddy climber, is also falling behind the leading group. Its leaders are going at quite the pace, intent of protecting their advantage over the peloton.
64km to go: A few riders are struggling on the climb. Rein Taaramäe is one of them - he has fallen off the back of the leading group, and is not going to catch up any time soon.
66km to go: The peloton have hauled back a bit of the gap to the leading group, which now stands at 2min 26sec. The leaders reach Arbéost, whose only mention in the Guardian came when Nicci Gerrard stopped there on a walking holiday in 1997. She described it as a “tiny hamlet” where “apparently only 15 people live” which “stands on the slopes of a wild and little-known valley”. She had a lovely dinner of duck soup, followed by duck.
Updated
69km to go: The leaders reach Ferrières. Like Leeds in England, Ferrières has a castle that’s nowhere near it: the Château de Ferrières is near Paris.
Updated
72km to go: The delayed start was down to some environmental protesters who expressed their unhappiness at industrial emissions by sitting in the middle of the road, forcing organisers to give police time to clear them.
76km to go: There are 17 riders in the breakaway group, with a lead of nearly three minutes on the peloton. Here’s a handy list:
🇫🇷#TDF2019
— Team Jumbo-Visma Live (@JumboVismaLive) July 20, 2019
83 km - 17 renners hebben een voorsprong van 2'45" op het peloton. De namen:
🇫🇷Calmejane
🇪🇪Taaramäe
🇫🇷Sicard
🇫🇷Gesbert
🇦🇹Haller
🇨🇴Henao
🇩🇪Kämna
🇫🇷Ladagnous
🇫🇷Martin
🇸🇮Mohoric
🇮🇹V. Nibali
🇸🇰P. Sagan
🇪🇸Sanchez
🇪🇸Verona
🇫🇷Vuillermoz
🇧🇪Wellens
🇷🇺Zakarin
77km to go: We are well into the foothills of the Col du Soulor, though the leaders are still 20km from the summit.
80km to go: So to Arthez-d’Asson, another town with just one mention in the Guardian archives. In 1933 we mentioned in our obituary of Henri Bremond, the noted French priest and historian, that he had died there.
Emmanuel Macron is, well, somewhere on route. He’s waving at people and shaking some hands, with a burly man in sunglasses looking stressed behind him.
86km to go: The 15 chasers have caught the leading duo, and have a 2min 37sec lead over the peloton. Meanwhile Kate Nikki wants me to give a shout out to The InternationElles and Donnons des Elles au Vélo J-1, “two teams of female cyclists riding the entire tour route a day ahead of the men to highlight the lack of a proper stage race for women. None of the road closures or support networks of course. They made it safely up Tourmalet yesterday, and after a transfer and very short night are on stage 15, with plenty more climbing.”
91km to go: The leaders pass through Coarraze. The town has been mentioned in the Guardian precisely once in all of history, when we reported in 1842 on the erection of a statue of Henry IV of France in Pau. On one side of the pedestal is “a bas-relief, from the chisel of M Etex, representing the great king playing with the little mountaineers of Coarraze”.
Updated
93km to go: The breakaway has been allowed to definitively break, with Guillaume Martin the best-placed member in GC terms, sitting in 25th place this morning.
96km to go: The leaders reach Bénéjacq, which strikes me as a rather lovely name for a rather obscure little village. Here’s their rugby team:
98km to go: Sagan and Nibali have crested that climb, and are having a little chat as they coast downhill for a bit.
100km to go: The leaders are on their way up the Cote de Labatmale, the first categorised climb of the day. There is now a 15-strong chasing group, with the front two now 1min 30sec ahead of the peloton.
102km to go: Lennard Kämna tries to close the gap, but it’s still growing. Tim Wellens is just behind him.
103km to go: Now the front two lead by 26 seconds, and the gap is increasing quickly.
105km to go: Sagan and Nibali have extended their lead to about eight seconds, a decent distance when they’re on their way back downhill at nearly 80kmh.
Updated
107km to go: Nibali and Elie Gesbert take a small lead but are hauled back in, then Nibali goes again, this time with Peter Sagan.
108km to go: They’re on a gentle climb already, which is stretching the peloton, and Vincenzo Nibali has taken an early lead at the front.
And they’re off! The race director waves his flag and accelerates away!
They have now passed the protest, which thanks to some skilful editing on the part of the broadcasters has received absolutely no international publicity.
Updated
Apparently there is a demonstration at Ossun, four kilometres into the stage, so the riders will be chaperoned through that before the racing gets under way.
Updated
Due to as-yet unknown “technical issues” the start has been slightly shifted, so there will be less than 117.5km of actual racing.
The general classification looks something like this:
#TDF2019 GC ahead of today's crucial mountain stage
— British Cycle Sport (@VeloUK) July 20, 2019
1 Alaphilippe
2 Thomas @ 1.26
3 Kruijswijk 2.12
4 Mas 2.44
5 Bernal 2.52
6 Buchmann 3.04
7 Pinot 3.22
8 Uran 3.54
9 Quintana 3.55
10 A Yates 3.55
11 D Martin 4.15
13 Fuglsang 4.29
15 Porte 4.44
17 Bardet 5.46
18 Landa 6.00 pic.twitter.com/oFUiv45aUH
The rollout is about to start rolling. The Pyrenees are looking gorgeous this afternoon, which is just as well given the number of lingering helicopter shots we’re going to be treated to before the day’s out.
Hello world!
So, stage 14. Tarbes to Col du Tourmalet, and the first classic climb of this year’s Tour. Just the 117.5km, but they’re hard yards: the category four climb to Cote de Labatmale, the category one Col du Soulor, and the hors-categorie, 19km-long final climb, with a steepest climb of 13.5%, are all on the route. It all looks something like this:
Stage 14 / Étape 14
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 20, 2019
🚩 Tarbes
🏁 Tourmalet Barèges
⏰ 13:30 CET > 17:02 CET
💚 Pierrefitte-Nestalas
⛰️ 1xHC, 1x1️⃣c, 1x4️⃣c#TDF2019 pic.twitter.com/iyihhMaM91
Here’s our report on yesterday’s Stage 13. And welcome! It should be an excellent day’s cycling.
