Stage 11: Albertville - La Toussuire-Les Sybelles

Today was the day.  This was the stage we’d all been waiting for, the decider, the bike race to end all bike races.  It happened.  And it was spectacular – spectacularly destructive, spectacularly revealing, spectacularly tenacious.   Stage 11 reminded that this is the Tour de France, of whom only the greatest are worthy, and today we finally learnt who the worthy riders are.

It panned out almost exactly the same as the day before.  Today’s stage began with a large breakaway that formed almost as soon as the riders left the neutral zone.  The 30 or so riders moved fluidly between several breakaway groups ahead of the peloton for the first hour or more, being dropped, catching or attacking in turn.   As the group reached the top of the first climb of the day, the hors catégorie Col de la Madeleine, the 26 riders were 2’55” ahead of the Team Sky-led peloton.

Due to the pace being set by Sky’s Edvald Boasson Hagen, riders were dropping off the back of the peloton as the climbed the Madeleine.  Behind Boasson Hagen, four more Sky riders were waiting in line to do the pace-making, willing to lay everything on the line for their team leader, Bradley Wiggins.  Boasson Hagen’s high tempo had cut nearly a minute off the breakaway’s lead, before Christophe Kern (Europcar) took over the pace-making from teammate Davide Malacarne and began stepping up the speed of the escape group.

The King of the Mountain point was passed without incident by the breakaway, Astana’s Fredrik Kessiakoff leaping forward for second place in an attempt to regain his polka-dot jersey.  Kessiakoff continued over the top of the climb to attack the breakaway on the descent with Peter Velits (Omega Pharma-Quickstep), one of two groups to do so, splintering the breakaway into three.  The first two groups rejoined in time for the intermediate sprint at Saint-Etienne-de-Cuines, uncontested due to the lack of sprinters, Ivan Basso (Liquigas-Cannondale) leading the second group across the line.

As the leading group began the second HC climb of the day, the Col de la Croix de Fer, the second group on the road bridged gap, forming a 22-man leading group again.  The group soon began dropping riders, as the third rider of the day dropped out of the Tour de France.  Rabobank sprinter Mark Renshaw joined Vacansoleil-DCMs Lieuwe Westra and Gustav Larsson on the list of riders withdrawn from the Tour’s 11th stage.  Riders continued to yoyo on and off the back of the breakaway as Kern continued the pace-making up front and Sky set the tempo further down.

The expected attack came partway up the Col de la Croix de Fer.  Sky made no reaction as the wearer of the best young rider’s white jersey, Tejay van Garderen, disappeared up the climb.  The reason for van Garderen’s attack was soon evident: a few minutes later, BMC team leader Cadel Evans attacked as well, racing ahead to join his young teammate.  The leading Sky rider, Australian Michael Rogers, began increasing the tempo of the peloton even more in an attempt to bridge the gap to Evans, who was by then sitting comfortably on the wheel of Tejay van Garderen.  He didn’t look comfortable for long, however, van Garderen’s accelerations dropping his team leader off his wheel far too easily.  Even with the assistance of Amael Moinard, dropping back from the breakaway, it was too much for Evans, and the Skymobile came forward to swallow all three back up again.

Thanks to Sky’s accelerations, the groupe Maillot Jaune had been reduced to just 10 riders; team leaders and the best climbers.  There were just seven men in the lead group just over two minutes ahead as the crossed the top of the Croix de Fer, led by Robert Kiserlovski (Astana) and Pierre Rolland (Europcar).  The riders began attacking each other on the way down, but it was Rolland again who led them over the third and final climb of the day before they reached the mountaintop finish.  A group of three formed at the head of the race as Rolland, Kiserlovski and Vasil Kiryienka (Movistar) began descending the Col de Mollard.  The glory was shortlived, however, Rolland crashing on the descent.  Bleeding from his elbow but otherwise unhurt, Rolland was able to remount and try to chase down the leading pair a few seconds ahead of him, catching them 23 kilometres from the end of the stage.

Back together in the lead, Rolland attacked his breakmates, trying to set himself up for a solo stage win.  There were attacks back in the main field, too,  Jurgen van den Broeck (Lotto Belisol) and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Cannondale) among the four riders who jumped of the front of the peloton.  Forced to chase, Sky super-domestique Chris Froome began setting a pace that dropped all bar a few riders.  Fortunately for Wiggins, one of the dropped riders was Cadel Evans, who had teammate Tejay van Garderen thoroughly confused with his inability to keep up.  Van Garderen also dropped back to pace Evans over the climb, the pair unable to rejoin the yellow jersey group and crossing the line over three minutes behind the winner of the stage.

Froome and Wiggins, meanwhile, had dropped everyone else and were forging ahead to join the breakaway of van den Broeck and Nibali just up the road.  Having managed this, Froome then went to the head of the group and accelerated so hard that Wiggins dropped off the back.  Froome was quickly instructed to stop pace-making and go back to help Wiggins, stranded behind the group of four.  Picking up Kiryienka along the way, the reformed group of seven continued their high pace towards the stage finish on La Toussuire.

But they weren’t the only ones out there.  Pierre Rolland, with a minute over his nearest pursuers, repeated his feat of last year soloed to a mountaintop stage victory, the day after the stage win of his team leader, Thomas Voeckler.  The French fans were in for a bigger surprise, because young FDJ-Bigmat star Thibaut Pinot managed to outsprint Froome to take second to make it a French 1-2, Wiggins rolling across the line two seconds later, one and a half minutes ahead of Evans.

Stage 12 is a medium mountains stage, with two Category 1 climbs close to the start and a long flat towards the finish.  This is the kind of stage that encourages breakaways, and would definitely suit the skills of a rider like Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEDGE), Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) or maybe even Michele Scarponi (Lampre-ISD).  It’s unlikely to see the big GC contenders try anything one a stage with such a flat finish, but being the Tour de France, anything could happen.