Stage report: As the Tour entered France for the first time this year, Julian Philippe was the source of much gallic pride after securing victory and the overall lead, courtesy of a late breakaway.
Jersey wearers after stage three
Those in charge of the Tour stopwatch are dilly-dallying over the General Classification, but for the time being, here are your wearers of the jerseys that matter ...
- Yellow: Julian Alaphilippe (Quick Step)
- Green: Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgroe)
- Polka-dot: Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal)
- White: Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma)
Julian Alaphilippe speaks: “I’m speechless,” says the stage winner and new race leader. “I don’t realise what’s happening to me. I knew this stage suited me. I managed to avoid any pitfalls and crashes. I felt good so I accelerated in the Mutigny climb but I didn’t think I’d go alone. I gave everything. I heard I was 30 or 40 seconds ahead. It’s difficult to meet the expectations being the favourite. I made it. I’m delighted.”
Julian Alaphilippe is overcome with emotion when finding out that he’ll be wearing Yellow tommorow. 💛
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 8, 2019
L’émotion submerge @alafpolak1 au moment de réaliser qu’il est le nouveau Maillot Jaune. 💛#TDF2019 pic.twitter.com/0BN04RenKK
Stage three result
- 1. Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick Step) +26sec
- 2. Michael Matthews (Sunweb) +26sec
- 3. Jasper Stuyven (Trek–Segafredo) +26sec
- 4. Greg Van Avermaet (CCC) +26sec
- 5. Peter Sagan (Bora Hansgrohe) +26sec
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Julian Alaphilippe wins the stage!!!
But has the French Quick Step rider done enough to secure the yellow jersey? We’ll find out soon enough. The ramp to the finish is brutal and those chasing Alaphilippe aren’t quite quick enough to prevent him from securing the race leader’s jersey.
1km to go: Alaphilippe’s knees keep pumping with Team Ineos’s Michal Kwiatkowski leading the chasing pack. The gap is 34 seconds. Alaphilippe should be able to win the stage, but he may not finish the day in yellow.
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4km to go: Unsurprisingly, Tim Wellens will be awarded today’s combativity prize after his heroics earlier today. Alaphilippe’s lead over the chasing pack is down to less than 30 seconds. He may have the yellow jersey snatched from his grasp, after all.
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7km to go: Julian Alaphilippe is the virtual Tour leader by 31 seconds, but still has a punchy finish to negotiate to guarantee getting the maillot jaune today.
10km to go: On the downhill, Julian Alaphilippe is 50 seconds clear of four chasing riders: Max Schachmann, Michael Woods, Mikel Landa and Alexey Lutsenko.
15km to go: Wellens is caught by Quick Step’s Julian Alaphilippe, who has attacked off the front of the bunch and is riding away. Wellens was first over the climb and takes the eight seconds available, but immediately steps off his bike with a mechanical. Alaphilippe was second over and gets five. Michael Woods (EF Education First) was third over the summit and got two.
16km to go: Wout van Aert leads the chasing bunch up the final climb and can see Wellens in the distance. After a brave effort, the Belgian is about to be caught.
15km to go: With a lead of 53 seconds, Wellens hits the final classified climb of the day. It’s a leg-burning 900 metres high at 8% to the finish.
16km to go: Wearing the white jersey for best young rider, Teunissen’s Jumbo-Visma team-mate, Wout van Aert, is nicely placed at the front of the bunch and could take the yellow jersey with a decent finish today. It would be an impressive feat, three days into his first Grand Tour.
19km to go: Mike Teunissen continues to cling on at the back of the bunch, but it looks like he’ll be losing the yellow jersey. Wellens pedals his way towards the final classified climb of the day, where the bonus seconds I mentioned earlier are up for grabs.
25km to go: Wearing the yellow jersey, Mike Teunissen is struggling at the back of the bunch. The gap from Wellens, who has just taken two more King of the Mountains points, to the peloton is closing and is now just 1min 09sec. The riders of Astana are currently leading the chase.
26km to go: We’re on the second of the four classified climbs and the big guns are hitting the front of the bunch. Assorted sprinters are being shelled out the back and are forming the first grupetto of this year’s Tour. The roads are narrow, the scenery is beautiful and the gap between stage leader Tim Wellens and the chasing pack is 1min 16sec.
