Tour de France 2016: Stage 7

By
published

January 1 - July 24, L'Isle-Jourdain, France, Road - WorldTour

Refresh

Live coverage of stage 7 of the Tour de Frace, 162.5 kilometres from L'Isle-Jourdain to La de Payolle.

 

The bluff and counter bluff of the Tour de France's opening exchanges gives way to the arid truth of the high mountains as the peloton faces into three defining - if not necessarily decisive - days in the Pyrenees, starting with today's leg over the Col d'Aspin to Lac de Payolle. The concluding 7-kilometre descent should temper some of the Aspin's sting, though not all. Certainly, ASO will have designed the route expressly hoping that, unlike in 2013 or 2015, the first high mountain in the Pyrenees won't all but end the race as a contest.

The peloton is assembling at the start in L'Isle-Jourdain. Roll out is at 13.10 local time, with the offical start due five minutes later, at 13.15. After travelling the relatively flat roads that straddle the departments of Gets and Haute Garonne, the terrain becomes increasingly rugged later in the day. The category 4 Cote de Capvern, with 45 kilometres remaining, signals the beginning of real hostilities. There is sure to be a fearsome pace in the peloton from there to the base of the Col d'Aspin. 12 kilometres in length, at an average gradient of 6.5%, the 1490m-high pass should provide the first major selection of this Tour de France.

Despite his hefty 5:11 lead on GC, Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) sets out expecting to lose his maillot jaune this afternoon, though less talented riders than the Belgian have defended narrower leads on tougher Pyrenean stages than this one over the years. The upper reaches of the general classification look like this:

Remarkably, all 198 starters of this Tour remain in the race as it sets out on the first mountain stage. This is the first time in Tour history that not a single rider has abandoned by this juncture.

The peloton is pedalling beneath bright sunshine as it makes its way through the neutralised zone ahead of kilometre zero. 

162km remaining from 162km

A dozen riders slip up the road in the opening two kilometres, including green jersey Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) and world champion Peter Sagan (Tinkoff). The day's intermediate sprint, incidentally, is at Sarrancolin, just 27 kilometres from the finish and only eight from the base of the Col d'Aspin.

158km remaining from 162km

154km remaining from 162km

148km remaining from 162km

It's interesting to see that Nairo Quintana (Movistar), Fabio Aru (Astana), Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) and Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) all have teammates in this early escape. Chris Froome, by contrast, is surrounded by the entirety of his Sky team in the main peloton.

140km remaining from 162km

It's been a rapid start to proceedings this afternoon and we can expect an equally fast finish on the quick descent off the Col d'Aspin, as Warren Barguil explains here.

135km remaining from 162km

Greg Van Avermaet's BMC team have been absent from the front of the peloton thus far and with good reason - the highest placed rider in the break is Jarlinson Pantano, but the Colombian is some 13:22 off Van Avermaet's maillot jaune.

126km remaining from 162km

This is, of course, the first - and, on paper, most benign - installment of a troika of tough stages in the Pyrenees. The race dips a toe into the Circle of Death this afternoon on the Col d'Aspin, before tackling the Tourmalet and Peyresourde en route to Luchon tomorrow. A demanding leg to Andorra Arcalis follows on Sunday, and Stephen Farrand previews the long weekend of action here.

122km remaining from 162km

120km remaining from 162km

The gap drops to within 20 seconds and the break is beginning to fragment.

Suddenly the peloton is upon the break. Roy, Benedetti and Navardauskas are not be deterred, however, and they forge on ahead, while Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data) bridges across to them.

119km remaining from 162km

The question now, of course, is whether there'll be a period of respite, or if another group of willing attackers will take up the reins once again.

113km remaining from 162km

110km remaining from 162km

109km remaining from 162km

107km remaining from 162km

And it really is quite remarkable that a yellow jersey who already leads the second-placed rider by more than five minutes has now been permitted to join a large break and build up a lead of two minutes over the peloton. Van Avermaet is now more than 7 minutes ahead of Alaphilippe on the road...

103km remaining from 162km

99km remaining from 162km

94km remaining from 162km

After the serene blue skies at the start, clouds are gathering over the break, and thunder showers are forecast by the time they hit the Col d'Aspin later in the afternoon.

91km remaining from 162km

Chris Froome and Sky all but decided the 2013 and 2015 Tours on the first day in the Pyrenees, but the defending champion has suggested that the weekend's two mammoth mountain stages would be more important this time out. “We have to keep in mind that tomorrow and Sunday are going to be very selective days,” Froome said at the start. “The descent of the Col d’Aspin is pretty straightforward from what I can see. But it sounds like there’s going to be rain in the final, which will always make it more nervous.

