However, he has retained the yellow jersey after the Tour de France jury revised the results of stage 12.
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Chris Froome vowed to keep fighting for every second after stretching his Tour de France lead on Wednesday’s 11th stage. “You always have to expect the unexpected at the Tour”.
Froome was reduced to running up the mountain after his bike was broken when he, Richie Porte and Bauke Mollema collided with a television bike on the crowded mountain. “The next minute, I went straight over the top of the motorbike. It’s just a mess”, Porte told reporters.
“I’m just enjoying my racing”, Froome said of his tactics.
Froome’s sports director at Sky, Nicolas Portal said: “We’ll wait for the jury’s decision”. I can’t believe what happened out there.
The incident initially seemed to have cost him terribly as Yates was provisionally announced as the new Tour leader with Froome, who had started the day with a 28sec lead over his countryman, trailing down in sixth place at 53sec.
“There will be an investigation to find out why the TV motorbike was blocked and the riders fell”, Prudhomme added.
Froome picked himself up and could not find his bike and so there was the freaky sight of the yellow jersey wearer running up the road.
Froome eventually found a new bike to ride when his team auto caught up to him, but by then the damage was done.
Aiming for his third Tour title in four years, Froome gained time on all of his direct rivals in the overall standings and now leads by 28 seconds from second-placed Adam Yates.
Afterwards, Froome said: “I was asking myself in the last 10 kilometers: is it worth it?”
But the pair were knocked off their bikes near the finish and Froome began running up the hill.
The initial replacement bike was too small for him, so he had to have a third bike taken to him.
There was a lot of action in the early part of the race; the peloton split, leaving Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) and most notably Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) struggling to catch up; but en-route to Ventoux Simon Gerrans misjudged a corner on a descent and crashed taking down Sky’s Ian Stannard with him which allowed the former to bridge the gap.
Briton Froome was with Australian Richie Porte and Bauke Mollema of the Netherlands when all three crashed into a motorcycle that was halted because of fan overcrowding.
It means Froome and Porte were given the same time as Mollema, the first to get up and finish from their group.
Overall leader Chris Froome was the stage victor when the Tour last scaled Ventoux’s barren, 1,909-meter (6,263-foot) peak in 2013.
Colombian rider, Nairo Quintana (Trek-Segafredo), who benefited from the crash, rose to third 0:00:14 behind Yates.
“I don’t want to take the jersey like that”, the 23-year-old Briton said. Yellow jersey and green jersey at the front, it’s unbelievable how the breakaway was formed. “I’d rather take it with my legs and not a crash in a bad situation”.
American Tejay van Garderen, who also got held up in the melee, described the scene as “mayhem”, but criticized his fellow riders for not showing more courtesy in neutralizing the race themselves. “It is what it is”.
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– Stage 12 victor Thomas De Gendt explains the difficulties he had in the final kilometre when riding against Belgian compatirot Pauwels for the victory.
