Righty ho, my summit has been breached and I’m off to cool down. Here’s Jeremy Whittle’s report on an excellent stage that left Tadej Pogacar more secure than ever in yellow. Bye!
The Tour de France leader Tadej Pogacar repelled all assaults on his control of the race, with an imperious win at the top of the Col de Portet in the French Pyrenees, as Jonas Vingegaard of the Jumbo Visma team, and Richard Carapaz riding for Ineos Grenadiers, scrapped between each other to guarantee a top three finish in Paris.
Pogacar, leader of the UAE Emirates team, had described the Bastille Day stage, from Muret to the Col du Portet, as the hardest of the 2021 Tour. Despite that, on the mighty 16km climb of the Portet, it was defending champion Pogacar who drove the pace at the decisive moments and finally emerged through the mountain mist to claim his second stage win in this year’s Tour.
Much more here:
Here’s William Fotheringham’s preview of tomorrow’s 18th stage, 129.7km between Pau and another mountain finish in Luz:
Shorter and more straightforward than the previous day; the Col du Tourmalet is arguably the most iconic climb in the Pyrenees and Luz Ardiden one of the classic finishes. There is always room for a surprise attack but on paper, this stage should replicate the verdict of the previous day as it will favour exactly the same kind of rider. Again there should be a massive early escape involving climbers who are out of contention overall, but the brevity of the stage means they are liable to be scooped up late on leaving the stage win for whoever is in the yellow jersey.
Pogacar says some stuff:
I mean, the team worked really hard every day to defend yellow. Every day was good for breakaways so every day we couldn’t do much. Today was a good course to control the breakaway much better. The guys did a fantastic job. We were 50/50 to go for the stage or just defend, but everybody felt good and in the end we succeeded.
[On the final climb] only me and Jonas [Vingegaard] worked together. I tried a couple of times to go clear, just because more time is better. In the end I just sprinted the last 50 metres.
Jonas said to me, he thought Carapaz is bluffing and I knew it also. It was nothing unusual. This is the tactic in cycling. And then he tried to attack. But I really tried to catch him and just hold his wheel, but it was super hard.
The top 10 in general classification tonight looks like this:
- Pogacar 71hr 25min 27sec
- Vingegaard +5min 39sec
- Carapaz +5min 43sec
- Uran +7min 17sec
- O’Connor +7min 34sec
- Kelderman +8min 6sec
- Mas +9min 48sec
- Lutsenko +10min 04sec
- Martin +11min 51sec
- Bilbao +12min 53sec
Today’s top 10:
Clasificación de la 17ª etapa del #TDF2021 https://t.co/29ZhOa3h3N pic.twitter.com/cpsyROpSOp
— MARCA (@marca) July 14, 2021
A gripping final climb, with Richard Carapaz breaking as many rules as he dared in pursuit of stage victory but perhaps as a result Pogacar was spurred not only by ambition and pursuit of glory but by anger as well.
David Gaudu comes through in fourth place, and is the first Frenchman over the finish line on Bastille Day.
Updated
Tadej Pogacar wins stage 17!
Tadej Pogacar tugs on the yellow jersey as he crosses the line first! Jonas Vingegaard comes through to finish in second place, with Carapaz third!
Updated
200m to go: Pogacar pushes once again, and nobody can match him this time!
300m to go: Pogacar is sitting on Carapaz’s back wheel. Vingegaard catches them up again...
600m to go: Neither Carapaz nor Vingegaard has won a Tour de France stage before. It looks like this one will be between Carapaz and Pogacar.
1.3km to go: Now Carapaz launches himself off the front! Pogacar stays with him, but Vingegaard is left behind!
Updated
2km to go: Pogacar pushes, but both of the others stay with him!
Updated
1.5km to go: The top three remain together. There’s been no doubt for some time that Pogacar is aiming to win this stage, but can either of the others stay with him? Whatever, this trio should be the front three at day’s end.
4km to go: Behind the front three David Gaudu has caught up with the next three riders, overtaken them, and set off on his own in pursuit of the leaders.
4.5km to go: Carapaz is refusing to do a turn at the front, leaving Pogacar and Vingegaard to do the work. The Ecuadorian is still grimacing, but hasn’t been shaken off.
