Stage 20

The road

At the start

The last mountain, and an open podium

Froome leads Contador by 5:11, Quintana by 5:32, Kreuziger by 5:44 and Rodríguez by 5:58 — four riders inside a minute of one another for two places on the podium in Paris. Today is short and vicious: a hundred and twenty-five kilometres around Annecy over six climbs, finishing with ten and a half kilometres up the Semnoz.

How it was won

1. 1113 km to go

   Voigt, at forty-one, goes again

   Nobody attacks from the gun the way everyone predicted. What happens instead is Jens Voigt, in his sixteenth and perhaps last Tour de France, riding into the break on the Côte du Puget with Burghardt, Flecha and Rolland — who wants every mountain point on the five climbs before Semnoz.

2. 274 km to go

   Rolland closes the door

   Igor Antón has been contesting every summit with him. On the Col des Prés the Basque looks set to take the points until Rolland switches suddenly across his line and forces him to swerve away from the fans at the roadside. There is no rematch.

3. 346 km to go

   Ninety seconds on Mont Revard

   Voigt puts the pace up on the front of the break and it disintegrates behind him. He crosses Mont Revard with a minute and a half and takes another minute out of them on the descent into the valley — the last great solo of a career full of them.

4. 420 km to go

   Gilbert spends himself for Van Garderen

   The world champion jumps out of the peloton with Tejay van Garderen, joins the remnants of the break, and gives everything he has to cut Voigt's lead and set his teammate up for the climb. Then Sky come to the front approaching Semnoz and swallow the lot of them.

5. 511 km to go

   Onto Semnoz with forty-three seconds

   Ten point seven kilometres to the summit, and Voigt turns onto them still in front. Behind, Sky's pace on the first ramps takes the yellow jersey group apart faster than anyone expected.

6. 69 km to go

   Froome finishes Contador

   Porte leads a much-reduced group past Voigt with eight and a half kilometres left. Rodríguez makes the first dig, Quintana answers it — and then Froome comes to the front and sets his legs whirring, and Alberto Contador is gone. Three riders remain at the front of the Tour de France, and one of them is twenty-three years old.

7. 7At the line

   Quintana's day

   Froome attacks just short of the kilometre kite and Quintana is on him in an instant — and then goes himself, fast and smooth, and neither of them can follow. The poker face finally breaks into a grin at the line: the stage, the white jersey, the mountains jersey on Colombia's national day, and second overall as Contador loses more than two minutes.

The result