The Kandel mountain, the race’s first Cat 1 climb.
After three flat stages, the riders will have to, or get to depending on your perspective and body weight, do some climbing at this relatively early stage of the Tour. Starting from Breisach on the Rhine, the Kandel and Schauinsland mountain peaks are the first two first category climbs, followed by three more ascents on the way to Müllheim, very close to the French border. But long-ish descents follow all five of them, so it remains to be seen how much impact this stage will have on the GC.
It is of course also a really intriguing one for breakaway riders. Lukas Postlberger leads the mountain classification with 21 points and the first climb alone already has 16 to offer the first rider to cross it. And if the main GC contenders aren’t willing to expend resources this early, who knows if they aren’t willing to let the breakaway have this one – including perhaps a stint in yellow.
With the Breisach minster in the background, Turek starts the attacks. Jorgenson is next, Barbio accelerates, too.
The Portuguese is followed by Arissol and Godon. Roosen tries his luck as well.
Lehtinen wants to follow, but Duyvesteyn makes a big effort to deny both him and Roosen. Does Beltran perhaps have something big planned for later today?
Phodingam and Rosskopf go next, this time Gunnlaugsson leads the pursuit.
When those two are brought back, the pace slows down a little and the gap to the original five riders grows to a minute. But we’re not done with attacks just yet, as Delco wants to make sure that his team gets some representation up front. Gazelle already does, but Leknessund tries to join the Swiss just for good measure. It’s another unsuccessful attempt, though.
A bit later, Nsengimana, Osorio and Tejada make a move. But it seems like the peloton does not want more than five riders up front and none of these guys manage to catch up with the breakaway.
Or is the magic number six? After another few attacks including from the likes of Miltiadis, Abreu, Hofstede and Verschaeve, it’s Bernard who uses a quiet moment to break free on his own. He quickly gets a gap of 40 seconds and now tries to make his way to the front.
By the time the quintet reaches Waldkirch, Bernard has almost made it. The peloton still hasn’t calmed down yet with another attack from Verschaeve, this time followed by Kron. Teams know how valuable a presence in the breakaway can be today, but also, the breakaway needs to increase their gap at some point to make full use of that opportunity – and with all the attacks and the high pace behind them, they’re still only a minute ahead.
Jorgenson wins the intermediate sprint, in part because the fastest man in the group, Godon, seems to have dropped back to assist his teammate.
In the early slopes of the Kandel climb (12.2km at 7.6%), the peloton actually starts to slow down and immediately, some riders take advantage and try to make their way to the front. The most important name might be Arensman, who targets the polkadot jersey following yesterday’s exploits. He’s joined by Pronskiy and Lafay.
They all make it to the front, but that group of 9 soon becomes a group of 8 as Bernard apparently pays the price for his long solo chase. The rest of the group is a fairly homogeneous mix of decent but not great climbers and puncheurs, with perhaps only Turek and Arissol lacking in climbing abilities. We’ll see how far they can go. The peloton is still pretty close, just over a minute down the road.
Because of the small gap to the peloton, one might think the pace in the group hasn’t been that high so far, but that’s not true. And it shows: With still 6 kilometers to the top, Barbio, Arissol, Godon and Jorgenson lose touch on this 9.5% slope. Only the newcomers, who haven’t spent as much time in the wind yet, remain ahead, plus Turek, which is a surprise.
The first riders are off the back of the peloton, too. Sütterlin, Haugard, Goldstein, Swift and Dillier have a tough day ahead of them – not great given most of them are important TTT pieces for tomorrow.
Nearing the summit, only Arensman, Lafay and Pronskiy remain ahead. They have a minute on Turek and Godon, 2’30 on the peloton. The Isostar rider is probably the best pure climber on paper, but certainly not by much.
Lafay attacks very early, with 2 kilometers yet to go to the sprint.
But that proves to be a winning strategy: It looks like he’s simply the strongest of the three. 16 points to him, 12 to Pronskiy and 10 to Arensman, who slips into the virtual KoM lead thanks to the 12 points he collected yesterday. Godon and Turek take 8 and 6 points, respectively, a couple minutes later.
In the peloton, Vanthourenhout actually tried to attack to collect 4 points, but those go to Gunnlaugsson, with 2 to Duyvesteyn. Cedevita and EA Vesuvio, with occasional input from Puma and De Stijl, lead the peloton, but they’re not pacing particularly hard. The gap to the race lead has opened up to almost 5 minutes, and yet, more and more time trialists and a couple of sprinters could not keep up anymore.
In the run-up to the Schauinsland climb (literally translated to “look into the country”), Godon and Turek catch up to the leading trio, but in the process, the breakaway also loses a ton of time, entering the climb (15.5km at 5.8%) with just 2 minutes on the pack.
As soon as they hit some of the steeper inclines of over 8%, Godon and Turek are immediately off the back again. Arensman leads, trying to put some more time between them and the peloton.
That endeavor isn’t particularly successful and the gap is down to a minute inside the final kilometer of the climb – but at least they’ll get to the summit. Fighting for the mountain jersey, Pronskiy goes first.