Ian Stannard sets the tempo in the main peloton for Team Sky, which trails the break by 5:35. Quintana's Movistar guard maintain a watching brief near the front.

87km remaining from 162km

The road flattens out and Cancellara puts his hand to his radio earpiece. Luca Guercilena and Dirk Demol appear to have asked him to cool the jets. Cancellara sits up and the 29-rider group is reunited, now almost six minutes clear of the peloton.

Movistar have begun to collaborate with Sky at the head of the peloton, while BMC can afford to sit in the wheels around Tejay van Garderen and Richie Porte. Van Avermaet's unconventional method of defending the yellow jersey is paying a dividend for his leaders here.

Today doesn’t look on paper to be the decisive Pyrenean stage but it’s the Tour so who knows what can happen,” Porte said with perhaps inadvertent foresight at the start. “I’ll sit tight on the Aspin and see.”

80km remaining from 162km

Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), who began the day 14 minutes down in the general classification, is riding very smoothly in this break and though the Sicilian was dropped in the Massif Central on Wednesday, his pedalling didn't seem too laboured at the time. The climb of the Col d'Aspin and its sweeping descent ought to be to his liking.

77km remaining from 162km

Luke Rowe leads the long line of Sky riders at the head of the peloton, with Froome tucked in 7th position. A delegation from BMC is queued up behind him.

67km remaining from 162km

Cannondale have three riders in this break - Alex Howes, Matti Breschel and Sebastian Langeveld - though the team's overriding objective in this race is a tilt at the general classification with Pierre Rolland. The Frenchman has enjoyed a flawless opening week and hits the foot of the Pyrenees in the same time as Froome and Quintana, 5:17 off the maillot jaune of Van Avermaet.

61km remaining from 162km

57km remaining from 162km

53km remaining from 162km

Even after this ascent, the road continues to rise more or less all the way to the base of the Col d'Aspin. The long false flat and heavy roads mean that we should see riders shelled off the back of the peloton even before the Aspin begins in earnest, particularly is Sky and Movistar ratchet up the pace on the run-in.

For now, Ian Stannard is content to set a steady tempo at the head of the peloton for Team Sky, and Movistar, BMC et al are happy to leave him to it.

50km remaining from 162km

Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) sits buried deep within the peloton. As the truism goes, we probably won't find out who will win the Tour this afternoon - but we'll get a fair idea of whether Contador can't. Beset by crashes, the Spaniard has endured a trying opening week and he reaches the mountains already 1:22 behind Froome and Quintana. He really can't afford any further slip-ups and this is what he had to say ahead of today's stage.

46km remaining from 162km

45km remaining from 162km

Nibali relents shortly after the summit and the break tackles the very brief descent that follows. The road will then rise gently from here until the base of the Col d'Aspin.

43km remaining from 162km

42km remaining from 162km

38km remaining from 162km

Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) has seen enough and takes matters in hand.The yellow jersey accelerates in a bid to bridge across to the three escapees. Howes is locked onto his wheel, while behind, the rest of this 29-man move is beginning to fragment.

Before Van Avermaet's move, Steve Cummings (Dimension Data) had already accelerated in pursuit of the three leaders, and the Briton impressively bridges across. With every passing day, his absence from the British Olympic team becomes all the more inexplicable. 

35km remaining from 162km

Vasil Kiryienka, incidentally, has sat up and is now among the Sky contingent leading the chase at the head of the peloton, where you sense some riders are already adopting the brace position. The pace will be ferocious on the approach to the Col d'Aspin.

30km remaining from 162km

28km remaining from 162km

26km remaining from 162km

25km remaining from 162km

23km remaining from 162km

21km remaining from 162km

You get the distinct impression that Cummings wanted to begin the Col d'Aspin with a head start on Nibali, and the canny Briton is notoriously difficult to bring back once he establishes a lead. 

19km remaining from 162km

The yellow jersey group hits the base of the climb 32 seconds down on Cummings, and Nibali immediately hits the front and lays down a brisk tempo.

Howes, Impey, Van Avermaet and Navarro are the only riders who can follow Nibali's forcing on these lower slopes. Cummings' gap falls slightly to 27 seconds but the Briton is resisting.

Back in the main peloton, meanwhile, FDJ have begun to set the pace in support of Thibaut Pinot and the speed is skyrocketing. 

16km remaining from 162km

4:35 down the road, French champion Arthur Vichot leads the peloton onto the base of the Aspin and lays down a very brisk tempo.

