Stage 9

The road

At the start

The Puy de Dôme, after 35 years

Mark Cavendish crashed out yesterday with a broken collarbone, the record chase over on his last Tour. At the front nothing has moved: Jonas Vingegaard leads Tadej Pogačar by 25 seconds and Jai Hindley by 1:34. Today the Puy de Dôme returns after thirty-five years away — 13.3 kilometres up an extinct volcano whose last 4.5 average 11.5 per cent, and where no spectators are allowed on the road.

How it was won

1. 1130 km to go

   The break goes clear

   A fourteen-man move breaks away in the opening kilometres, Michael Woods among them, and the day settles into a war of successive splinter groups off the front.

2. 213 km to go

   Puy de Dôme

   Matteo Jorgenson hits the base of the extinct volcano — 13.3km at 7.7% — a minute clear, and disappears up the barren, crowdless spiral toward the summit alone.

3. 32 km to go

   Woods rides across

   On the savage final ramps Michael Woods surges clear of Mohorič and hauls himself up toward the fading Jorgenson, the gap tumbling with every hairpin.

4. 4At the line

   Summit of the Puy de Dôme

   Woods reels in Jorgenson inside the final 400 metres for a heart-wrenching victory; far below, the GC group thins to eight and Pogačar takes eight seconds back on Vingegaard.

The result