But it ends up being the same order as it was on the first climb, which means that Lafay and Arensman are now tied for the KoM lead at 32 points. 22 points are still left for the taking today, but will one of them even reach any of those?
This was obviously only a question of time: Harrison falls behind shortly before he reaches the summit. His days in yellow are over, but still, what an achievement for him. 104 riders remain in the peloton at this point.
Heading into the Wiedener Eck climb (13.1km at 4.6%), Lafay fights to remain ahead of the peloton. No help from his companions, who know they’re not strong enough to compete with the French anyway.
And indeed, Pronskiy and Arensman are caught by the now Carpenter-led peloton. Lafay has 8 kilometers left to the summit.
But he doesn’t get there, either. The way the stage unfolded, it was just really hard for the breakaway. His focus now has to be to finish ahead of Arensman to claim the jersey. Postlberger is no longer in the peloton, he’ll have to hand over the jersey today.
No challenges for the KoM points, Bettiol picks up 10 just by leading the pack, but interestingly, 8 and 6 go to Yates and Herklotz, who have moved up to the front. You can see many of the other contenders, including Tenorio and Morton, not far behind, too. The group still includes 96 riders.
Nearing the penultimate summit of the day, the Côte d’Oberböllen, that number is down to 75. Munoz and white jersey contender McNulty are the most prominent absentees.
Further behind, Arensman manages to hold onto a group currently led by Lafay. The Dutch is ahead in the GC by 17 seconds thanks to the prologue, so the French needs to do something if he wants to wear the polkadots tomorrow. Something to keep an eye on.
Herklotz collects another 4 points at the summit, following Goos.
Bettiol leads 60 riders into the Hohwildsberg, Vingegaard and Powless are the next prominent victims of his pace.
A closer look at the profile of the climb reveals that the steepest parts come near the final KoM sprint – and they are really steep! With another small uphill section and then less than 15 kilometers of downhill to the finish, some gaps could be created and sustained.
But despite what their teams’ efforts may have suggested, neither Yates nor Herklotz try something – instead, they just collect another 4 and 2 mountain points, respectively. This is slightly anticlimactic.
In the very last few hundred uphill meters of the day, Hsu is distanced, who had miraculously hung on until now and would have been a prime candidate for the finale. Maybe he can recover on the downhill?
Instead of on the climb, we see the first big name attack on that downhill! Latour makes a move, Morton, Wellens and Herklotz come to the front to react.
Latour reaches the final flat 4 kilometers with a small gap. Behind Herklotz, it’s Warchol, Yates and Schelling and then there’s a small gap!
2 kilometers to go, what a massive win this could be for Latour! Herklotz really wants yellow here, but he’d need to finish second without a time gap being awarded if Latour pulls this off!
Latour’s lead only seems to grow! Meanwhile, Almeida makes a big effort to close the gap to the six primary chasers.
Flamme rouge for Latour, he’s timed 14 seconds ahead of the chasers, where Herklotz still is the one doing the work.
400 meters for Latour as Herklotz opens the sprint. Jaramillo is the fastest on the road right now, trying to go for a big surprise.
Latour raises his arms in celebration, but really he should be pushing for every single second! He’s 10 behind Herklotz in the GC, but if the German finishes second, only a time gap gives the Polar leader yellow!
It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen but still, what a magnificent win with a perfectly timed attack for Pierre Latour!
Herklotz finishes second and fulfils his manager’s first big goal of the race: to take yellow on home soil. Yates rewards his team’s work by taking 8 bonus seconds in third place, Jaramillo is fourth.
Smith leads the rest home, Schelling will be happy with a good sixth place, then come Warchol, Kirsch, Morton and Sivakov.
Despite some work by the team earlier, Cedevita remains anonymous in the finale. Pogacar finishes 21st, Beltran 23rd.
And despite Lafay best efforts until the very end, Arensman clings on at the back of this group. He takes the lead in the KoM classification, in big part because of what he did yesterday.
A couple of classification leads changed hands today and the Lanterne Rouge is no different. Having already been fourth-to-last before today, Yatsevich is the final rider to cross the line almost 40 minutes behind Latour and relieves Malori of that questionable honor.
So, we have a new overall leader in Herklotz, a new mountain leader in Arensman and also a new rider in white, someone we haven’t mentioned at all so far: Keagan Girdlestone. It’s probably only for one day, as both Sivakov or Almeida look poised to overtake him in the team time trial tomorrow. But still a good achievement for the South African.
As Tinkoff and Grieg failed to get three riders into the first group, Aker – MOT takes over the lead in the team classification. Thus, the only thing that remains the same is Manninen leading the points classification. He will not be particularly happy with Herklotz’s 25 points today, but it could have been at least a little bit worse.
Tomorrow, as I alluded to, will be the team time trial. Given the strength of Polar, Latour has a very good chance to claim what he barely missed out on today, which is a day in yellow. Puma have a decent setup as well though, so Herklotz has at least a shot of keeping it.
Tour de France 
