Stage 13

The road

At the start

Wind off the Med, and Mont Saint-Clair

David Millar won out of a five-man break in Annonay and the general classification did not move: Wiggins, then Froome at 2:05, Nibali at 2:23, Evans at 3:19. Today looks like a sprint stage and is nothing of the kind — the road runs close to the Mediterranean into a wind that often blows hard, and Mont Saint-Clair sits twenty-three kilometres from Le Cap d'Agde, an ideal place to lose the fast men.

How it was won

1. 124 km to go

   Evans attacks; Wiggins closes it himself

   Twenty-four kilometres out Cadel Evans goes clear with Van den Broeck at his shoulder. The yellow jersey rides to the front of the bunch and calmly tows it back up to him, which is a message as much as a chase.

2. 222 km to go

   Mont Saint-Clair takes the sprinters

   Mørkøv, out alone since the intermediate sprint, is finally caught on the day's only categorised climb. Evans leads over the top, the field comes apart on the way up, and Mark Cavendish is on the wrong side of the split with no team-mates and nobody willing to help him.

3. 33 km to go

   Sánchez and Sprick, at 2.5 kilometres

   Vinokourov and Albasini are pulled back and immediately Luis León Sánchez jumps with Matthieu Sprick — two riders from two teams whose Tours have been catastrophes. The maillot jaune leads the chase down himself.

4. 4At the line

   A photo finish at Le Cap d'Agde

   Wiggins swings off having launched Boasson Hagen, and Greipel and Sagan come past him side by side. It takes the camera to separate them: the German by a wheel rim, his third stage of the race.

The result