Stage 13

The road

At the start

Extremadura heat, 204 kilometres

Eiking still leads by 58 seconds from Guillaume Martin, with the men who will decide this race lined up behind them: Roglič at 1:56, Mas at 2:31, Bernal at 4:46. Schachmann and Fraile do not start. Today is one of only two flat stages left, 204 kilometres across Extremadura, where the obstacle is not the terrain but the heat.

How it was won

1. 111 km to go

   Uncontested points

   The three-man break is put to the sword with 28km left and Jakobsen takes the intermediate sprint without anyone bothering to challenge him — an omen, it seems, for the finish.

2. 21 km to go

   Jakobsen sits up

   QuickStep have already lined the race out and dropped most of the opposition, Démare among them. Then, 1.4km from the line and with the stage seemingly won, Jakobsen raises a hand — a puncture or a mechanical — and stops racing.

3. 3At the line

   The lead-out man wins it

   With fewer than a dozen riders left in contention the QuickStep train keeps driving anyway. Van Lerberghe peels off, Krieger opens the sprint, and Sénéchal — a lead-out man all afternoon — goes past everyone inside 120 metres to hold off Trentin.

The result