16km remaining from 162km

15km remaining from 162km

Back in the main peloton, Warren Barguil (Giant-Alpecin) attacks alone and opens a small gap. Sky and Movistar seem happy to leave the pace-making to FDJ for now.

14km remaining from 162km

Barguil's attack fizzles out and he is pegged back by the FDJ-led peloton.

13km remaining from 162km

As the gradient bites, Van Avermaet continues alone, a minute down on Cummings. The main peloton is 4:23 back.

12km remaining from 162km

There has been no real selection in the main peloton as yet. Froome, Quintana, Contador and all of the main contenders are safely aboard and the group is a sizable one.

11km remaining from 162km

11km remaining from 162km

Navarro comes through and does a turn on the front of the chasing group. The road straightens out on these upper reaches of the Aspin, and they can see Cummings in front of him, but the gap is just shy of a minute.

The peloton remains 4:33 down on Cummings, and there seems a general air of detente among the contenders, though it's notable that Pinot is positioned at the rear of the group and appears quite laboured in his pedalling.

10km remaining from 162km

Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) has been dropped by the large group of favourites and he looks to be in real trouble. As Irish footballer-cum-pundit Keith Andrews would put it, Pinot looks like he's been caught on the travelator in Gladiators. It will be difficult to recover from this.

9km remaining from 162km

8km remaining from 162km

Navarro accelerates from the chasing group and Nibali tries to follow but then sits heavily into his saddle. The Sicilian has cracked, and is unable even to follow Daryl Impey's wheel as he bobs past.

7km remaining from 162km

7km remaining from 162km

Meanwhile, Julian Alaphilippe (Etixx-QuickStep) accelerates from the main peloton and zooms across to Pozzovivo.

A flagging Nibali crests the summit of the Col d'Aspin, all hopes of a stage win long gone even before he launches into the descent. A battling Van Avermaet is the fourth man across the top, and he knows that every pedal stroke is bringing him closer to another day in yellow.

Pozzovivo and Alaphilippe have been pegged back by the Sky-led peloton within sight of the summit, and the increase in pace has done for Warren Barguil, who has been distanced.

Dan Martin sprints away to take the mountains points at the front of the peloton, but they are four minutes down on Cummings, who has this stage win in the bag.

3km remaining from 162km

2km remaining from 162km

1km remaining from 162km

It seems as though all of the podium contenders crested the top of the Aspin together, with the exception of the struggling Pinot and Barguil.

Steve Cummings (Dimension Data) wins stage 7 of the Tour de France at Lac de Payolle. Dimension Data have won four of the seven stages to date.

Daryl Impey (Orica-Bike Exchange) wins the sprint for second place ahead of Dani Navarro (Cofidis), 1:06 down on Cummings.

Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) is still some way short of his best, and he has to settle for fourth on the stage, 2:13 down.

Dramatic scenes at the flamme rouge, meanwhile, as the inflatable air bridge collapses just as the peloton passes the kilometre to go marker. It's not clear if any riders were knocked off by that incident, but they were all held up and one imagines that the commissaires willhave to neutralise the final kilometre of racing.

Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) came home 3:05 down to retain the yellow jersey. Froome, Quintana et al came home 4:30 down, but we understand the times for GC today will be taken from the 3km to go point.

A dejected Pinot crosses the line more than seven minutes down and three minutes behind Froome et al. His time will be taken from the 3km to go point, of course, but by any measure, his hopes of overall victory have vanished. Had FDJ not set the tempo on the lower slopes of the Aspin, one would assume Pinot was suffering from illness. The FDJ team bus will be a major point of congregation for reporters at the finish line.

Result:

A replay of the flamme rouge incident, meanwhile, shows that Adam Yates (Orica-Bike Exchange) was the rider knocked off by the collapsing airbridge. 

General classification after stage 7:

As he waits to mount the podium, Steve Cummings talks the world through his stage victory in the most matter of fact fashion. “I wasn’t confident in that group with Navarro and Nibali, but Navarro went off the front, I said it was great, because he would cook himself before the climb. I said I’d go in front with Navarro and then put pressure on them to chase behind,” Cummings says. “But I thought I might cook myself actually. I was riding on the flat quite a lot and Nibali had a teammate so he might have had an easier ride to the climb. But the climb was 5 or 6 percent and that’s good for my characteristics. And when you’re on the limit and in a chase you never trust anyone except your own teammates – and sometimes not even them. So I just carried on, as you do.”

Adam Yates' bike ended up on top of the deflated flamme rouge banner, and the Briton crossed the finish line with a cut to his chin. We'll have a further update on Yates' injuries in due course.

