Landslides force Tour de France organisers to cut 20th stage short
Saturday’s 20th stage of the Tour de France will be cut short from 130km to 59km and will skip two significant climbs because of landslides, organisers said on Friday evening.
A hailstorm and a landslide forced the race jury and organisers to stop the 19th stage with the extreme weather conditions having damaged other roads. The peloton will now go straight from Albertville to the final 33km ascent to Val Thorens and the riders will not have to tackle the category two Côte de Longefoy or the category one Cormet de Roselend, a 19.9km ascent at 6%.
The changes hand the new overall leader, Egan Bernal, a significant advantage, dramatically reducing the opportunities for his rivals to mount an attack.
Bernal became the race leader after dominating his rivals in Friday’s stage, which was in effect halted at the top of the Col de l’Iseran. And for all the storms swirling over the Alps on Friday afternoon, amid the continuing debate over the neutralisation of stage 19 of the Tour de France, there was one irrefutable fact. In what was billed as “the highest Tour in history” Bernal emerged as the best climber.
“We’ll never know what would have happened,” the Team Ineos principal, Dave Brailsford, said of the revised finish line, “but the facts are Egan got to the top of that climb faster than anybody else. They’re the facts, aren’t they?”
The sky-scraping Col de l’Iseran is no stranger to storms and stages routed over the climb have been impacted by severe weather in the past. In the 1996 Tour a stage taking in the climb was drastically shortened and rerouted as a blizzard swept across the mountainside.
Stages in Paris-Nice have also been cancelled mid-race due to snow, while Milan-San Remo in 2013 was stopped and then restarted at a different location due to blizzard conditions. The Tour’s director, Christian Prudhomme, said a restart further down the mountain was not an option.
“There were strong storms and hailstones,” Prudhomme said. “We needed to alert the riders, and Simon Yates and Bernal were ahead and on the descent of the Iseran, riding full speed. So we had to send a motor bike up to alert them to stop because a few kilometres later there was the landslide.” Asked if the race could have continued in some form Prudhomme described it as impossible. “There was no other solution,” he said.
Alaphilippe, who had been furiously chasing Bernal on the descent when the race cancellation was announced, accepted his fate. “I was expecting this,” he said of Bernal’s decisive attack. “I gave everything but I was beaten by a stronger rider. I don’t think I can get the yellow jersey back but it was a dream to have worn it for so long. It was longer than I could have imagined.”
Brailsford, who is now on the threshold of guiding his team to its seventh Tour win in eight years, said Bernal was “on a mission” as he climbed the Iseran and attacked powerfully to drop not only Alaphilippe but also his teammate Geraint Thomas, the defending champion.
In the Ineos team meeting before the stage Brailsford said his team had described the Iseran climb as “37 minutes to win the Tour”. “We talked about the inspiration the guys would take from that and said: ‘Right, let’s not finish second or third. Let’s go all in.’” Thomas, meanwhile, accepted Bernal’s status as team leader for the rest of the Tour, saying the Colombian had been “incredible from the start”. “He’s a phenomenal talent,” Thomas said. “We all said last year he’ll win the Tour one day. Maybe we didn’t expect it to be this year but he’s been super strong and, climbing, he’s one of the best here.”
But for most French fans the optimism that fuelled their enthusiasm for this year’s race has been snuffed out. Like strict parents crashing a teenage party, Team Ineos have now put the home nation back in its place by crushing the impetuous Alaphilippe.
Even so, Brailsford had a thought for the hapless Thibaut Pinot, who was filmed sobbing uncontrollably as he pulled over and quit the race with a thigh injury. “He’s been a great contributor to the race and to French cycling,” he said. “I really, really like Thibaut Pinot, I always have. You couldn’t help but watch those images without being really genuinely upset and sorry for him. The French fans can feel really proud of him. Both him and Alaphilippe made the race.”