Updated
5km to go: The leaders are cycling through cloud, rendering all those carefully-planned helicopter shots useless.
5.5km to go: Carapaz is grimacing as he tries to stay in the leading trio. Jonas Vingegaard and Pogacar are looking significantly more comfortable, but they remain together for now.
6km to go: There are three riders in a group about 30sec behind Pogacar: Ben O’Connor (fifth overnight), Urán (second), and Sergio Higuita, Urán’s teammate.
Updated
6.8km to go: There’s going to be a significant top-10 reshuffle today (though Pogacar’s position is getting more rather than less secure). Alexey Lutsenko, the overnight No7, has dropped away.
7.5km to go: Rigoberto Urán has fallen away, but Richard Carapaz has stayed with Pogacar, along with Jonas Vingegaard.
8km to go: Perez has been gobbled up, and Pogacar is the leader on the road.
8.5km to go: Pogacar goes! His final UAE-liveried assistant peels off, and the leader attacks. Who will stay with him?
9km to go: Mystery of the day: who attacked Wilco Kelderman?
Kelderman seems to have blood on his face, has he crashed? Or something else, eg bit his lip by accident going over a bump pic.twitter.com/LDNMwwHu4c
— the Inner Ring (@inrng) July 14, 2021
9.4km to go: Perez’s lead over the yellow jersey is 47 seconds.
10.3km to go: Of the GC leaders, Enric Mas, who started the day eighth, is struggling, and there could be a lot of churn in the bottom half of the top ten, with Alexey Lutsenko and Guillaume Martin also in trouble.
11.3km to go: Perez’s lead over the yellow jersey group is now below two minutes. Rafal Majka is at the front of that group now, pushing hard, with Tadej Pogacar behind him and looking entirely comfortable.
Updated
12.8km to go: A reminder of what this climb looks like in grisly profile:
📈 Col du Portet 16km, 8,7% Après @NairoQuinCo sur le #TDF2018, qui triomphera au sommet ? / After @NairoQuinCo on the #TDF2018, who'll be the first at the summit? #TDF2021 pic.twitter.com/6Su948ltTn
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) November 1, 2020
13.1km to go: Perez’s lead over the yellow jersey group has just dipped below three minutes.
13.2km to go: Godon, after fighting to catch up with Perez, has been dropped by him again. But their lead over the yellow jersey group is shrinking, to 3min 8sec now.
13.5km to go: Nairo Quintana is not so dominant today: he has been dropped by the yellow jersey group, as has Julian Alaphilippe.
15km to go: Here’s our report on the last Col du Portet stage finish, won by a dominant Nairo Quintana in 2018:
15km to go: Perez rides for Cofidis, who haven’t won a stage, or very much else, this year. They are starting to look excited.
#TDF2021
— Team Cofidis (@TeamCOFIDIS) July 14, 2021
Maintenant c'est le Col du Portet qu' @PerezAnthony1 attaque en compagnie de Godon 👊
🏁 16 km https://t.co/7eelDvZy7d
15.5km to go: The leaders go through Vignec, and start their journey up the Col du Portet. They have a 3min 55sec head start.
Updated
18km to go: Godon and Perez are now together at the front, a pair of Frenchmen aiming for Bastille Day victory.
22km to go: Poels pulls off the front of the peloton to bank some bonus King of the Mountain points at the top of the col de Val Louron-Azet. Quintana has a go at keeping up with him, but can’t. Ahead of them, Dorian Godon is just a few seconds behind Perez at the front.
Updated
25.5km to go: There are now just two UAE riders keeping Pogacar company at the front of the peloton.
28.9km to go: Perez reaches the top of the Col de Val Louron-Azet and, with a glance over his shoulder (nobody there!), he heads down the other side. Just a gruelling and brutal 16km climb to go!
32km to go: Now it’s Anthony Perez, out on his own. He’s 3.3km from the top of this climb, and there’s nobody now to help him.
35km to go: UAE are in a group at the front of the peloton (though Mikkel Bjerg has dropped off). Instead of another team pushing to see if Tadej Pogacar could cope, it’s Pogacar doing the pushing.
38km to go: The breakaway six is now a three: Godon, Turgis and Perez remain as they head up the Col de Val Louron-Azet.
