As expected, Julian Alaphilippe used the final climb as a launchpad to ride into the yellow jersey for the second time in this year’s Tour de France as the 200km stage finished in Saint-Etienne today.
The Frenchman, who won the stage and yellow jersey on a similar finale at Épernay earlier in the tour, accelerated on the steep 1.9km category three Cote de Jaillere that topped out with 12km to go and only his compatriot, Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ), who placed second, was able to match him.
The pair set off in pursuit of Lotto Soudal’s Thomas de Gendt – the only survivor of a four-man breakaway that led for most of the stage – on the descent into the finishing town but the Belgian breakaway specialist matched them all the way down to hang on to a deserved victory by a handful of seconds.
Australian Michael Matthews (Sunweb) led the peloton – which included overall leader Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) – home 26 seconds later.
The Italian now trails Alaphilippe by 23 seconds in the general classification with Pinot 53 seconds back in third.
Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali, runner-up in this year’s Giro d’Italia, showed that he was not fully recovered from a tough three weeks in the saddle and cracked on the run-in to the finish to lose over four minutes.
Defending champion Geraint Thomas (Ineos) was held up by a crash just before the start of the final climb, but was able to make up lost ground thanks to sterling work by his team and especially Wout Poels.
“Obviously it was a key moment in the race,” said a frustrated Thomas.
“(Michael) Woods crashed and just took out Gianni (Moscon) and me. I got tangled in Gianni’s bike and took some time to get going.
“The boys did a great job. I caught up for the final bit, and moved up through the group, but by the time I was in the first 10 or 15 positions that’s when they sprinted over the top for the bonus seconds. So I was kind of gassed for a bit.”
Although he was annoyed, the Briton said his chase showed that he had good form.
“You just don’t want to give any unnecessary time away. If I hadn’t crashed I could have followed, and it’s a totally different story today. That’s how it goes.”
The De Gendt-quartet, which formed around 12km into the stage, included Dutchman Niki Terpstra (Total-Direct Energie), American Ben King (Dimension Data) and Italian Alessandro de Marchi (CCC). The latter was the last to be dropped after he failed to match a De Gendt acceleration on the final climb.
