We’ve made it to the Alps! Three days of climbing are ahead of us, a very diverse trio of stages, starting with this one from Voiron southeast of yesterday’s finish in Lyon to the small town of Réallon in the Département Hautes-Alpes. It’s fairly tame for the most part, a lot of up and down with climbs of the second and third category, yes, but no big mountains - in fact, this is classified as a hilly stage by the organizers. And yet, of these three days, it might be the one that creates the biggest time gaps between GC contenders.
This is exclusively due to the final climb to Réallon. With an average of 6.9% over 11 kilometers and slopes of up to almost 11%, it’s rightfully categorized as first category and certainly has the chance to lead to significant time gaps. Sivakov is in yellow for the fifth day in a row, but it’ll be a tall task to defend it against Herklotz. These are the current Top 5 in the GC:
1
Pavel Sivakov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
39h51'12
2
Silvio Herklotz
Team Puma - SAP
+ 12
3
Ryan Eastman
Duolingo
+ 54
4
Lachlan Morton
cycleYorkshire
+ 1'09
5
Patrick Schelling
Team UBS
+ 1'40
Then there are just 15 seconds between Schelling and Yates in 11th place.
In the mountain classification, Arensman leads by 47 points on Barbio. There are 52 points available at most, including the finish, so the Dutch will likely keep it at least one more day. But starting with Vosekalns yesterday, stronger and stronger riders begin to be involved in the breakaways, so it’ll be harder to score many more points.
Lastly, ELCO - ABEA still leads the team classification somewhat comfortably, but they’ll likely need a strong breakaway presence to keep it over teams with more climbing prowess such as EA Vesuvio, who are currently in third place.
Turek opens proceedings. Vosekalns and Jorgenson try to follow.
They drag Haugard with them, then go Wright and Kron.
Los Pollos finally send someone other than Nareklishvili (all due respect) into a breakaway, namely Lopez Nolasco, followed by yesterday’s escapee Parra Bustamente.
Abreu and Seboka join them, Leknessund and Buitrago attack as well. The peloton remains calm.
And that’s it. 12 riders form today’s breakaway. Vosekalns and Parra Bustamente are the best climbers next to Seboka, though the man from Lesotho has a rather unique skillset, of course.
The Côte du Crozet is only 4.5% on average, thanks to a rather easy start and finish. It earns its second category title due to its length of 12 kilometers and stretches of over 7%. Like yesterday, the peloton doesn’t seem eager to let the breakaway just have the stage: Multiple GC teams ride to keep them within around 3 minutes. Notably absent is Puma, who don’t have too strong a team on hilly and mountainous terrain, so it’s probably a smart move to not overcommit at this point.
Vosekalns wants to build on yesterday’s efforts and attacks towards the mountain sprint. Leknessund and Kron follow closest.
Both move past him, leaving Vosekalns with only 6 points. The peloton has slowed down a bit, allowing their lead to grow to 4 minutes.
We’re really among some pretty high mountains now!
Vosekalns once again attacks near the summit of the Col de l’Holme. A small gap emerges behind Kron and Jorgenson as Seboka can’t keep up.
Again it’s only third place for Vosekalns. With now 24 points, he’s 8th in the mountain classification, the best rider of the group.
On climbs, the breakaway manages to gain some time, but on flat stretches, it’s the opposite. Following this long flat stretch between mountain sprints, they’ve suffered accordingly and the lead is down to just under 2 minutes. De Stijl is the most prominent team at the head of the peloton, surely encouraged by Yates’ win yesterday.
Wright and Haugard are dropped on the Col Bayard.
Jorgenson takes 6 points here, another 4 for Kron, who’s up to 22 now, and 2 for Leknessund. Turek is distanced but returns quickly on the following descent.
At the intermediate sprint in Gap, the gap between peloton and breakaway stands at 2’30.
In the first slopes of the Col Lebraut, Turek is immediately distanced again. Abreu is currently doing a most of the work.
Seboka then takes over, which is the end of Lopez Nolasco’s ambitions.
Rather surprisingly, Vosekalns crumbles next. But under Seboka’s high pace, only Abreu and Parra Bustamente can follow. They also increase their lead over the pack to 3’30.
Near the summit, Parra Bustamente attacks and creates a gap …
But Seboka gets the upper hand again at the mountain sprint. He leaves the other two behind and the gap to the peloton shoots up to 4’40 very quickly. Let’s see how much they still have at the foot of the climb to Réallon.
