The first and only individual time trial of the Tour awaits the peloton today. With 12 demanding stages already behind them, recovery and freshness should play a major role for the riders today. Yesterday was especially tough with two big mountains to conquer. This is underscored by the fact that one of the riders I listed in the preview as a contender for today, Mario Gonzalez Salas, is not going to be at the start after failing to make the time limit.
With that in mind, here's a look at the other nine time trialists from the preview. I've added the GC position with time distances as an additional indicator of how much a rider has suffered so far:
Spoiler
TT
FL
RS
RC
GC
Zmorka
82
74
75
72
139. (+ 1h18'41)
Vlatos
81
72
71
67
180. (+ 3h06'59)
Sergent
80
79
74
71
130. (+ 1h07'59)
Würtz
80
76
77
74
104. (+ 44'08)
Lammertink
80
74
76
70
125. (+ 1h04'03)
Van Winden
80
74
70
74
170. (+ 2h25'33)
Howson
80
71
74
72
161. (+ 1h52'52)
Paillot
80
70
74
68
118. (+ 55'02)
Viviani
79
78
77
74
145. (+ 1h22'46)
Cataford
79
74
75
73
82. (+ 32'54)
Vlatos is the rider who's spent the most time in the saddle, but Van Winden, Howson and a few others are almost up there with him. Würtz and Paillot have handled themselves well so far, and I've added Cataford as the best climber of the TT specialists, who is consequently the best-placed of this bunch.
We'll have to see how well they will perform, but even if this was stage 1, neither of those riders would be the favorite. That label belongs to one man and one man only: Taylor Phinney. He starts the day in the yellow jersey and is expected to extend his lead even further by the end of it. And while he targets a second stage win, this stage is also crucial for the other GC contenders, either trying to limit their losses or making up some time on a few rivals. Here are the current Top 20 with their respective time trialing skills:
Spoiler
TT
1
Taylor Phinney
58h13'20
83
2
Romain Sicard
+ 27
76
3
Angel Madrazo
+ 34
77
4
Lachlan Morton
+ 56
73
5
Joseph Dombrowski
+ 1'08
71
6
Stefan Denifl
+ 1'38
72
7
Jose Alarcon
+ 2'00
67
8
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
+ 2'48
77
9
Warren Barguil
+ 3'22
70
10
Yonathan Monsalve
+ 3'24
72
11
Fredrik Strand Galta
+ 3'26
73
12
Sergio Luis Henao Montoya
+ 3'32
71
13
Tim Wellens
+ 3'43
72
14
Peter Velits
+ 4'33
73
15
Rasmus Guldhammer
+ 5'06
71
16
Miguel Angel Lopez
+ 5'10
70
17
Tiago Machado
+ 5'40
71
18
Andy Schleck
+ 6'38
72
19
Nikias Arndt
+ 6'50
56
20
Gianluca Brambilla
+ 7'24
70
With a few exceptions, these riders are pretty evenly matched. Sicard and Madrazo are among the better time trialists, so we could see them being even more entrenched in the podium positions. Lecuisinier also hopes to perform well to begin his comeback towards a Top 5 or Top 3 position.
In the Top 10, Alarcon is the rider who stands to lose the most. But by far the worst time trialist here is Arndt, he is likely to drop at least a place or two, but probably not too much since the time gaps beyond the Top 20 are already pretty sizeable.
All this talking and I haven't even brought up that this time trial isn't even entirely flat, so we could go on to speculate how much that impacts the results. But instead, why don't we just start with the coverage?
There are no intermediate time checks today so we’ll jump right in with the times at the finish line. Vlatos is the first man on the road. You can see him on the first uphill section here, which is two kilometers long at around seven to nine percent - pretty demanding stuff. His time is the measuring stick for everyone coming up next and under normal circumstances, you would expect it to last for a while.
40’59
But obviously, these aren’t normal circumstances and the first rider to come next already beats the Greek. Quaade is a very good time trialist in his own right, but this is still a bit of a surprise.
40’57
Every preconceived notion of time trialing favorites is immediately crushed when Vanderpool crosses the finish line a whole minute faster than both of them! He has consitently been one of the weaker riders over the past twelve days - his one advantage over guys like Vlatos and Quaade: his (comparably) better climbing.
39’54
A number of strong time trialists come in over the next few minutes, including Andersen, Van Winden, Bernaudeau, Oram, Kwok and Leung. But the only rider who comes close to the lead is Mottin, who’s just two seconds short.
39’56
But then Howson finishes and restores a little of the TT specialists’ honor. He beats Vanderpool handily.
39’25
His stretch in the hot seat lasts exactly one rider, then Walsleben comes along and sets the new best time.
39’14
The importance of climbing skills, either because of the ramps today or simply because of energy conservation yesterday, is underscored when in quick succession first Belgasem and then Manulang set new best times.
38’37
Zmorka misses the best time by 45 seconds and finishes provisional fifth.
39’23
We’re going to skip ahead a little bit now. Neither Viviani nor Sergent or Paillot made a big impact. Lammertink actually managed to set a new best time, but only a few minutes later, Rosskopf took the it from him. The current leader though is the man pictured here: Mads Würtz.
38’04
With exactly 100 riders left on the road, this is the leaderboard.
