Today’s stage: Pas de la Casa – Saint-Gaudens, 169 kilometers
The Pyrenees, stage 2. After the first, Sunday, between Céret and Andorra la Vella, won alone by the American Sepp Kuss, the 146 remaining riders will face a stage with a fairly similar profile, Tuesday 13 July. Before the summit arrivals at Col du Portet (Wednesday) and Luz-Ardiden (Thursday), this 16e stage between Pas de la Casa, in Andorra, and Saint-Gaudens (Haute-Garonne) will be marked above all by the sequence of several difficulties: two second category passes – the Col de Port and the Col de Portet-d’Aspet – and one of the first category with the collar of the Core.
The victory could be played six kilometers from the finish in the Aspret-Sarrat coast, ranked fourth category, before tackling the old Saint-Gaudens racing circuit where the finish line is located – with a sloping finish over 500 meters at 7%. This profile could be ideal for a new escape from backpackers.
As for the battle for the general classification, where the suspense is low before entering this third week, so much the yellow jersey, the Slovenian Tadej Pogacar, annihilated all competition in the Alps, it could rather start on Wednesday and Thursday when the peloton will tackle uncategorized passes.
The runner: Nairo Quintana
He has only two teammates left in the peloton, has nothing more to play in the general (31e, more than an hour from Pogacar), but yet the Colombian has animated the Tour de France in recent days. While five Arkéa-Samsic riders, including Warren Barguil or Nacer Bouhanni, have retired, Nairo Quintana continues to project himself into attacks and is well placed in the race for the best climber’s weight jersey – the only classification with suspense.
Sunday, during the stage between Céret and Andorra la Vella, while he was in the group of breakaways, the Colombian attacked several times in the port of Envalira and in the Beixalis pass. Once caught, then let go, he managed to come back and attack again. Without success, since he was caught each time and failed to keep pace with the winner of the stage, Sepp Kuss.
Quintana did not lose everything, however, as the 31-year-old rider is in third place in the best climber standings with 64 points behind Dutchman Wouter Poels (74 points) and Canadian Michael Woods (66 points). And he looks forward to these next steps: “ I appreciate the passes of the Pyrenees, and I hope that my good legs today [dimanche] will be identical during the next stages in this mountain range. “ There is therefore a good chance of seeing him again on the attack this Tuesday.
Do the pursuers of Tadej Pogacar still believe in their ability to overthrow the Slovenian in the general classification at the time of starting this third week of racing? If they still have hope, it is better that they do not take a look at the statistics of the last few years. While Pogacar holds more than five minutes ahead of the Colombian Rigoberto Uran and the Dane Jonas Vingegaard, we have to go back to the Tour de France 2000 to find such gaps at this moment of the race at the top of the classification, as has note The team in its Monday edition. It was then Lance Armstrong who owned the jersey, ahead of Jan Ullrich by 7 minutes 26 on the evening of the 15e step.
Apart from the American, who has been dispossessed of all his victories, the biggest gap dates from 2014 with Vincenzo Nibali who was 4 minutes 37 ahead of his closest pursuer. And the sports daily to recall that “The yellow jersey has never changed shoulders during the last week when the leader had more than two minutes in advance six days before the arrival on the Champs-Elysées”. The feat for Uran, Vingegaard or the Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz would therefore be immense if one of them arrived in Paris with the yellow tunic next Sunday.
“I have good feelings but, for a race like that of the Olympics, the whole team has to be on top”
While there have been many withdrawals over the past two weeks, mainly because of a large number of crashes, the Grande Boucle is also suffering this year from its proximity to the Tokyo Games. The Olympic event can be a goal for many riders who have nothing more to hope for in this Tour and therefore decide to give up.
The latest is none other than the former winner of the yellow jersey in 2014, the Italian Vincenzo Nibali. The “Messina Shark” announced it on Monday during the rest day:
“I ran a different Tour from my past experience but similar to 2016 before Rio. It was the perfect way for me to reach the best form for Tokyo. “
Before him, the Dutchman Mathieu Van der Poel had taken the same decision on July 3 after losing the yellow jersey. He had not taken the start of the 9e step for “Focus on the Olympics”, he had let know.
Before facing three Pyrenean stages, and after two hectic weeks of racing, with many injuries to the key, the 146 remaining riders mainly tried to recover and repair their bodies on Monday in Andorra, during the second day of rest. On the program, according to the teams’ tweets: massage, bike ride or even rest at the hotel.
On the program this morning: retrieval ✅ https://t.co/5b863lT27w
Relaxing on the massage table after a hard week of racing @LeTour ? # TDF2021 https://t.co/2QF5SMZSki
Laundry day ? # TDF2021 Photo: @BeelWout https://t.co/Y2WFHnfLZH