The Tour de France continues with what is sure to be another frenetic, fast-paced stage as the race transitions away from Provence to the high Alps.
Stage 16 more than delivered on drama as Valentin Paret-Peintre ended the drought of stage wins for the home nation with a victory in a thrilling two-up sprint atop the legendary Mont Ventoux, getting the better of Ireland’s Ben Healy.
Paret-Peintre’s victory - just his third at WorldTour level - marked his maiden Tour de France win and ensured the yellow jersey of Tadej Pogacar and his rival Jonas Vingegaard were denied glory on one of the Tour’s most legendary climbs.
The pair were locked together all the way up the climb, with Vingegaard continually attacking but unable to distance the race leader, before Pogacar dropped the Dane in the closing metres to add another two seconds to his overall lead. Vingegaard’s frustration was compounded by a crash with a wayward photograph in the finish area, although he did not appear injured.
24-year-old Paret-Peintre’s success continued a strong Tour for Soudal-QuickStep, who have now won four stages, despite the loss of team leader and general classification hopeful Remco Evenepoel.
“How I won that stage is hard to say, I was thinking ‘maybe I can win today, maybe I'm the best climber in this breakaway’,” Paret-Peintre said afterwards.
“I asked my team-mates to make a good pace at the bottom and I tried so many times to drop Healy but he was very strong and at the end, I was just waiting for the sprint and then I won.
“These last few days we went through a little storm, I guess, and now the sun shines again,” he said, in reference to Evenepoel’s withdrawal. “It’s really amazing for me and for the team to win another stage, a fourth stage in this Tour, then tomorrow it’s a sprint we hope, so we can maybe win again [with sprinter Tim Merlier].”
As for Merlier: there’s precious little for the sprinters to enjoy in the final week of the Tour de France, having struggled up Mont Ventoux yesterday and with the prospect of three frankly gruesome days in the Alps still to come.
But today is the penultimate chance for the fast men, and quite possibly the only clear-cut sprint left in this year’s race. Stage 21 is traditionally of course a day for the sprinters, with loop after loop of Paris building to a nerve-wracking crescendo and the final launch down the Champs-Elysees.
But the introduction of several laps of the category-four Montmartre climb has thrown a spanner in the works for the sprinters, meaning that stage 21 could look a lot like stage 11 in Toulouse: in theory a ‘flat’ stage that’s really anything but.
So today’s 160km run from Bollene to Valence may really be last chance saloon - so it seems safe to say, it’ll be a chaotic, frenzied day at the very least.
There are two climbs on the menu: the category-four pairing of the Col du Pertuis (3.7km at 6.6%) and the Col de Tartaiguille (3.6km at 3.5%), spaced at the 66km and 117km mark respectively. After the Tartaiguille it flattens out for the final 40km of the stage, which should be enough time for a high-speed chase by the sprinters’ teams to reel in any escapees.
Route map and profile
Start time
Today’s stage has a neutralised start time of 1.35pm local time (12.35pm BST), with an expected finish time of 5.10pm local time (4.10pm BST).
Prediction
Two sprinters have dominated this year’s flat stages, of which there have been vanishingly few: Tim Merlier has got the beating of Jonathan Milan in their two head-to-heads, on stage three and 10, with the Italian finishing second both times. Milan won the one sprint stage Merlier couldn’t contest, stage eight, after the European champion suffered a late mechanical.
In the absence of stage one winner Jasper Philipsen, sent packing with a broken collarbone, it looks like it’s down to this pair - unless one of the B-list sprinters of the peloton can spring a surprise. Milan is in desperate need of points after failing to make the breakaway and conceding the green points jersey on a stage to forget yesterday. But his Belgian rival has had his number so far in this Tour and for that reason we’re going with Tim Merlier.
