Geraint Thomas reversed the narrative in the Tour de France, leading home the main contenders with a resurgent performance in the first summit finish of the 2019 race on the gravel road to La Planche des Belles Filles in the Vosges mountains. When Alaphilippe went clear at 800 metres to go, I had the confidence to let him go and ride my own tempo and drive it all the way to the line.” Ahead of him an exhausted Giulio Ciccone, already a stage winner in this year’s Girod’Italia, took the maillot jaune from Alaphilippe’s shoulders to lead the Tourby six seconds, despite being beaten to the line for the stage win by breakaway companion Dylan Teuns of Belgium. While Thomas, Alaphilippe and local hero Thibaut Pinot, widely seen this year as a potential winner rather than a mere contender, powered clear to the finish line, they also opened clear daylight on rivals such as Quintana, Jakob Fuglsang and Mikel Landa, who paid for his earlier attack halfway up the seven kilometreclimb. Pinot, who lives about 15 kilometres from the climb, has already drawn high praise from Ineos sports director Nicolas Portal. “He’s areal contender for the overall win.” Further back, it was a bad day at the ‘Bench of the Beautiful Girls’ for several of Thomas and Bernal’s biggest rivals with riders such as Vincenzo Nibali, Porte, Fabio Aru and Romain Bardet, steadily losing touch with their hopes of a high placing in Paris. “I’m still very motivated for this Tour but I have to try to understand what happened and why I was stuck like that.” However, Thomas is separated by only 35 seconds from Adam Yates, with Bernal,Pinot, Michael Woods, Rigoberto Uran, and Fuglsang all sandwiched between them. The fearsome climb, appearing for the fourth time and extended this year by a kilometre, has alwaysbeenpivotal in past Tours, with the yellow jersey wearer after the stage going onto win in Paris in the 2012, 2014 and 2017 races through Bradley Wiggins,Vincenzo Nibali andChrisFroomerespectively.
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