29km to go: Tony Martin is human after all! Having done the work of about 10 men today, he finally cracks and drops out of the back. The gap to Wellens is 1min 27sec and the race for the stage win is on in earnest.
31km to go: Behind Wellens, about half the bunch is struggling to keep up and are seriously strung out on the road. The gap is 1min 58sec, the road is exposed and there’s a bit of a cross-wind. Team Jumbo-Visma had been at the front of the bunch but are currently being crowded out as their rivals jockey for position. They’re about to catch the four breakaway riders that were recently left behind by Wellens. Bora and Quick Step are are at the front of the bunch.
33km to go: With the race in the Champagne region, Tim Wellens, the 28-year-old from Belgium, continues to make the running and is 2min 24sec clear of the main bunch. If he takes the next available King of the Mountains point, he’ll be zipped into the polka-dot jersey later this afternoon. On Eurosport, Sean Kelly suggests he may well win the stage as well. “He just needs to put his head down, give it his all and concentrate on what he’s doing.”
37km to go: Wellens has gone over a minute clear of the breakaway he was once part of. His team have said they have no General Classification plans for this Tour, but will attempt to pick up stage wins and other prizes as they see fit. Wellens may or may not win today’s stage, but he could find himself on the podium in the polka-dot jersey for King of the Mountains.
39km to go: Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal) leads the stage and is 2min 28sec clear of the peloton. On the road between them, there rolls a group of four riders in whose company Wellens spent most of the day before bidding them farewell and heading off into the distance.
43km to go: Tim Wellens tackles the first of four classified climbs towards the end of today’s stage. He’s 45 seconds clear of the four chaps who were with him the breakaway and 2min 30sec ahead of the bunch. Wellens is a two-time stage winner at the Giro but has never won a stage in the Tour de France.
44km to go: “You don’t think Tony Martin might be on a long solo breakaway, and just hasn’t noticed the peloton behind him, do you?” asks Bob O’Hara.
47km to go: Wellens opens a gap of 17 seconds on his former travelling companions on the climb up Nanteuil-la-Foret. At the back of the race, Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale) is being paced back to the bunch by his entire team after suffering a mechanical.
48km to go: Like some sort of Lycra-clad terminator, Tony Martin (Jumbo-Visma), continues to tow the peloton along as they chase the five leading riders. At the front of the race, Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soiudal has just attacked off the front of the breakaway.
50km to go: Now Thibaut Pinot (Groupama–FDJ) is being paced back to the bunch after getting a puncture. He and a team-mate make their way through the support cars tailing peloton so he can re-attach and begin the next job of trying to make his way to the front.
55km to go: A few riders get squeezed out of the bunch and into an adjacent field as the rush to get to the front of the bunch intensifies, with the lumpy stuff very much ahoy!!! The gap between our front five and the chasing pack is a mite under two minutes.
59km to go: A contender for today’s stage, Michael Matthews, of Team Sunweb, is being paced back to the bunch after being held up by a minor crash as the bunch went through Betheny. Paddy Bevin (CCC) hit the deck but is back on his bike.
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62km to go: The gap is down to 1min 47sec. There’s a time bonus available today, on the final climb of the day, the Côte de Mutigny, which is 900 metres. This is new wheeze, in which the Tour organisers have decided to award eight seconds to the first rider to reach eight specified summits in this year’s race. The second and third riders to reach them will get five and two seconds respectively. The first of today’s four climbs is coming up in 20 kilometres.
70km to go: The gap is down to two minutes as the process of reeling in the five-man breakaway of Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Anthony Delaplace (Arkea-Samsic), Yoann Offredo (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Paul Ourselin (Total Direct Energie) and Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) begins.
Mark Cavendish misses out: The omission of Mark Cavendish from Team Dimension Data’s race line-up was a source of much pre-race controversy. The Manx sprinter, who has 30 stage wins to his name, did not feature on the start list for the first time since making his debut in 2007.
“It is understood that Dimension Data’s head of performance, Rolf Aldag, wanted to select Cavendish but was overruled by the team principal, Doug Ryder, who instead made the final call on a squad which includes Britain’s Steve Cummings, 38, and the Danish rider Lars Bak, 39,” wrote the Guardian when the team was announced.
