Date: Sunday July 14, 2024
Distance: 198km
Start location: Loudenvielle
Finish location: Plateau de Beille
Start time: 11:55 CET
Finish time (approx): 17:22 CET
The second week comes to an end with a second successive day in the Pyrenees, boasting an intimidating parcours that has the strongest case to be considered this year’s queen stage. Not only is it longer than any other Pyrenean or Alpine stage at this year’s Tour de France, lasting almost 200km, it also has the most amount of climbing, with a total of five mountains ranked category one or above amounting to 4,800m elevation gain.
The last of those mountains will be Plateau de Beille, which will also be the hardest summit finish of this year’s race. Its gradients are comparable to yesterday’s finale at Pla d’Adet, averaging 7.9% with few fluctuations on the way. The difference comes in its length: by the time they emerge from the forested section, they’ll have climbed for about as long as yesterday’s effort, only to find a whole other 4km left to do over exposed, baron roads until the top.
As such a difficult, selective climb, the Plateau de Beille has had a massive impact in the Tours it has featured in since its first appearance in 1998. It quickly built a reputation as being a kingmaker, with Marco Pantani (1998), Lance Armstrong (2002 and 2004) and Alberto Contador (2007) all winning here before going on to be crowned yellow jersey winner in Paris. The most recent visits have bucked that trend, however, with Jelle Vanendert surprisingly slipping away from the GC contenders to take victory here in 2011, and Joaquim Rodriguez becoming the first rider to win here from a breakaway in 2015. Not only that, it wasn’t as selective either — on both occasions a group of 9 GC favourites finished at the top together, with a gurning Thomas Voeckler memorably digging deep in 2011 to hang in there, celebrating with a fit bump over the line. That he eventually cracked and lost his yellow jersey in the Alps suggest that maybe the climb has lost some of its aura.
Today’s stage might return the Plateau de Beille to its former stature, due to the severity of the climbing that precedes it. The difficulty starts right from the flag with the Col de Peyresourde, one of the original Circle of Death and most famous of Pyrenean summits, which will provide an ideal springboard for stage-hunting climbers to get into the day’s break — especially French ones, seeing as this is Bastille Day. That’s then followed by the Col de Menté, which is arguably the hardest of the day with a savage average gradient of 9.1% for 9.3km. A long stretch of valley roads follows the next, short climb of Col de Portet-d’Aspet (4.3km at 9.6%), but the unrelenting 8.2% gradient of the 10km Col d’Agnes will tax the legs to their limit even before the final climb. There is therefore another huge haul of points on offer for any climber wanting to take control of the King of the Mountains classification, as well as for any team intending to make this stage as hard as possible before launching their GC contender on the Plateau de Beille.
Route profile sourced via ASO
Contenders
Even though stage 14 resulted in a GC battle on the mountaintop finish to Pla d'Adet, we don't expect the fireworks to be over in the fight for the yellow jersey on stage 15. But this is the first back-to-back mountain test, so stage 15 raises the question of how well the GC riders will be able to recover.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) put more time into his lead after taking his second Tour stage victory in this race yesterday, and the tactics in the first Pyrenean double-header by the whole UAE team were executed to perfection. His rivals – Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal–Quick-Step) – could not hold his wheel as he stormed up to the finish line. However, Vingegaard did move up to second place, and with this being his favourite terrain, we will expect to see him and Visma-Lease a Bike try and do something on stage 15 to take back some time on Pogačar. Evenepoel will be thinking the same. He has looked super strong so far this race and has a team of strong climbers to help him, but he could not keep the same pace as Vingegaard on the approach to the finish on stage 14.
Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers) sits fifth on the GC and excels on stages with long mountain passes. He came fourth in the first summit finish on stage 14, so he will be a contender for the stage win. Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) is in eighth place, followed by Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) in ninth. Both are performing well, and we expect them to place high in the stage standings. Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) is just outside the top 10 and will be wanting to try and break that before the third and final week.
If it is decided that the breakaway can go for the stage, we expect some of the peloton's strongest climbers to be featured, as this is one of the hardest stages of the race. Riders such as Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ), Simon Yates (Jayco Alula), Steff Cras (TotalEnergies), and Wout Poels (Bahrain-Victorious) will have this stage circled in their calendars and will not want to miss the chance for a stage win on their type of terrain.
Stage 15 winner prediction
We think it is going to be a battle from the flag, but in the end, we are backing Jonas Vingegaard for the victory.