Updated
48.8km to go: A few names are finding themselves dropped here, including Tao Geoghegan Hart and Ion Izagirre.
49km to go: The breakaway has crested the Col de Peyresourde, and Anthony Turgis was the first over the finish line there.
49.5km to go: Three of the four people who had been trying to chase down the breakaway have given up and been subsumed into the peloton. Pierre Latour, however, is still going, on his own.
50km to go: News today of Simon Clarke, the 34-year-old Australian, who it turns out broke his back in a crash on stage three and has just been cycling through it.
“I suffered the fracture on stage three and until yesterday I’ve been able to hide it and fight it pretty good and kept it under wraps but yesterday it became clear I wasn’t able to push on,” he told Cycling Weekly. “I suspected straight away that I had done some damage to my back and had an x-ray straight after the stage but it didn’t show up as x-rays aren’t accurate enough. I pushed on but after the Ventoux stage I understood that something wasn’t right and we organised for a CT scan and the fracture on the L4 showed up.
“It’s painful, yeah. It’s a stable fracture so I’m not doing any damage to it and I can push through it but I can’t wait until Paris, to be honest. I can still ride. It’s not pretty, but why not keep going? We’ll look back when I retire and I don’t want to say, ‘well, why would I just throw the towel in like that?’ Why not go to Paris?”
52km to go: Danny van Poppel has been dropped by the breakaway group.
55km to go: More action at front and back of the peloton: Pierre Latour has caught the Poels, Quintana and Gesbert trio, while Michal Kwiatkowski of Ineos Grenadiers has been dropped.
56km to go: Right then. We were hoping for some intrigue once the riders hit the hills, and it looks like we might get some. Three riders have broken off the front of the peloton, and they are the polka dot-clad Wout Poels and two of the three remaining Arkéa Samsic riders in Nairo Quintana and Elie Gesbert.
57km to go: The peloton is now eating into the breakaway’s lead, which is down to 7min 25sec. “Quick question: The King of the Mountains battle looks fairly well poised with only two days left in the mountains,” writes Daniel Barnett. “Do you have any idea how many points are on offer at the various climbs today and tomorrow before Friday’s flat stage? I’m really rooting for Michael Woods to become the first Canadian (I believe) to win the polka dot.”
Well there are two category one climbs, which offer points to the first six riders (10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and one respectively), and a hors-categorie finish, for which normal HC points will be doubled to 40, 30, 24, 20, 16, 12, 8 and 4, with the first eight to finish getting points. The top five in the Kong of the Mountains standing are as follows:
- Wout Poels (74 points)
- Michael Woods (66 points)
- Nairo Quintana (64 points)
- Wout van Aert (64 points)
- Bauke Mollema (41 points)
60km to go: The peloton reaches Luchon, and Michael Matthews crosses the sprint finish line first, ahead of Mark Cavendish and Sonny Colbrelli. That will reduce Cavendish’s green jersey lead over Matthews by a single point to 35, and extend Matthews’ lead over Colbrelli by a couple of points to 52.
61km to go: And so the climbing begins.
63km to go: The order of the first six to reach Luchon was as follows:
- Danny van Poppel, 20 pts
- Turgis, 17 pts
- Godon, 15 pts
- Pöstlberger, 13 pts
- Perez, 11 pts
- Chevalier, 10 pts
65km to go: The front six have completed the sprint, with Danny van Poppel first over the line, and without much competition.
Lyndsey Melling writes, on the subject of funeral adverts: “on the ITV coverage I think they said there has been a total of four deaths in the Tour’s history? Given the length of the race, it’s long history, and the number of participants, wouldn’t that make it actually be one of the safer sports?” I was meaning that it was reasonably dangerous for the average enthusiast who might be watching at home and thinking of taking their bike out for a spin, not for the ultrafit, brilliantly-supported professionals who compete on the closed roads of the Tour itself.
71km to go: The sprint culminates at Bagnères-de-Luchon, a town of “elegant Belle Epoque architecture” that boasts of being “popular with the world’s greats from Napoleon III to Gustave Flaubert”. The Rough Guide says “it’s the largest and arguably most sophisticated Pyrenean resort, much the most elegant place this side of Biarritz”.
