Stage 8

The road

At the start

The first mountains

Impey leads Boasson Hagen by three seconds and Froome and Porte by eight, and every genuine contender in the race is inside a minute of yellow. Peter Sagan has finally won a stage. Today the Tour enters the Pyrenees for its first summit finish: the Col de Pailhères, hors catégorie and the highest road of this race, and then eight kilometres up to Ax 3 Domaines.

How it was won

1. 150 km to go

   The break starts eating itself

   Fifty kilometres out, with the Pailhères still ahead and two minutes in hand, Hoogerland attacks his own escape and gets nowhere. The four have 1:06 when the real climbing starts, and Riblon leaves them at once, hunting the win he took on this road in 2010.

2. 234 km to go

   Quintana goes past everybody

   Gesink attacks the peloton first, then Voeckler. Then a twenty-three-year-old Colombian in the white jersey accelerates and rides past both of them, then past Riblon — comfortable in a way almost nobody else on this mountain looks, with Valverde's blessing to keep going.

3. 323 km to go

   Caught at the bottom, gone again at the top

   Quintana gives time back on the descent and Rolland catches him at the foot of Ax 3 Domaines with the Froome group only twenty-two seconds behind. Then the road tips up and the Colombian rides away from Rolland as though the descent never happened. Evans, Schleck, Dan Martin and Talansky are all dropped, riding alone.

4. 47 km to go

   Ten riders left

   Six and a half kilometres from the summit, Porte and Kennaugh have reduced the yellow jersey group to about ten. Fuglsang goes out of the back of it, and so does Joaquim Rodríguez.

5. 55 km to go

   Froome puts his stamp on the Tour

   Quintana is swallowed with five kilometres left and that is the signal. Chris Froome goes, and it is not a probe this time: Contador drops away, Kreuziger drops away, Valverde drops away, and Quintana holds the wheel for a few seconds before sliding back to Porte. Five kilometres alone, up a mountain in Pyrenean heat, and a Tour de France starts to look decided in the first week.

6. 6At the line

   Ax 3 Domaines

   Froome by fifty seconds from his own teammate Richie Porte, with Valverde third at 1:08. Sky have first and second on the stage and the yellow jersey; Contador, Schleck and Evans have all lost a great deal more than time.

The result