Norwegian sprinter Alexander Kristoff took his first Tour de France victory, winning the bunch sprint into Saint-Etienne on stage 12. It was another crushing defeat for Peter Sagan who has come second place four times this Tour and has yet to win a stage. For a sprinter, second place is just as good as last pace. For the rest of us, this would be a dream come true.
Today was a mildly exciting stage before the fireworks tomorrow on stage 13. It’s the first big mountain stage of this year’s Tour with the riders set to cover 198km towards the summit finish at Chamrousse. The final HC climb is 18.2km long with an average gradient of 7.3% with two other climbs preceding it (see stage 13 profile here). This should begin to settle the General Classification and we’ll see who’s on top, and who will be fighting for scraps over the next half of the tour.
Read the full race report and results from Stage 12 of the 2014 Tour de France here.
Enjoy the photos from stage 12 courtesy of BrakeThrough Media (follow on Instagram and Twitter) and Cor Vos. More to come…
- A group of five riders was formed after ten kilometers of racing, including Sebastian Langeveld (Garmin-Sharp) who initiated the breakaway, as well as Gregory Rast (Trek), Simon Clarke (Orica-GreenEdge), David De La Cruz (NetApp-Endura) and Florian Vachon (Bretagne-Séché Environnement). Unfortunately De La Cruz heavily crashed out at 90km remaining going around a corner and broke his collarbone. It was his first Tour de France.
- Simon Clarke had escaped from his remaining breakaway companions on the final category 4 climb. At the bottom of the climb Perrig Quémeneur and Cyril Gautier (Europcar) caught Clarke and worked together until 5km away from the finish when they were swamped by the peloton.
- A crash with 3.4km remaining saw Andre Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) lose his chance of victory, the German remonstrating with Sylvain Chavanel (IAM) shortly afterwards, suggesting the Frenchman had caused the incident.
- This is the first Tour de France stage win for Alexander Kristoff . The Norwegian claimed Milan-San Remo earlier this year.
- Peter Sagan comes in second place yet again. So far this Tour he’s placed in the top 10, 9 times.
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- Vincenzo Nibali finishes safely in yellow and Richie Porte still in second. Tomorrow’s stage 13 will feature the first HC climb and summit finish in Chamrousse which could see a shuffle of the GC deck.
- Andre Greipel comes in almost 6 minutes back after his crash at 3.4km remaining. It was quite remarkable that Greipel made it over the final climb (Cote de Grammond) while the likes of Kittel and Renshaw were dropped.
- Koen de Kort’s newest addition to his tattoo - the tiger attacking the gladiators!
- The significance behind Koen’s tattoo is that it comes from this thoughts after a nasty crash he had after E3 Prijs Vlaanderen – Harelbeke in 2012. He was questioning why he keeps sacrificing himself for this sport and came to the conclusion that it’s no different than the entertainment that the ancient gladiators used to provide. The tatoo covers his scars from that crash.