Stage 14

The road

At the start

The wind cost Froome a minute

Echelons on a flat road took more than a minute out of the yellow jersey yesterday: Froome now leads Mollema by 2:28 and Contador by 2:45, and Valverde, who punctured out of the front group, has gone from second to sixteenth. Edvald Boasson Hagen did not start. Today is a hundred and ninety-one kilometres into Lyon over seven small climbs, two of them inside the last twenty-five.

How it was won

1. 125 km to go

   The break turns on itself

   Eighteen riders have been out all afternoon and with twenty-five kilometres left they stop cooperating. Albasini digs, Millar digs, and then Bakelants and Van Garderen press on the Côte de la Duchère hard enough to shed two veterans — Millar and Jens Voigt both gone.

2. 210 km to go

   France scents a winner

   Julien Simon accelerates over the penultimate climb and nobody organises behind him. Over the Côte de la Croix-Rousse, with huge crowds roaring him up it, he leads Kadri by twenty-four seconds and the rest are still attacking each other.

3. 31 km to go

   Fifty metres, and a kilometre left

   Van Garderen does an enormous turn that halves the gap, Bak commits, Bakelants and Gautier chase him, and when the five come together Simon's lead is fifty metres. Albasini crosses it without appearing to try.

4. 4At the line

   Trentin, in the last ten metres

   Albasini, sensing he has shown himself too early, waits for Bakelants to open it, then counters and looks to have won. Matteo Trentin comes up the other side of the road in the final ten metres — Italy's first Tour stage in three years, by less than a wheel.

The result