Tour de France 2023: Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne - Grand Colombier

 

 Today's stage was another hilly chaotic stage. A win occurring from the breakaway after an extremely fast start and some action by the yellow jersey contenders prior to the Alps. This would result in Cofidis second stage win this year and a second victory by a Basque rider.

Route Description: The thirteenth stage was from Chatillon-sur-Chalaronne to Grand Colombier over 138 km. The route ran thru the Ain department into the Jura mountains and up the Grand Colombier climb, an HC rated climb, with its steep section of 12% gradient and the notorious exposed hair pin curves on the ridge line.The route started running along the flat sections of road in the Ain. In the second half of this short stage came an un-categorized climb that included the sprint location. After a descent and traverse of the valley the last 17 km of the stage were the climb of the Grand Colombier.

Race Summary and Analysis:This stage featured a fast start over a flat parcours with a steep mighty climb at the end. The start included attempts to get a breakaway that would hold a lead over the peloton. The combination of a headwind, flat roads, attacks, and counterattacks made the job of forming a breakaway nearly impossible. Eventually a breakaway would form26 km into the stage. The breakaway consisted of 19 riders Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos Grenadiers), Alberto Bettiol, James Shaw (EF Education-EasyPost), Kasper Asgreen (Soudal-Quick Step), Matej Mohoric, Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious), Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek), Adrien Petit, Mike Teunissen, Georg Zimmerman (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), Nelson Oliveira (Movistar), Hugo Houle (Israel-PremierTech), Luca Mozzato (Arkea-Samsic), Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny), Cees Bol, Harold Tejada (Astana), Anthon Charmig (Uno-X), Pierre Latour (TotalEnergies). They would even gain a lead of 3'55" at the bottom of the Grand Colombier. The breakaway started on the massive climb to the finish line and within the first kilometer Quentin Pacher attacked the breakaway. The French rider was attempting to win the stage on Bastille Day, their national holiday equivalent to Independence day. He would be caught by Tejada, Van Gils, and Shaw 12.9 km from the line. Michal Kwiatkowski would come from behind the four riders who had just regrouped at the front of the race and pass them without any hesitation. He set a pace that was fast enough to hold off the other riders and even the yellow jersey contenders who were catching members of the breakaway all over the slopes of the climb. He eventually got a 42 second lead on the first chase group which he would not relinquish until he crossed the finish line for the stage win. Meanwhile in the peloton the pace had picked up with all the GC contender teams lining up their riders as if a sprint finish was going to be adjudicated. Once the climb began for the peloton UAE started setting the pace that dwindled the group down to only the climbers. It was noticeable to see that Jumbo-Visma did not have many of its riders next to Jonas Vingegaard. Wout Van Aert was dropped very early on the climb without having done any pace setting. Eventually the group of contenders dwindled down to Adam Yates and Tadej Pogacar of UAE-Emirates, Jonas Vingegaard and Sepp Kuss of Jumbo-Visma, Tom Pidcock and Carlos Rodriguez of Ineos-Grenadiers, Jai Hendley of Bora Hansgrohe, Simon Yates of Jayco-AlUla, and David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ. At approximately 2km to the line Adam Yates attacked the group gain a small amount of separation. Sepp Kuss responded to this attack by chasing him down and dragged Pogacar and Vingegaard with him. Most of the other contenders were able to follow, but David Gaudu was among the riders who were dropped by the sudden acceleration.  Pogacar would attack at 400 meters from the line and pass several breakaway riders to take third place on the stage to get a small time bonus. Vingegaard followed the acceleration sprinting uphill to keep up with Pogacar. He would eventually cede several seconds at the line in addition to the time bonus. Vingegaard leads by nine seconds over Pogacar at the end of the stage. The question that can be reasonably asked is whether all the uphill sprint efforts committed by Pogacar to get the time bonuses and small time gains will wear him out and leave him vulnerable to a massive time loss over the next two brutal alpine stages. Vingegaard has thus far been much more defensive in all the climbing stages other than stage 5 in to Laruns. It will be interesting to see if Jumbo-Visma has a plan similar to last year's Col du Grannon stage that could put multiple minutes of time gap between the yellow jersey and Pogacar.