After crashing on stage 19, the British professional cyclist maintained his sizable first-place lead.
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Adam Yates of Orica BikeExchange has had a great ride so far but the young English rider also lost his podium spot on the final climb yesterday with both Quintana and young French stage victor Romain Bardet leapfrogging him in the classification.
Despite his crash, the race leader extended his overall lead to 4 minutes 11 seconds ahead of Bardet, with Movistar’s Nairo Quintana moving into third overall, 16 seconds down on the Frenchman and 9 seconds ahead of Yates, who drops to fourth.
“I lost some skin and banged my knee a little bit but I’m grateful to have that four minute advantage to fall on a little bit”. “Never a quiet day on the Tour”.
A relieved Chris Froome felt he got lucky after a fall in treacherous conditions on stage 19 of the Tour de France did not prove to be costly.
Froome quickly swapped bikes with teammate Geraint Thomas and remounted, but the series of crashes clearly unsettled the contenders’ group.
“It was great to have all the team around me”, said Froome, the 2013 and 2015 champion.
Whilst Froome appears to have had a narrow escape, no less than eight other riders crashed on yesterday’s stage as sudden rainstorms rendered dry summer mountain roads treacherously greasy.
However, his closest rival in the general classifcation, Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo), also crashed and suffered even heavier time losses, which meant Froome ended up stretching his overall lead from 3min 52sec to 4min 11sec.
Yet he was the slowest of the riders placed second through sixth and while Froome has as good as wrapped up overall victory, the fight for a podium finish is set to rage on the next two Alpine stages.
His team announced that he has a broken wrist, and it’s unclear whether or not he’ll be able to race in the Olympics (where he is the favorite to win gold in the individual time trial).
And Froome, who was third in the time-trial in London four years ago behind British teammate Bradley Wiggins and German Tony Martin, believes this time around Dumoulin will be the favourite.
“Right now I’m on a cloud”, Bardet said after posting his second Tour stage win.
“It was not planned but my team pushed me and pushed me”, said Bardet.
Mollema started the stage two minutes, 27 seconds behind Froome but finished 85 seconds adrift and is now nearly four minutes back.
“Tomorrow will be hard, I’m sure I’m going to be a bit sore and stiff from today but hopefully I can rely on my team-mates and just one last push again to get through tomorrow’s stage now”.
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Last year Bardet won stage 18 and then held the climbers’ polkadot jersey after the following stage.
