Stage 15

The road

At the start

Bastille Day, and Mont Ventoux

Froome leads Mollema by 2:28, Contador by 2:45 and Kreuziger by 2:48. Today is the longest stage of this Tour: two hundred and forty-four kilometres from Givors, flat and hot for two hundred of them, and then the Giant of Provence — twenty-one kilometres of Mont Ventoux, and a summit finish on the fourteenth of July.

How it was won

1. 120 km to go

   Chavanel onto the Ventoux alone

   Twenty kilometres from the summit Sylvain Chavanel has twenty-eight seconds and the chase group behind him is already disintegrating. Sagan drifts back, Rolland is dropped — and then rejoins with a wave and a wheelie, because he is Sagan.

2. 212 km to go

   Quintana comes through the wreckage

   Nieve goes past Chavanel, then Quintana goes past Chavanel, and Sky move to the front of the chase with Froome still holding two helpers. The mountain that has been eating riders all afternoon has stopped taking prisoners.

3. 311 km to go

   Evans lets go

   Quintana takes Nieve with ten and a half kilometres to climb. Behind, the 2011 champion slides out of the yellow jersey group, and Valverde and Fuglsang go with him. What is left is only favourites.

4. 48 km to go

   Three men on the moon

   Kennaugh is finished, and eight kilometres from the summit there is a trio on the white stones: Froome, Porte and Contador. Porte drags them up it for as long as any human could.

5. 58 km to go

   Froome, seven and a half from the top

   Porte finally cracks and Froome goes past him without a word. Contador does not respond, or cannot. The yellow jersey climbs the last of Mont Ventoux through motorbikes and crowds who will not get out of the way, never once out of the saddle, and catches Nieve, and then catches Quintana.

6. 61 km to go

   And then he drops Quintana too

   The Colombian claws his way back onto the wheel and even takes turns on the front, the two of them riding together in the wind above the treeline. Froome tries again and again to shake him and finally manages it with 1.3 kilometres left.

7. 7At the line

   King of Mont Ventoux

   Froome takes the summit of the Giant of Provence on Bastille Day, from Quintana and Nieve, and stretches his lead over everybody. It is the kind of ride that wins a Tour de France and starts an argument in the same hour.

The result