Froome (Team Sky) slid off on the descent from the penultimate climb of the day and although he was able to continue, he had to struggle up to the summit finish at Saint-Gervais on a team-mate’s bike and crossed the line 36 seconds down on Bardet (Ag2r-La Mondiale) in ninth place.
Advertisement
He also finished second to overall leader Chris Froome in Thursday’s mountain time trial. All three riders were part of an early breakaway.
Despite crashing on Friday, Froome comfortably held onto his lead of more than four minutes over Frenchman Romain Bardet on the rainy 146.5km stage from Megeve to Morzine in the Alps.
Meanwhile Movistar’s Nairo Quintana, third in the GC standings, conceded Froome had proved too good over the Tour’s entirety.
Up until 2016 our team’s focus in the Tour has been on stage wins and attention on the overall has been something that’s existed only in forecast projections with the young talent that we have spent our resources scouting.
Froome crossed the line ninth, 36 seconds behind Bardet, and the 2013 and 2015 victor was soon sporting heavy bandaging on his right knee.
“Right to the last finish line I had a lot of stress and a lot of emotion today”, said the 31-year-old Briton.
“I am okay – I’m lucky nothing is seriously injured”. I think I just hit one of the white lines on the road and lost my front wheel.
Greipel, who pre-Tour was pegged as a favourite for the sprint stages, has been denied any wins so is undoubtedly keen to deliver in Paris.
This short, sharp stage with four categorised climbs was designed for drama but it was when the weather closed in inside the final 50km that the race changed shape.
With the famous yellow jersey ripped to reveal badly grazed skin, a clearly tired Froome managed to limit the damage and was helped in part by nearest general classification rival Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) also crashing.
Geraint Thomas, who handed over his bike to Froome on Friday to let his team leader complete the stage, did the job of guiding the yellow jersey up and over Col de Joux Plane, the final mountain of this year’s Tour.
“I’ve won it three times and I can’t say the novelty is wearing off”. It gave me a breathing space.
Advertisement
Tour director Christian Prudhomme said watching Team Sky was “like watching Paris St Germain, they are so powerful, they always win the championship”. I can fall back on that a little bit and obviously it was great for me to have team-mates all the way up to the finish. “Wout in particular. all the guys”.
