Sagan completes hat-trick with stage 13 win – Tour de France
Tour de France 2018
Stage 13
In the absence of many of the top sprinters following a tough series of stages in the Alps, the world champion Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) proved his worth once more to secure a third win in the world’s biggest bike race for the third time in his career.
A perfect lead-out from his Groupama-FDJ team-mates put Frenchman Demare in an excellent position on the home straight, but Sagan surged clear form the slipstream of Norway’s Kristoff to deny the European champion a first win on the Tour since 2014.
An eleventh career stage scalp on the Tour saw Sagan further strengthen his vice-like grip on the green jersey, the 28-year-old moving onto 398 points – a staggering 228 points more than his nearest challenger, Kristoff – as he closes in on a record-equalling sixth title.
Germany’s John Degenkolb (Trek-Segafredo) and Belgium’s Greg van Avermaet (BMC) completed the top five of the stage, which saw a four-man breakaway fail to build up a gap of more than three minutes over the pack.
After his latest exploit on the Tour, Sagan described the largely flat stage as “a piece of gold” for the peloton, adding: “It was a flat stage, and everyone could recover a bit in the group. I think everyone was happy in the bunch to have a relaxed stage.”
“I’m very happy to win today, it’s very nice for me and thanks to all my team-mates because they did a very good job. I thought I’d left it a little bit late, I was a little bit behind in the last 600m, then on the last turn I tried to bring myself up to the front, and after that I stayed on the wheel of Kristoff and I’m very happy to beat him.”
There were no changes on GC as Welshman Thomas took to the podium amid more boos from the French public after retaining his 1’39” lead over Sky team-mate Chris Froome, the four-time Tour champion. Dutchman Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) stays in third place at 1’50” ahead of Saturday’s stage to the Massif Central.
Frenchmen Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors) and Pierre Latour (Ag2R-La Mondiale) retained their respective polka dot and white jerseys.
After back-to-back summit finished and three successive days in the Alps, the intensity and drama was somewhat lacking in a largely sedate transitional stage that hugged the Isere valley of the Isere and Rhone either side of tackling the small but scenic mounds of the Monts du Matin in the shadow of the imperious Vercors Massif.
The advantage of the quartet topped out at three minutes as breakaway specialist De Gendt crested the Cat.3 Col de Brie in pole position before doubling up at the intermediate sprint. When the peloton passed through it was Kristoff who pipped Degenkolb and Sagan in the battle for the remaining green jersey points.
Going over the summit of the Cat.4 Cote de Sainte-Eulalie-en-Royans the gap was down to one minute as Scully took the solitary point. De Gendt and Claeys called it a day shortly after the 25km-to-go banner leaving Schar and Scully to battle it out for the daily combativity award.
It was the rangy Swiss who took the spoils as Scully soon sat up leaving Schar to enter time-trial mode in a drive to the line which came undone with 6km remaining. Team Sky were on the front of the pack to keep their leaders out of trouble – but once the magic 3km marker was passed the baton was passed over to the teams of the sprinters.
Tomorrow’s stage 14 takes the riders 187km from Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateau to Mende.
Both Bardet and Pinot had their pockets picked by Steve Cummings the last time the Tour came to Mende in 2015. This is one for the breakaway specialists rather than the GC riders – although Team Sky will be on red alert.