It has since been reported that Aldag considered walking away from the Tour and his job on the back of Ryder’s decision, but he decided to stay on. “We have to do what’s good for the team, what’s good for the eight riders,” he said. “I’m obligated to do that. If it’s the best for me to do that, to help them with my experience of 27 Tours de France than that’s what I’m going to do. I think everybody has to judge himself on whether he can be helpful or not helpful, and in every Tour de France that is the case for me.
“Do I contribute or not contribute? The situation for me is to help the eight guys here and that is what I will focus on. I can’t really be distracted. It doesn’t matter what happened if and when and how so I would just like to put that story to bed and move forward.”
85km to go: The gap between the breakaway and the bunch is at 3min 16sec and Tony Martin is putting in another shift at the front of the peloton. Apologies for briefly abandoning you, but I was in danger of suffering what cyclists call the “bonk” or “hunger knock” and don’t have a support team to feed me treats, energy gels and protein bars in a musette.
92km to go: Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Anthony Delaplace (Arkea-Samsic), Yoann Offredo (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Paul Ourselin (Total Direct Energie) and Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) are in the breakaway as assorted teams jockey for position at the front of the bunch, which is 3min 09sec. I’ll be back in 10 minutes, if not sooner, to bring you the business end of today’s stage. While I’m away, here’s some more top Global Cycling Network content to keep you entertained.
96km to go: At the back of the bunch, Astana rider Jakob Fuglsang has been getting treatment for an elbow injury which he suffered when face-planting in the opening stage. Fuglsang had to get stitches on an eye injury and hurt an elbow and a knee after being brought down towards the end of the first stage.
102km to go: In the green jersey today because Mike Teunissen, the rightful owner, is in yellow on the back of his win in the first stage, Peter Sagan has now gone into the lead on points classification. Should he win the green jersey this year, it will be his seventh.
Intermediate Sprint result
- 1. Paul Ourselin: 20 points
- 2. Yoann Offredo: 17
- 3. Stéphane Rossetto: 15
- 4. Anthony Delaplace: 13
- 5. Tim Wellens: 11
- 6. Elia Viviani: 10
- 7. Peter Sagan: 9
- 8. Sonny Colbrelli: 8
- 9. Michael Matthews: 7
- 10. Andrea Pasqualon: 6
- 11. Michael Morkov: 5
- 12. Daniel Oss: 4
- 13. Giacomo Nizzolo: 3
- 14. Tony Martin: 2
- 15. Kasper Asgreen: 1
108km to go: Elia Viviani of Quick Step is first of the bunch over the line at Dizy-Le-Gros, followed by Peter Sagan, who has already got his mitts on the green jersey in this Tour. Things are likely to calm down for the foreseeable future as it’s a fair old schlepp to the first climb. The peloton is strung out and it’s very windy.
113km to go: Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Anthony Delaplace (Arkea-Samsic), Yoann Offredo (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Paul Ourselin (Total Direct Energie) and Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) pedal towards the intermediate sprint, with the peloton 4min 16sec behind them. Race leader Mike Teunissen is towards the front of the bunch, about six riders from the front.
The five riders in front don’t make too much of an effort to win the intermediate sprint at Dizy-le-Gros. Paul Ourselin makes more of one than his four colleagues and takes maximum points.
🚀 The 2 first hours of racing were completed at an average speed of 45.7km/h.
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 8, 2019
🚀 Les deux premières heures de course ont été courues à 45,7 km/h de moyenne.#TDF2019 pic.twitter.com/FRYKwUtV2u
115km to go: On the road providing punditry for Eurosport from the back of a motorbike, my former Sunday morning Talksport co-presenter (a long story for a quieter day!) Bradley Wiggins says the peloton is pretty relaxed at the moment, but things are starting to hot up a bit as they snake along the road. Ablutions have been attended to, snacks have been devoured and the riders are starting to think about getting in position as they prepare for today’s intermediate sprint, which is due in about five minutes. It’s also quite windy, so the very real threat of crosswinds has to be considered.
124km to go: There’s been a change at the front of the bunch, where Tony Martin has decided he’s done enough work for the time being and has dropped back a bit. Assorted Deceuninck-Quick Step riders are doing all the work, presuming with a view to trying to get their man Julian Alaphilippe, one of the favourites for today’s stage, into the yellow jersey.