Despite Seboka’s really poor rouleur skills, it takes Abreu and Parra Bustamente quite a long time to catch up to him. They are reunited heading into the climb though, with 44 seconds on a group of Leknessund, Jorgenson and Kron, and a solid 4 minutes on the peloton. That could be enough to get the stage win, but we’ve seen before how quickly those gaps can be erased if the favorites go for it.
Seboka knows he’s the strongest of the leaders and attacks right away – no use in pulling the others in his slipstream.
Still, with a strong riders like Kirsch at the helm, the peloton starts to gain time. Many of the GC contenders are near the front now.
This won’t be helping the breakaway, either: Who else could it be but Latour, who attacks with 7 kilometers to go!
But Puma have taken control now. Stork and Madouas quickly bring him back, but how many more attacks will those two be able to counter? 1’30 and 5.8 kilometers for Seboka up the road.
We’ll find out soon enough! Yates is next, Warchol in his wheel.
He catches up to Abreu and Parra Bustamente. With him are Warchol, Latour, Godoy, Wellens, Roglic and the two Puma domestiques, but they’ve forgotten about their leader: Herklotz leads the peloton in an effort to close this small gap.
Which he does rather effortlessly, of course. Seboka is caught with 4 kilometers to go, a good effort but ultimately fruitless. 53 riders remain in the peloton.
And Latour goes again!
At the other end of the group, we have a surprising victim of this acceleration: Preidler seems to be running on empty. Amezawa is fighting to hold on as well.
Back to the front where Madouas neutralizes the attack, now with Herklotz directly in tow. Can someone else make a decisive move or will this end in a sprint?
Another shocker! 3rd overall Eastman is being dropped!
Herklotz himself has taken over now and even creates a small gap. At the back of the group, Pogacar and Godoy struggle to keep up.
It’s a full on attack under the flamme rouge and no one seems to be able to counter! Tenorio and Sivakov, fighting for his yellow jersey, lead the chase. Godoy is off the back and Yates is in trouble, too!
Yates is indeed being distanced! Ahead of him, Latour and Karnulin, among others, have to dig deep. Many Top 10 contenders are suffering today!
Herklotz is riding towards victory! With a second place and no time gap, Sivakov could save the yellow jersey – the former seems possible, the latter less so.
He drags himself over the line, no energy left to celebrate, but Silvio Herklotz shows his dominance and celebrates his 4th career Tour de France stage win!
Sivakov does indeed finish second, an enormous performance, but he’s timed 17 seconds behind Herklotz, who therefore takes the overall lead. Tenorio finishes third, then Pinot barely ahead of Hirt.
They get the same time as Geoghegan Hart, Schelling, Beltran, Wellens, Chiarello and Powless. But then there’s a gap to the next group, and that includes a certain light blue jersey!
And that belongs to Morton, who completely collapsed in the final kilometer. He finishes 14th behind Foss and Roglic, all coming in 52 seconds behind Herklotz, as are Warchol and Karnulin.
Latour takes an even bigger hit, he’s timed with a deficit of 1’25 alongside Pogacar, paying for his aggressiveness. The group around Yates comes in at + 1’45, Godoy loses an additional 13 seconds to that.
The biggest loser among the podium contenders today is of course Eastman. He suffers badly and finishes almost three minutes behind the winner.
Goldstein, Schädlich and Dillier continue to establish themselves as the worst climbers of the race. The Swiss remains in last place, but while they did finish comfortably within the time limit today, they might struggle more over the next two days.
The stage gave us some tough battles and time gaps among the contenders, perhaps even more than expected. Herklotz gets yellow, now 13 seconds ahead of Sivakov, but then there’s already a significant gap. Tenorio, Schelling, Wellens and Morton are all between 2’03 and 2’09 behind the German.
Between Karnulin in 7th and Kritskiy in 14th are also only 1’24. They can hypothetically all still harbour podium ambitions. For guys like Roglic and Godoy, that gets further and further away, but perhaps it frees them up for big breakaway escapades later on.
Herklotz also moves up to third in the points classification, now just 30 points behind Manninen, who might be slightly annoyed at the lack of breakaway success yesterday and today. That might change tomorrow though, without a traditional mountain top finish.