Tour de France 2017: Stage 18

Tour de France 2017: Stage 18

by Katie Haskins

Stage type: Road Race –Mountains with mountain top finish

Length: 17935 km/111.5 miles

Route: Briancon to Izoard

Today’s race started with a four rider breakaway but were caught fairly quickly. The breakaway then became 54 riders at about 154 km/102.4 miles to go. The peloton would slowly let the gap to this group grow.

The first climb was the Cote Demoiselles Coiffees. A Category 3, 3.9 km long climb with 574 ft in elevation gain, an avg. gradient of 5.2%, and a max gradient of 9.8%. Not too bad by this race’s standards. Nothing very interesting happens during this climb. The peloton is six minutes behind when they go over the top. Seven riders split off the front, but they’re caught with 1 km to go until the sprint point. It’s now eight minutes to the peloton.

With 4 km to go until the next climb, the front group splits in half. The 2^nd climb of the day was the Col de Vars. It’s a Category 1, 9.3 km long climb, with 2037 ft of elevation gain, 7.5% avg. gradient, and a max gradient of 12.7%. The peloton is starting to bring their gap back. The front group splits farther so that it’s a group of four about a minute ahead of 22 riders and the peloton about six minutes behind. At 28.4 km/17.6 miles left, it’s eight riders in the leading group and the peloton is almost five minutes behind.

We finally get to the final climb and the mountain top finish. The Col D’Izoard. It’s an HC climb, 14.1 km long, with 3307 ft elevation gain, 7.3% avg. gradient, and a max of 12.3%. The maximum gradient is near the top, so it gets harder the farther you go. The leader of the race changes, at the bottom of the climb it’s Lusenko, but he’s caught and passed by Atapuma. Meanwhile, back in the yellow jersey group, AG2R tries to drop Chris Froome, but ends up dropping Fabio Aru. Rigoberto Uran stays on the wheel, Mikel Landa goes up the road, Froome attacks on the slight descent and brings Romain Bardet and Uran with him back up to Landa. At this point, 1.8 km to go, Warren Barguil has caught and passed Atapuma and is about 30 seconds ahead of Froome’s group and a minute ahead of Aru.

Barguil wins in 4:40:33 and clinches his KOM jersey.

This is the current leader board.