77km to go: A little over 10km to go now before the intermediate sprint. With the breakaway bound to take the top six spots, there’s a maximum of nine points available for those in the peloton.
81km to go: Here’s some actual news from earlier this afternoon: Steven Kruijswijk is the fourth Jumbo-Visma rider to abandon this year’s Tour, leaving only Wout van Aert, Sepp Kuss and Jonas Vingegaard on the road. Kruijswijk is feeling unwell.
🇫🇷 #TDF2021 @s_kruijswijk abandons @LeTour #DNF
— Team Jumbo-Visma cycling (@JumboVismaRoad) July 14, 2021
Steven started to feel ill during the restday and that feeling didn’t improve unfortunately.
He'll now focus on @lavuelta
Get well soon Stevie!🍀 pic.twitter.com/pzdn49fQbS
86km to go: I’m really looking very hard for interesting things to tell you about, but having failed I have no choice but to tell you about the lack of interesting things I have to tell you about. Sorry. The breakaway six still lead by around eight minutes.
94km to go: There is a lot of funeral-related advertising during British Tour coverage. I know road cycling’s reasonably dangerous, but surely this is going too far. “Further to the Tour coverage, as well as the bucolic nature of the pre-race bit (local markets, etc) on France TV they have a historian on the commentary team to do the ecclesiastical architecture bits,” writes PhilippaB. Eurosport sometimes does this. I feel like there should be a great big book of Tour-route trivia that it would be really handy to have access to, but I’m yet to find out if such a thing actually exists.
103km to go: We’re not far away from Las-Verdures. I can’t find out anything about Las-Verdures as a place but it’s an excellent and underused word in English so I recommend you add it to your vocabulary immediately and spray it around in these days of (in Britain) warm weather and abundant rainfall. This from the Collins dictionary:
verdure (noun, literary)
/ˈvɜː.dʒər/
- flourishing green vegetation or its colour
- a condition of freshness or healthy growth
Derived forms
verdured (adjective)
verdurous (adjective)Word origin
C14: from Old French verd green, from Latin viridis
108km to go: This is very much the calm before the storm. It is 113km of calm, hours of it, which is perhaps a bit more calm than is necessarily, but then with any luck it’ll be a really good storm.
112km to go: Interesting update here from Graham Whittington: “With regard to the comments earlier on how France is filmed: the Tour has long been seen by France Télévisions (state-controlled) as a way of communicating very much a holiday image of an essentially rural country full of heritage sites,” he writes. “Horse-riders beside the peloton a speciality. Aesthetically-arranged tractors. I live in a village in the south of France that the Tour passes through every five years or so, and the reconnaissance teams encourage us to conceal anything that they consider to be out-of-place. Camera angles (especially from the helicopters) are carefully pre-planned.”
Here’s a good example:
🌻 We miss the sun, be we have the sunflowers!
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 14, 2021
🌻 Le soleil nous manque, mais les tournesols sont au rendez-vous !#TDF2021 pic.twitter.com/LrGpSKaUfK
116km to go: Sunflower-and-cyclist photograph alert!
119km to go: The leaders approach Lieoux. You’re right, there are an awful lot of different vowels in the middle of that name. I don’t know why they didn’t throw an A in as well and complete the set. They also just went through Latoue, who really might have added an I and given themselves bragging rights over their neighbours.
124km to go: The breakaway has a lead of around seven and a half minutes, and rising.
128km to go: Bernard has had enough. He has given up on catching the leaders, and is waiting to be caught by the peloton.
132km to go: The breakaway now has a lead of six minutes over the peloton, with Julien Bernard continuing his solo battle, 1min30sec back.
136km to go: Poor Julien Bernard is still on his own, attempting to catch up with the breakaway but not really gaining on them at all.
141km to go: Gary Naylor’s been on the virtual blower again. “On the basis that you should always do what your opponent least wants or expects, why don’t Ineos go with five riders now?” he muses. “ UAE plans would go out of the window and, if Carapaz is isolated later, he has to follow Pogacar or Vinnegard anyway, so why not risk it?”
I’d be entirely in support of that, mainly because it is surely time for a bit of tactical intrigue. But from all available evidence nobody seems particularly interested in discomfiting UAE.
