This has become a tour of extremes. It would be no surprise if, at the end of 3,540km and 21 days of racing, that the yellow jersey had been won and lost solely on gradients of over 10% or more and Chris Froome’s finish today might well be one of the most important of this tour, and perhaps may be seen as the moment that the Briton really put his stake onto this race.
Ahead of him, Sunweb’s Michael Matthews gained a deserved win, rewarding the efforts of his team – who are now having their finest year in recent memory – and also himself, whilst managing to prolong what has returned to an engrossing battle for the Malliot Vert with Marcel Kittel finally out of the equation today.
The Australian, helped brilliantly by Sunweb, was dominant in a sprint that was launched by AG2R’s Oliver Naesen early before Philippe Gilbert took up matters on the front, the Belgian launching a huge push that put the rest of the field in difficulty. The pair had always gone too early however and Greg Van Avermaet sat on his tail, ready to strike. The BMC powerhouse and Paris-Roubaix winner appeared to have made a powerful strike on, but Matthews, who was simply riding too well, with too much confidence and too much power to spare, rounded him to take a well deserved stage win, being able to celebrate and then giving Van Avermaet a taste of the medicine he had dished out to Sagan in 2015.
Behind them Jay MacCarthy was an excellent fifth for Bora-Hansgrove, with Sonny Colbrelli doing well for Team Bahrain-Merida in sixth.
The other big story of the day, however, concerned the yellow jersey, which made it to Chris Froome for the 51st time, taking the Briton one day closer to a fourth title, after Astana’s Fabio Aru, without meaningful support, had found himself on the wrong side of what was a hectic finale, managing to ceded the hard fought advantage he had gained on Peryagudes.
The Italian was presumably dislodged from a prominent position sometime before the final uphill sprint, without the teammates that Froome, Dan Marin and Rigoberto Uran had for the finish. They occupied seventh to ninth whilst Tiesj Benoot of Lotto Soudal rounded out the top 10.
The key change was that of the yellow jersey, with Froome gaining all of the time he had lost – and then more. He told Cyclingnews: “It’s a very nice surprise. I never thought I'd get the jersey back on a stage like today, thanks to my teammates for keeping me in front, Kwiatkowski did a great job. The team always stayed very close front, and taking 20 seconds is enormous, it’s the same as Peyragudes. Every second counts. It's a fight for every second this year."
At the end of the day Froome led the race by 19 seconds, having taken back the race lead and then 25 seconds from Aru, to leave the battle for the yellow jersey as tightly balanced as ever with 29 seconds separating the first four of Froome, Aru, Bardet and Rigoberto Uran.
The Italians around Aru, it must be said, were philosophical. Guiseppe Martinelli told The Observer’s William Fotheringham: If Sky ride only for Froome and keep Landa back, that’s good for us, we can base our race on Froome; if they keep two plates spinning – Froome and Landa – it gets complicated.”
The rest of this tour is about to get, very, very complicated.
