Date: Tuesday, July 22
Distance: 171.5km
Start location: Montpellier
Finish location: Mont Ventoux
Start time: 12:10 CEST
Finish time: 16:44 CEST (approx.)
The pieces are in place for strange things to happen at the Tour de France today. The stage day after a rest day is often one that produces surprising results, as riders’ legs respond differently to the break from racing — those who had looked impervious can suddenly become undone, while others who have been struggling can bounce back with renewed freshness. And it also marks the beginning of the third week, when fatigue really starts to take its toll on some, while the Grand Tour specialists really start to come to the fore. This is when the established hierarchy at the top of the general classification can begin to get upset.
Additionally, the parcours has almost been designed to exacerbate the unpredictability and play games with the riders’ legs. The first 150km or so are as flat as anything at this Tour, as the riders make their way from the starting city of Montpellier and into the region of Provence. Then suddenly, 15.7km from the finish, they take on what is arguably the hardest, and certainly the steepest, summit finish of the whole race — the legendary Mont Ventoux. This kind of drastic change of terrain can come as a shock to the system, especially when you consider the effect of being at higher and higher altitude as they approach the huge 1,910m-high summit. There’s no telling how some riders will react, and we could be in for some unexpected results.
As well as being one of the Tour’s most famous and feared mountains, Mont Ventoux is no stranger to strangeness. Nine years ago, the last time it hosted a stage finish, one of the most memorably farcical moments in the race’s recent history occurred here. Amid the swarms of fans on the roadside, one of the TV motorbikes was forced to break, forcing Richie Porte and Chris Froome, in the yellow jersey, to stop. His bike broken, and his team car a long way down the mountain, Froome saw no other option than to begin jogging up the mountain. This kind of surreal scene is in keeping with the abnormal landscape here, which, with its lunar coloured grey limestone and lack of vegetation, gives the impression of being somewhere alien and not of this world.
The strong winds that often blow at its exposed summit forced that stage in 2016 to be shortened, which means a Tour stage hasn’t finished at the very top of Mont Ventoux since 2013. That was the occasion of one of Froome’s most devastating attacks, when, about 7km from the summit, after Porte (then riding as his teammate) had helped distance all his other GC rivals, he explosively upped his cadence to drop Alberto Contador and solo to victory. Nairo Quintana managed to limit his losses to 29 seconds, but every other rider was a minute and a half or more adrift. There might be two more Alpine days to come after this, each featuring more mountains, but the potential for race-changing time gaps on the unforgiving gradients averaging 8.8% of this mountain is huge.
Contenders
There is almost nothing separating the peloton from Mont Ventoux in terms of difficult terrain, which means the bunch will potentially remain almost complete into the foot of the mountain. It also means a breakaway will struggle to get away and put significant time into the peloton, and it should be a more straightforward job for the likes of UAE Team Emirates-XRG or Visma-Lease a Bike to keep it in check and go for a famous stage win.
Tadej Pogačar is a fan of making history, so it seems very likely that he'll fancy a stage win in yellow at the top of one of the Tour's most historic mountains. Likewise, Jonas Vingegaard will want to find some success in this Tour and show his best climbing form again, and winning ahead of his main rival on Ventoux would be a major coup for the Dane.
Other contenders from the GC group like Oscar Onley (Picnic-PostNL), Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa B&B), Florian Lipowitz and Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), Felix Gall (Decathlon Ag2r La Mondiale), and Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) could also be contenders if they're able to buck the trend of this Tour and get away from the yellow jersey.
There are plenty of climbers capable of winning on the Giant of Provence if an unlikely break does stay away. Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) has experienced victory at the summit in the CIC-Mont Ventoux challenge, and has been aggressive in this Tour in search of mountain points. Ben O'Connor (Jayco-Alula), Michael Woods (Israel-Premier Tech), Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious), and Michael Storer (Tudor) are all capable of winning on this terrain, while stage winners Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers) have shown they're in strong enough form for a victory should they make a successful breakaway.
Prediction
We think Tadej Pogačar will take victory atop Mont Ventoux.
