Good afternoon and welcome to this live blog! My name is Jeroen van Barneveld and I will keep you informed of the twelfth stage in the Tour de France, in which the riders will be tackling the high mountains for the first time. Enjoy!
Another 158 km – In the meantime, the Tour organization has finished counting. It’s not 47 riders, but 50 riders who are in the large leading group. You will receive the names of all those riders from us. They have a lead of 55 seconds.
Another 164 km – A large group of no fewer than 47 riders is breaking away from the peloton. And believe it or not: Mathieu van der Poel is also there, despite his strenuous efforts yesterday. His compatriot Thymen Arensman is also riding in the leading group. They now have a lead of 20 seconds on the peloton.
A nice moment for the start in Auch: Tadej Pogacar and the Norwegian Tobias Halland Johannessen seek each other out. Pogacar fell yesterday due to a maneuver by the Norwegian, after which the latter received a lot of misery via social media. Pogacar then recorded a video to call on people to stop. He didn’t blame Johannessen for anything.
Another 171 km – Pascal Eenkhoorn and the other three leaders’ adventure does not last long, because the peloton has already caught them. The expectations of the opening phase of this opening stage are being fully met. It has been war in the peloton for ten minutes.
Another 173 km – A group of four riders open a gap with the peloton and the Dutchman Pascal Eenkhoorn is one of them. He is a servant of Remco Evenepoel, so Soudal Quick-Step seems to have something planned today. The other names are the Austrian Marco Haller, Alexey Lutsenko from Kazakhstan and the Frenchman Alexandre Delettre.
Another 175 km – Visma-Lease a Bike is trying to send a pawn forward with the Belgian hard rider Victor Campenaerts, but he immediately gets a bunch of cheetahs on wheels in his wheel. It should be clear: the Dutch team wants someone in the flight of the day.
Another 180 km – Not the climbers, but the sprinters and hard riders are stirring in these first kilometers of the race. Among others, Biniam Girmay is trying to create a gap with the peloton, but there are many more contenders.
Départ réel! This twelfth stage in the Tour de France has definitively been launched by Tour boss Christian Prudhomme. A fierce battle for the flight of the day is expected in the first 80 kilometers, which are relatively flat.
Evenepoel: ‘Time for hide-and-seek is over’ Remco Evenepoel had firm texts before the start. “The first mountain stage is always special,” says the challenger of Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard to Sporza. “Now you can no longer play hide-and-seek, but the legs and power will speak. I initially expect a big fight for the escape of the day. Or Visma-Lease a Bike won’t go all out from the start? Then they will burn a lot of energy for nothing.”
The Tour de France continued today without the Dutchman Cees Bol. The Astana rider is sick and not fit enough to continue. His best ranking was an eighth place in the eighth stage, which was won by Jonathan Milan.
The 29-year-old Bol is the thirteenth drop-out in this Tour de France. One of them was the Dutchman Marijn van den Berg.
Départ fictif! After the minute of silence, the riders, led by yellow jersey wearer Ben Healy, started the neutralization. After 6.5 kilometers in and around Auch, Tour boss Christian Prudhomme will wave his flag.
At the start in Auch, a minute of silence is held in memory of cyclist Samuele Privitera, who died yesterday at the age of nineteen after a fall in the opening stage of the Giro Ciclistico della Valle d’Aosta. He rode for Hagens Berman Jayco, the training team of Tour team Jayco AlUla.
The first photos of Tadej Pogacar at the start in Auch are trickling in. The big question is of course how heavily packed he is after yesterday’s crash. He appears to have a large plaster on his left arm, the arm with which he kissed the asphalt yesterday. The arm is wrapped with a net bandage. Will that affect his race today?
Visma: Pogacar’s fall has no influence on our plan Tadej Pogacar’s fall yesterday has no influence on the plan of Jonas Vingegaard and his team Visma-Lease a Bike for today, team leader Marc Reef emphasized in an interview with the NOS. “Regardless of whether Pogacar has fallen or not, we have been working on our own plan throughout the Tour de France. We are not looking at what is wrong with him (Pogacar, ed.) and we are not going to do that today either.”
“We have tried to put pressure and see where the opportunities lie in the past week. We will also try to do that in the coming days. Today is the first mountain stage. Perhaps we will try it today. Based on the situation after the start, we will decide what exactly we will do in the race.”
These are the differences in the general classification prior to the start of this stage. Jonas Vingegaard is still 1 minute and 17 seconds behind Tadej Pogacar.
This is the profile of the first tough mountain stage in this Tour de France. After a rolling run-up of more than 80 kilometers, the riders will face the first climb. This is followed by three more climbs. The stage is a total of 180.6 kilometers long.
How good is battered Pogacar today? Normally, this tough mountain stage will result in a duel between world champion Tadej Pogacar and his great rival Jonas Vingegaard, but the big question is whether that will be the case today. Pogacar fell yesterday just before the finish due to a maneuver by the Norwegian Tobias Halland Johannessen.
Pogacar quickly scrambled to his feet and only had some scrapes and bruises, but according to former riders and experts, a fall always has an impact on a rider’s form and fitness. It justifies the question of how good the three-time Tour winner is today. Vingegaard’s Visma-Lease a Bike will definitely test him today.
The climbers in the peloton have been looking forward to this day for a long time: the first stage through the Pyrenees. It is also the first stage in this Tour de France in the high mountains. The riders start at 13:25 in Auch and finish around 17:45 on the top of the Hautacam, a climb of the ‘hors catégorie’, at 1,520 meters above sea level.