Stage 12

The road

How it was won

1. 1137 km to go

   Twenty-two clear over the Portet d'Aspet

   Westra's dig after the sprint has drawn out a monster of a breakaway — twenty-two riders, Rodríguez and Kwiatkowski among them — and by the Portet d'Aspet they hold more than six minutes.

2. 2102 km to go

   The break eats itself on the Core

   Westra and Fuglsang force the pace and the escape comes apart. With seventy-five kilometres left Kwiatkowski, Preidler and Vanmarcke slip away from what remains of it, and the peloton drifts to twelve minutes.

3. 350 km to go

   Port de Lers, and the sky opens

   Preidler is dropped and Kwiatkowski takes the points. On the descent the fragmented chase splits again as the rain begins to hammer down into the valley.

4. 417 km to go

   Into the storm on Plateau de Beille

   Kwiatkowski and Vanmarcke reach the foot of the final climb with two minutes on the chasers and ten on the peloton, and ride up into a full Pyrenean thunderstorm.

5. 59 km to go

   Rodríguez rewrites his week

   After two miserable days in the Pyrenees, Joaquim Rodríguez attacks the chase group with a little over eight kilometres left, drags Bardet and Fuglsang out of it, then flies past Kwiatkowski as though the Pole were standing still.

6. 6At the line

   Two for Purito, nothing for the GC

   Rodríguez takes his second stage of the Tour ahead of Fuglsang. Behind, Quintana tries the yellow jersey a few times near the summit and Froome sprints past all but Valverde — a damp squib of a fight for yellow on the hardest climb of the week.

The result