Name the breakaway: “The idea of a darker Flandrian interpretation of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series was always flawed,” writes Paul Griffin. “But once ‘lashings of ginger beer’ was mistranslated as ‘constant infusion of Flanders’ 39% Black Damnation stout,’ the cast plumbed unprintably sordid depths of depravity. To this day Wellens, Delaplace, Offredo and Ourselin are unwelcome in the film industry, anywhere in the world, while Rossetto the dog is anxious around liquids, trees, people, clouds and desks.”
128km to go: The gap from the five-man breakaway to the the group is 5min 19sec with a little over 85 kilometres behind them.
130km to go: My first email of this year’s Tour and it’s a complaint, albeit a passive aggressive one. “Just seen that you are resorting to GCN to fill quiet times in the Tour de France live feed,” writes Cathy. “Perhaps you could cover the biggest race in the women’s calendar during the quiet times, given the Guardian is currently ignoring its existence? Currently we have a breakaway at 3’36 from the peloton, giving the virtual race lead to talented young rider Nadia Quagliotto.”
The race to which Cathy is alluding is the Giro Rosa, the women’s version of the Giro d’Italia. It boasted one of the best finishes to a bike race you’ll see in yesterday’s Stage Three, when Marianne Vos of the Netherlands swooped to conquer Lucy Kennedy, who made the fatal error of sitting up in her saddle a milli-second too early when she thought victory was already hers.
Marianne Vos with the wildest stage win of the weekend, at the Giro Rosa pic.twitter.com/EUUBjhPnLY
— James Dart (@James_Dart) July 8, 2019
144km to go: Tony Martin continues to lead the bunch, trying to control the gap to the five-man breakaway. The gap is 5min 38sec at the moment. The hills at the business end of today’s stage, which ends with a punchy climb, means it won’t end in a traditional sprint finish, which explains the reluctance of the rest of the bunch to do any work.
Global Cycling Network
The GCN is a veritable treasure trove of hot cycling content for those of us with long live blogs to update when not a great deal is going on. In the accompanying video, they assess the runners and riders in this year’s Tour and try to find their idea of winner.
150km to go: Now the lads at the front take some grub on board, taking snacks from their team cars as they roll along led by Tim Wellens, who has a big banana sticking out of his jersey pocket in a manner that probably isn’t particularly aerodynamic. The gap is 5min 27sec.
156km to go: It’s more or less as you were, with Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Anthony Delaplace (Arkea-Samsic), Yoann Offredo (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Paul Ourselin (Total Direct Energie) and Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) in a breakaway that is now 5min 29sec clear of the punch. Team Jumbo-Visma’s Tony Martin is doing all the donkey work at the front of the bunch, where assorted cyclists are attending to the call of nature, or dropping back to their team cars for refreshments.
Mitchelton Scott Tour diary ...
The Australian team of Adam Yates, tend to give Tour video diary. Here’s their piping hot take on yesterday’s TTT. It didn’t go quite as well as they had hoped.
167km to go: The 106th Tour de France left Belgium and entered France and as predicted in Will Fotheringham’s preview, a breakaway group of five riders has gone clear of the bunch. Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Anthony Delaplace (Arkea-Samsic), Yoann Offredo (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Paul Ourselin (Total Direct Energie) and Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) are in the escape party and the gap to the chasing posse is 4min 12sec.
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The top 10 on General Classification
Following his surprise win in the opening stage, Mike Teunissen stays i n yellow following Jumbo-Visma’s win in yesterday’s team time-trial. Here’s how Jeremy Whittle saw the action unfold.
Stage 3: Binche to Epernay (215km)
From Will Fotheringham’s stage-by-stage report: On the map, a long flattish stage heading south, with a routine bunch sprint, but there is a sting in the tail. It will be dead quiet as far as Reims, with an early break establishing itself, but the final 30km include three stiff third category climbs one after the other, with very little respite, before a final 500m at 8% to the finish. All of France will look to Julian Alaphilippe on a finish made for the world No 1 but all the favourites’ nerves will be on edge with an intense battle for position. A classic day when at least one will lose the Tour.