As one of the last time trialing specialists on the road and the one with the best climbing skills, Cataford had a lot of expectations on his shoulders. And boy did he deliver. He beats Würtz’ time easily by almost a minute.
37’05
A couple of riders do pretty well and finish in the provisional Top 5, including Brown, who got to wear the polkadots for two days early in this race. He finishes second best at this point, but still pretty far off Cataford.
37’41
Canty also does well, beating Brown but falling short of the best time by 21 seconds.
37’26
With 50 riders left, another overview of the current best times.
Dekker hasn’t had the greatest Tour so far, sitting in 40th overall without any special exposure. He seems to have decent legs today, though: provisional third!
37’29
Both Lunke and Bibby performed well, beating Canty and Dekker, but Laengen is the one who comes closest to the best time for now.
37’16
One final look at the provisional standing before we head into the Top 20.
Brambilla strengthens his Top 20 ambitions with a decent time, provisional ninth!
37’43
Having overtaken Arndt, Schleck finishes next. He beats Brambilla by just a few seconds.
37’40
Arndt gets overtaken a second time! That’s really not looking great. He’s more than five minutes slower than the best time, a devestating performance that sets him back a lot, all the way to 24th overall. Machado on the other hand should be fine with this time. He loses a bit compared to Schleck and Brambilla, but not a lot.
42’10
38’12
Lopez has a rougher day. He’s more than a minute slower than Schleck and Brambilla and drops behind Machado in the GC.
38’44
In contrast, Guldhammer finishes with the best time of the contenders so far.
37’39
A bit surprisingly, that’s faster than Velits. The Slovakian Champion doesn’t perform to his limits, but it’s not a terrible time either.
37’56
Wellens beats Guldhammer by nine seconds, a good time and he is provisionally seventh.
37’30
Dropping behind the Belgian in the GC, Henao Montoya finishes with the same time as Velits earlier.
37’56
Galta keeps his place with a solid time, the second best among the contenders so far.
37’38
With only ten riders left, here’s how the GC has changed so far:
11.
Galta
12.
Wellens
+ 9
13.
Henao Montoya
+ 24
14.
Velits
+ 1’23
15.
Guldhammer
+ 1’41
16.
Machado
+ 2’48
17.
Lopez
+ 2’50
18.
Schleck
+ 3’14
19.
Brambilla
+ 4’05
20.
Iturria
+ 5’15
Monsalve finishes similarly to most of the other GC riders. With how close things are, he drops two seconds behind Galta though.
37’42
With Barguil’s time, Galta climbs another spot, but he, Barguil and Monsalve are now all within two seconds!
37’43
Lecuisinier had big ambitions for today. If he was going to attack the podium again, he would have to perform today. And he does! A new best time, beating all previous GC rivals by almost a minute or more.
36’41
For Alarcon on the other hand, today is one of the bigger obstacles on the way to a good overall position. But he manages to limit his losses pretty well!
38’09
Denifl also does remarkably well, beating the likes of Galta, Guldhammer and Schleck. He’s ninth at the moment, just behind Wellens, and it’s enough to keep Lecuisinier at a distance as well. Somehow missed the screenshot here, apologies to SPAR!
37’34
With that, here’s another look at the GC changes:
6.
Denifl
7.
Lecuisinier
+ 17
8.
Alarcon
+ 57
9.
Galta
+ 1’52
10.
Barguil
+ 1’53
11.
Monsalve
+ 1’54
We’re deep in the fight for the podium positions now. Dombrowski is the weakest time trialist of the Top 5, but he actually sets the fourth best time of the day so far!
37’22
What does this mean for Morton? Well, he has to beat that. And he does, he’s actually the second rider to be faster than Cataford, albeit just by fractions of a second.
37’05
Compared to the two riders before, Madrazo is clearly a better time trialist. Consequently, he beats them but he goes one step further and sets the new best time, beating Lecuisinier by 10 seconds!
36’31
Sicard had just seven seconds on Madrazo in the GC before today. He loses more than that here, dropping one position to third overall.
36’57
It feels like the question isn’t if Phinney wins today, but only by how much. The answer: a modest 20 seconds. He celebrates his second stage win (third if you count the TTT) and extends his lead in the GC, but maybe not by quite as much as he had hoped for. In combination with good performances by his teammates, it’s enough to take the lead in the team classification again though.
36'11
With that, all time trialing is behind the peloton for the remainder of the race. It was maybe slightly surprising to see the TT specialists so thoroughly without a chance (except for Cataford), but among the contenders, things played out mostly as expected.
Phinney takes the win, but perhaps he had expected to gain more than just 20 seconds on Madrazo and not even a minute on Morton and Dombrowski, who both did very well.
Behind those guys and Lecuisinier and Sicard, the times were very similar for many of the GC riders. Eight of them finished within 13 seconds of each other. Machado, Alarcon, Velits and Henao Montoya were a bit further behind, but still limited their losses to their most immediate rivals to around half a minute.
Only Lopez and, most of all, Arndt lost bigger chunks of time. But at least everyone knows where they're at now ahead of the remaining stages. Tomorrow already is an opportunity to shake things up, with a mountaintop finish at the Col du Tourmalet!
Tour de France 
