Recap: Tour de France Stage 13 – A Breakaway Bunch Sprint

Today’s 196-kilometer (122 mile) stage heading almost due south toward the Pyrénées from Rodez to Revel was relatively unpredictable.  Many teams and riders felt it would likely be a breakaway that won the day though some saw it ending in a bunch sprint, given the layout of the course. With 5 categorized climbs over a relatively long route on a warm day it was hard to know how it would play out.  None of the three category 4’s and two category 3’s were individually very challenging, but there were many other unclassified hills along the way that kept everyone bobbing up and down all day long.  After 14-days of hard pedaling and with the steep mountains staring everyone in the face tomorrow, it was anyone’s guess who would expend effort to make this thing go their way.  Turns out those predicting a breakaway and those predicting a sprinter’s finish were both right.  That’s just what happened.

There was the usual break early in the day that saw 3 riders make their way up front that were able to get some time on the field, and they weren’t just any riders.  Quick Step’s Sylvan Chavanel was there, having already won 2 stages in this race.  Sky’s Juan Antonio Flecha was there, an experienced rider who has been very successful in this part of the country in the past.  And there was Bbox’s Pierrick Fedrigo who also is no stranger to victory in this race.  Between them they’d won 6 Tour de France stages over the years and they were not being taken lightly.  The peloton seemed to keep them dangling on a string for quite some time and then they started to methodically reel them in.  It all started to look very familiar like many of the previous stages, same-script, different–day.

HTC-Columbia did most of the work hunting down the break – oddly so.  They got very little help from the other sprinter’s teams that should have been taking pulls at the front if they wanted to contest the stage with a bunch sprint at the finish.  Maybe they didn’t.  Is Cavendish becoming a foregone conclusion?  Or were the other teams attempting to fry up HTC’s leadoff legs to further isolate the Manx Missile without help?  Lampre, Garmin and Cervélo seemed to be content to allow HTC-Columbia to burn up their legs, and they probably did a bit.  Trouble is, the outcome would likely have been much different had more teams pitched in at the end.  They may have focused too much on beating Cav and forgot to contest the race.

The 3-man break was eventually caught at about 10 km from the finish and it looked then and there as if the predicted sprint was on.  But at about 9 kms to the finish line, several riders decided to attack smelling glory just up the road, particularly if the peloton continued to be so dysfunctional. And as we’ve seen so many times in the past, and again at this year’s contest, Astana’s Alexander Vinokourov was one of them.  He’s wearing the rider’s red bib number as the most combative rider for a reason.  He keeps plugging away like the Energizer Bunny, sometimes when there seems little logic or hope to his tactics.  Love him or hate him (that phrase comes up a lot when talking about Vinokourov), the guy keeps trying and today it paid off.  Vino jumped free at about 6.5 km to the finish and steadily started to gain on the field that seemed a bit in disarray as they were organizing their sprinter trains for what they must have considered the inevitable conclusion.  They got a surprise.  Vino didn’t quit pedaling.

Sure enough the bunch sprint formed, exploded across the finish line in a furious display of power and might, and Mark Cavendish won the sprint, even without his leadoff man Mark Renshaw and Lampre’s Alessandro Petacchi was right behind him (getting the green jersey back).  Trouble is, Vinokourov had already crossed that finish line 13 seconds prior, in a solo two hand salute, coasting.  So we had our breakaway win today and we had a bunch sprint too.  Everyone was right.

A nice sight on the course today was seeing Team RadioShack sporting the almost fluorescent colored bib numbers of the #1 strongest group in the team standings.  This is a very powerful team and they’re showing it everyday beating all other teams in the standings easily so far except one, Caisse d’Epargne who is just 21 minutes back in this overall competition.  There’s sizeable prize money and significant bragging rights attached to this competition and I think the Shack will have both come the 25th of July.

One not so nice sight was seeing Lance have another crash very early in the day.  He appears fine, pedaling on to the finish of the race smiling and talking with teammates.  Team Director Alain Gallopin said later that Lance Armstrong was okay with some minor bleeding from his elbow, and added that he and the whole team were ready to be in the ‘war’ to come in the Pyrénées.

It was a relatively fast stage today averaging something like 44.1 km/h and outside of the green jersey – which keeps pinging and ponging between Hushovd and Petacchi (back on Petacchi tonight) – there’s no change in the various classifications or the GC standings.  However, tomorrow’s stage will likely cause some movement on the leader board.  Heading out of Revel, the peloton meanders for about 132 kilometers before it runs smack into Port de Pailhères, 2,001 meters (6,565 feet) of off-category climbing that will be sure to split the field.  Once they crest that, they still have to get up the Ax-3 Domaines, a category 1 climb to the finish.  Going out on a small limb here, I think a climber wins tomorrow.  In fact, anyone who is not a pure climber in the current top 10 will be sliding backwards in the standings after this mountaintop finish.

Stage 13 results

By George Hurst, staff writer