Stage 14

The road

At the start

Plateau de Beille, the hardest finish

Thor Hushovd hunted Jérémy Roy down off the Aubisque and won alone in Lourdes in the rainbow jersey; Roy got the mountains jersey. Andreas Klöden's back beat him and he went home. Voeckler leads Fränk Schleck by 1:49 and Cadel Evans by 2:06. Today puts five categorised climbs in front of sixteen kilometres up Plateau de Beille — the hardest finish of this Tour, and the day his jersey is supposed to end.

How it was won

1. 1141 km to go

   The break, before the Portet d'Aspet

   Five categorised climbs stand between here and the hors-catégorie haul to Plateau de Beille, so the move goes early: Jens Voigt and Linus Gerdemann for Leopard Trek, with stage nine winner Luis León Sánchez and Bauke Mollema alongside them.

2. 258 km to go

   Izagirre goes on the descent

   Off the Col d'Agnes the Basque climber shoots clear of his companions and keeps pushing onto the lower slopes of the Port de Lers. Five minutes still separate the break from Voeckler in the bunch.

3. 350 km to go

   Voigt's descent

   Izagirre crests the Port de Lers alone. Behind him Voigt takes a solo trip off the road, then crashes again trying to chase back on — an eerie echo of the descent that ended his Tour two years ago. He gets up and rides back to work for his teammates.

4. 416 km to go

   Two minutes fourteen at the foot

   Sixteen kilometres of one of the Tour's iconic climbs to come, and Leopard Trek bring the peloton to the bottom of it 2:14 behind the leaders. Charteau, Di Gregorio and Gerdemann are swept up almost at once.

5. 511 km to go

   Schleck's first move

   Andy Schleck attacks with ten and a half kilometres left and Voeckler answers. Seven hundred metres later he goes again, and this time Evans, Contador, Fränk Schleck and Vanendert are all in the fight.

6. 69 km to go

   Vanendert slips away

   In the middle of somebody else's attack the Belgian who came to this Tour as Van den Broeck's helper simply keeps going, and nobody with a general classification to protect wants to chase him. Seventeen seconds become thirty-eight. He has never won a professional race.

7. 7At the line

   Voeckler holds the mountain

   Vanendert wins by twenty-one seconds from Sánchez, with Andy Schleck bringing the favourites in at forty-six. And the yellow jersey is among them: on the hardest finish of this Tour, Thomas Voeckler has answered every single attack, and crosses the line celebrating openly.

The result