Necessary calm day preceeds more hills in TDF’s third weekend
20 July 2018

Tour de France (st. 13)

Landa -6th overall-, Quintana (8th) and Movistar Team stay away from trouble en route to Valence, look forward to difficult finishes on Saturday (Mende) and Sunday (Pic de Nore before final descent to Carcassonne).

The Movistar Team had no troubles to get its main GC references unscathed through Friday’s post-Alps stage in the 2018 Tour de France, a 169.5km from Bourg d’Oisans to Valence where World Champion Peter Sagan (BOH) claimed his third stage win in this year’s race.

Helped out brilliantly by the Blues’ two rouleurs in the race, the expert Daniele Bennati and Imanol Erviti, it was a ride with no incidents for Mikel Landa and Nairo Quintana to climb one place further up in the standings -now 6th and 8th, respectively-, taking over the place left by Vincenzo Nibali (TBM), whose crash during Thursday’s Alpe d’Huez climb made the Italian not start today.

The ‘Grande Boucle’ will face its only Massif Central route on Saturday, finishing at the Mende aerodrome -188km from Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux- after the traditional climb to the Col de la Croix-Neuve (Cat-3; 3km at 10.2% average). A tough end to stage 14 which, combined with the Pic de Nore (Cat-1), 40km from Carcassonne on Sunday, will make for a pretty demanding third weekend in the TDF.

REACTIONS:

Mikel Landa:I felt a little bit better than yesterday. I don’t know if it was a result of the faster pace, the shorter route, the easier profile – even if I still suffered with back pain and I could have struggled if we got through any significant climbs today, I feel more optimistic about my condition. Hopefully I can forget about my back tomorrow and focus on moving on and improve my result. Let’s see how things go during the stage tomorrow, and how the climb to Mende unfolds. It will be a difficult finish, even more so considering we’re on stage 14 into the race. There could be some surprises. It should not suit me bad, so I hope I can do well.

Nairo Quintana: “It was a very fast start, more than we expected, but all in all, it was a calm race today. Hopefully this brings us some extra recovery before the weekend’s climbs. I feel in good health and spirits, and I want to continue doing things well in Mende. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.”

Picture (c): BettiniPhoto.net