Stage 12

The road

At the start

Three and a half minutes, and counting

The time trial did what time trials do. Froome leads Valverde by 3:25, Mollema by 3:37 and Contador by 3:54, and Nairo Quintana has slipped to eighth at 5:18. Today is two hundred and sixteen flat kilometres from Fougères to Tours, the fast men's easiest day of the week — and Marcel Kittel has already won two of them.

How it was won

1. 16 km to go

   Flecha alone, and Lotto on the floor

   Juan Antonio Flecha refuses to be caught with his companions and rides on by himself, twenty-five seconds at the ten-kilometre banner, taken with six to go. Then a crash inside the last three kilometres takes down Henderson, Roelandts and Sieberg and leaves André Greipel with no lead-out and no way through.

2. 2At the line

   Kittel's hat-trick in Tours

   Steegmans delivers Cavendish perfectly and for a hundred metres it looks done. Then Marcel Kittel comes around him in full flight and takes it in the last few metres — a third stage of this Tour, and a very clear message about which German is quickest this July.

The result