147km to go: Turgis and Chevalier have joined the breakaway, and Bernard is still trying to join them (though he’s over a minute behind still). The peloton is over four minutes back.
154km to go: Cavendish is at the front of the peloton, along with a couple of his Deceuninck-QuickStep teammates and a few Movistar riders. Between them they are controlling things, and they appear to be happy for this group to break. There are a couple of riders trying to join the breakaway, with Anthony Turgis and Maxime Chevalier about 50sec back. Julien Bernard is almost a minute behind them.
155km to go: Rolland has been caught, and there is a fresh leading foursome: Dorian Godon, Anthony Perez, Lukas Pöstlberger, and Danny van Poppel.
160km to go: “Seems a bit churlish on Bastille Day, but the Tour does not show off France the way The Giro shows off Italy does it?” writes Gary Naylor, churlishly. “Too many single crop fields, too many towns with cookie-cutter churches and chateaux and not enough coastline. And not a ghost village in sight.”
Not entirely unfair: water always helps a view, I think. Sea, rivers, lakes, it’s all good. This year we haven’t really seen the sea since stage three, and I can’t remember a lot of riverside racing.
But also, the Giro is raced earlier in the year, which means that landscapes are more lush and less dry, which helps. And Italy is perhaps the most beautiful nation in Europe, so it’s not really a fair fight.
166km to go: Rolland is still nearly 30sec clear. Behind him there’s a lot of jostling for position, but no actual use of the position that has been jostled for.
172km to go: Rolland is nearly 30sec clear, but the road is flat and straight enough for him to be very clearly in view of the front of the peloton.
175km to go: Pierre Rolland attacks! It’s Bastille Day and there’s a bellicose Frenchman leading the Tour, which is as it should be.
Updated
178.4km to go: And they’re off! It looks gently drizzly in Muret as the action begins.
Less than 1km before the start of racing, and Mark Cavendish is riding right behind the car, inches from its rear bumper. Just 113.4km before the intermediate sprint.
The rollout is already under way, with the stage due to start in earnest in just a few minutes.
Preamble
Today’s is a stage of two (uneven) halves, one of which is long and fairly benign, stretching from the start in Muret to the finish line of the intermediate sprint in Bagnères-de-Luchon, a distance of some 113km.
From then on it turns evil, with what the Tour itself calls “the terrible trio”: two category one climbs, the 13.2km Col de Peyresourde and the 7.4km Col de Val Louron-Azet, followed by the beastly, hors-categorie, 16km at 8.7% Col du Portet:
📈 Col du Portet 16km, 8,7% Après @NairoQuinCo sur le #TDF2018, qui triomphera au sommet ? / After @NairoQuinCo on the #TDF2018, who'll be the first at the summit? #TDF2021 pic.twitter.com/6Su948ltTn
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) November 1, 2020
After none of the GC contenders did anything remotely interesting yesterday, the supposition is that someone must be planning something either for today or tomorrow. As Jeremy Whittle put it at the start of his Stage 16 report:
The reigning Tour de France champion, Tadej Pogacar, is steeling himself for last‑ditch attacks on his race leadership in what may prove to be the toughest day of this year’s race – the 17th stage to the towering summit of the 2,215-metre Col du Portet pass on Wednesday.
Time is running out for those with lingering hopes of victory on the Champs-Élysées. With only two mountain stages and one time trial now remaining, in which any meaningful inroads can be made on the 22-year-old’s five-minute advantage, the race leader is expecting his grip on the yellow jersey to be tested.
Well, fingers very much crossed for that. Here’s what William Fotheringham had to say about the stage in his pre-race stage-by-stage guide:
Stage 17, Wednesday 14 July, Muret – Sant-Lary-Soulan 178.4km
The first of two mountain-top finishes that should decide the race. There’s a lengthy, flattish preamble where a large break should gain several minutes – in recent years these have involved as many as 30 riders – while the final 50kms includes a daunting trio of passes, culminating in the hardest finish of the Tour, the super-steep 10 miles to the Col de Portet. López, Roglic and Pogacar will be the main men here, and the stage win should go to the best climber out of the break – a rider like Gaudu.
And here’s Jeremy’s report on yesterday’s solo stage success for Patrick Konrad:
