Stage 18

The road

How it was won

1. 1181 km to go

   Uphill from the gun

   Six kilometres out of Gap the road tips up onto the Col Bayard at seven per cent, and the fight to be in the day's move begins before anyone's legs are awake.

2. 2102 km to go

   The move is made on the Col de la Morte

   Four short, savage climbs in the first eighty-five kilometres finally settle the shape of the stage. Over the Col de la Morte the escape is clear and the peloton, with Sky content, lets the day go.

3. 340 km to go

   Bardet drops off the Glandon

   Twenty-one kilometres of hors-catégorie climbing, and then the part Romain Bardet has been waiting for. He goes over the top and hurls himself down nineteen kilometres of open, fast descent, doing exactly what he did to win at the Dauphiné in June — riding away from better climbers on the way down.

4. 411 km to go

   The Lacets de Montvernier

   Eighteen hairpins stacked one above the other on a cliff face, climbed by the Tour for the first time in its history. Bardet takes them alone with Pierre Rolland somewhere below him in the switchbacks.

5. 5At the line

   France goes one-two

   Bardet wins alone in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne with 33 seconds on Rolland and Anacona another half-minute back. The yellow jersey group arrives long afterwards with nothing changed at the top.

The result