While many fancied Van Avermaet to hold his yellow jersey this afternoon, not even he would dreamed that he might extend his lead. He explains that his presence in the break of the day was not premeditated. “It was a bit strange because they kept attacking early on so I wanted to take the pressure off my team and go in the break myself. I think it was the smart decision. They didn’t have to work today and we kept the jersey.”

While Quintana, Froome, Dan Martin and Fabio Aru remain locked on the same time, 6:42 down on Van Avermaet, Pinot's disastrous afternoon sees him slip to 26th overall, 9:39 off the lead and almost three minutes off where he ought to be at this juncture. 

Warren Barguil, meanwhile, who attacked at the base of the Aspin and was then slightly distanced near the summit, managed to bridge back up on the descent, and he lies 7th overall this evening and he remains on the same time as Froome, Quintana et al.

Pinot has struggled in the heat before and that perhaps partly explained his travails this afternoon. Little wonder the Frenchman is so keen to test himself at the rather cooler Giro d'Italia, though it remains to be seen if sponsor FDJ will allow it... For now, his team have tweeted this picture and the message "Courage champion, better days will come."

Here's some more from Steve Cummings after the finish. His fellow adopted Tuscan Stephen Farrand will have the full story from the Dimension Data camp in due course. “Of all my victories, I think it's the best one," Cumming says. "The Tour is the Tour, it's special. I didn't need to win a stage this year. I had a different condition from last year as I started the Tour riding for Mark [Cavendish] who is such a winner and an inspiration. It's brilliant, it's fantastic."

Cummings has been in the business of managing leads since the last century, of course. All the way back in the spring of 1999, he won the Eddie Soens Handicap Race as a 17-year-old, the first junior winner in the history of the event. But Nibali and co really shouldn’t have needed to have been Cycling Weekly readers in the 1990s to realise that giving him a head start was a bad idea...

We understand that Michael Morkov (Katusha) has crossed the line inside the time limit, meaning that all 198 riders still remain in the Tour de France after seven stages. This is the first time in the history of the Tour that there have been no abandons or eliminations by this point.

Vincenzo Nibali won the combativity prize today for dragging Navarro and Impey almost all of the way up the Aspin in pursuit of Cummings, and he was magnanimous in his praise for the victor afterwards. "Cummings did well to anticipate our return. He told me after the race that he did it because he was scared of me. It wasn't easy to read this race," Nibali said, according to Letour.fr. "I made the right breakaway and I did quite well I think. I'm looking for my best shape and I hope to have fun during this Tour. I haven't stopped smiling even though I lost some time the other day. I know I can have a good Tour de France even after having won the Giro d'Italia. The first goal is to have a good final GC with Fabio Aru. He's in a great shape.”

Some remarkable statistics from the Tour de France's live data, provided by Dimension Data. Cummings averaged 22.1 kph on the Col d'Aspin, barely slower than the pace managed by the main peloton behind, who clocked 22.2kph. Nibali, by contrast, faded on the climb to average 21kph, while Van Avermaet - a classics man in unfamiliar terrain - managed 20kph. 

Thibaut Pinot was direct when he spoke to the press outside the FDJ bus a short time ago. The Pyrenean nightmares of 2013 and 2015 have repeated themselves. “I simply didn't have the legs. There's no need to look for an excuse. That’s three times that I’ve come to the Pyrenees and lost ground. That's it,” he said. “It's a season that’s almost gone up in smoke. The Tour is the highlight of the season and now on the first mountain stage, the objective is dead. We'll see what happens tomorrow, but if it's like today, there won't be any surprise. After two kilometres of the Aspin I realized I was not at my best."

Thanks for joining our live coverage this afternoon on an intriguing day of racing at the Tour de France. A full report, results and pictures are available here, and all of the news and reaction from the first day in the Pyrenees will follow on Cyclingnews.

We now understand that the commissaires have corrected the results to reflect that Adam Yates was ahead of the peloton when he was struck by the falling banner at the 1km to go mark. That means that Yates will move up to second overall, 6:35 behind Greg Van Avermaet, and will wear the white jersey tomorrow instead of Julian Alaphilippe - who had already been presented with today's maillot blanc during the podium ceremonies.

ASO have still to release the full, corrected standings, but they have now confirmed that Yates will wear the white jersey tomorrow and has been elevated to second place overall, behind Van Avermaet.

Thanks for joining our live coverage this afternoon on an intriguing day of racing at the Tour de France. A full report, results and pictures are available here, and all of the news and reaction from the first day in the Pyrenees will follow on Cyclingnews.

Latest on Cyclingnews