Despite crashing on a day that was riddled with disaster, Briton Chris Froome continued his dominance of the 2016 Tour de France on a day that was won by Frenchman Romain Bardet.
Bardet Descends to Win
After a strong performance in Thursday’s uphill time trial, Bardet again went for it, going all out on the descent into St. Gervais.
“I just wanted to maintain or increase my position overall and I knew the road to the finish very well,” said Bardet. “We decided, because of the rain, to make the last descent as fast as possible.
“I do not know what happened behind us, I did not have any information. I just wanted to catch the chase group and, then, ride quickly to the finish line.
In the last meters of the ascent I wanted to enjoy the moment with my team because not everyone can win a stage every year.I will ride to the utmost of my abilities and follow the GC leaders. My main goal is to be on the podium in Paris.”
Froome Relieved
Despite finishing ninth, Froome actually extended his yellow jersey advantage to four minutes and 11 seconds, after Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) and Adam Yates (Orica-BikeExchange) both lost time and dropped out of the top three.
A relieved Froome talked through the crash after the stage, and praised the fantastic work of his teammates who got him to the line.
He said: “There’s never a quiet day at the Tour! It’s ironic really. I was just trying to stay up front, safe and out of trouble. I think I just hit one of the white lines on the road and lost my front wheel.
“I’m okay. I’m lucky nothing is seriously injured, I just lost a bit of skin obviously and banged my knee a bit.
“This is the kind of day that I feel grateful I’ve got that four-minute advantage. I can fall back on that a little bit and obviously it was great for me to have teammates all the way up to the finish. Wout [Poels] in particular, and all the guys – it was a great team effort today and it feels good to be one day closer to Paris.”
Porte Moves Up
Richie Porte crossed the line in 10th place and moved up to fifth on the General Classification today. His teammates Marcus Burghardt and Amaël Moinard made it in the day’s breakaway of 20 riders which proved crucial for Porte in the final 50km of racing.
Porte crashed with 25km to go and chased hard, thanks to Damiano Caruso, Michael Schär, Amaël Moinard and Greg Van Avermaet, to return to the yellow jersey group before the final summit.
Caruso put in a stellar effort on the climb to deliver Porte to the front of the group with 3km to go.
“I left a bit of skin out on the second descent. I just crashed in the descent, quite a lot of guys did, but I think I was the first one down. I think it’s just a bit of skin missing, it’s one of those things.”
“It was such a hard day and it was a mess out there in the final,” said Porte. “I think everybody came down. But I think I worked well with what I had and tomorrow’s another day. Today, even up hill around the corners, it was a bit slippery, so we’ll see how tomorrow pans out. I gave it my all today. The team were just amazing out there. The way they brought me back to the group after the crash and their work on the climbs was phenomenal.”
Rafal Majka confirms KOM title
Riding in the break for the third successive road stage, Rafal Majka confirmed his position as King of the Mountains taking points on the first three climbs of the day and is set to carry the jersey into Paris on Sunday.
When Majka saw the break forming and his main rival for the climbers’ jersey escaping, he knew he had to go with him. “Mathematically I knew I had to go when I saw De Gendt go in the break. He took the first two so before the last climb we went a bit faster and I took the points there. Robert gave me a lot of help today and my teammates supported me in the earlier stages.”
Taking points on the first two climbs, and the full set on the Hors Catégorie climb, Rafal cemented his position as King of the Mountains, and while there is still one mountain stage to race, it was confirmed that his lead in the contest was insurmountable.
Rafal had nothing but praise for the entire team after his successes in the race: “We have a great team in Tinkoff and we’re so happy to have two jerseys. It’s our way of saying thank you to Oleg Tinkov for all his support. We’ve had some great results in the race and I’ve come in the top three myself a few times. I’m happy because we fought for two jerseys – the Polka Dot Jersey for me and the Green for Peter, and in the end even with the bad luck early in the race, we should have two jerseys in Paris. Without Alberto we were still able to ride a good race, but we needed to fight and we fought hard.”
Dumoulin Crashes Out
Tom Dumoulin (NED) crashed out of Le Tour de France on today’s 19th stage of racing after a crash that took place in the bunch.
“Tom has fractured his radius in his left forearm,” explained team physician Stephan Jacolino (FRA). “It’s a clean fracture and further examinations have shown no additional fracture of the wrist joint, which is good news. Tom will have further tests in the Netherlands to determine if surgery is required to stabilise the fracture and to make a treatment plan.”
Dumoulin said: “It’s a huge setback. After the crash I instantly knew it was bad news. Luckily it is a clean fracture. As a precaution I have a cast but I can’t ride a bike with it. If I need to keep this for two weeks, then my participation in Rio will be difficult.”
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