Stage 11

The road

At the start

Thirty-three kilometres to Mont-Saint-Michel

Froome leads Valverde by 1:25, Mollema by 1:44 and Contador and Kreuziger by 1:51 — margins a flat time trial can double in an afternoon. Thirty-three kilometres from Avranches to the causeway at Mont-Saint-Michel, and the world time trial champion, Tony Martin, has been waiting for this day since Corsica.

How it was won

1. 131 km to go

   Tuft settles into the hot seat

   Svein Tuft is the second man down the ramp and the first to finish, and 38:04 is good enough to keep him in the chair for a very long afternoon of watching.

2. 222 km to go

   Froome is faster

   Tony Martin, the world champion against the clock, has set 36:29 and is watching from the finish. The last man on the road goes through the first check quicker than him.

3. 311 km to go

   Still faster

   At the second check the yellow jersey is still up on the German, and Martin's expression on the podium chair stops being comfortable. Eleven kilometres of coast road remain, in view of Mont-Saint-Michel.

4. 4At the line

   Martin takes fourteen seconds back

   Over that closing stretch Tony Martin finds everything Froome had taken and four seconds more. He wins by twelve at an average of 54.3 kilometres an hour, and Thomas De Gendt is a very unexpected third.

The result