Tour de France | Richard Carapaz wins stage 17 solo

(Superdévoluy) After a completely crazy day, Richard Carapaz completed the first victorious breakaway in ten days in the Tour de France, Wednesday in Superdévoluy, where Jonas Vingegaard showed signs of weakness.

For once, the favourites were not at the front of the race after having ended up offering exit vouchers in spades during this 17^e stage that half of the peloton had checked off.

But that didn’t stop them from going to war once again on the difficult Col du Noyer, the penultimate climb of the day, where Tadej Pogacar once again left everyone behind.

“I really enjoyed the climb and I wanted to test my legs, see if they were still good,” explained the Slovenian after breaking away from a small yellow jersey group that was several minutes behind the breakaways.

Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, initially dropped, managed to come back on the descent.

But the battle royale resumed on the gentler slopes towards Superdévoluy and this time it was the Belgian rider who accelerated to finally regain twelve seconds on Vingegaard.

“When we entered the descent, I still had good legs. I made the jump on (his teammate) Jan Hirt and he took me until the last kilometer and after that I gave it my all,” said Evenepoel.

Incorrigible, Pogacar, who remained calmly in the wheel of the Dane, attacked him in the last few metres to also pick up two seconds, which are always good to take.

Vingegaard “stuck”

Overall, the Slovenian now has a 3:11 lead over Vingegaard and a 5:09 lead over Evenepoel.

But more than in the ranking, the damage is likely to be in the mind of the double title holder who sees the world time trial champion come back to less than two minutes.

“Jonas got stuck but we can’t draw any conclusions after a climb like that. These are very short, very explosive efforts and we know that it suits Tadej very well,” said Christophe Laporte, who, having survived the breakaway, had waited for his leader with Tiesj Benoot and Wout Van Aert to “bring him back and save everything.”

Carapaz had already crossed the line more than seven minutes earlier, after a fantastic comeback on the first breakaways followed by a solitary raid of thirteen kilometers from the Col du Noyer.

“The truth is that it was a very hard day. There were attacks, attacks and attacks all the time. At the end there was this very large group that came out and I knew that I had to move from this group that was too big. It’s a wonderful victory,” he commented.

This is the first stage victory on the Grande Boucle for the EF Education rider, who thus completes his collection on the major Tours and further expands an already extensive list of achievements, including a Giro d’Italia in 2019 and an Olympic champion title in Tokyo.

The molt of Carapaz

Two weeks ago, the climber from El Carmelo wore the yellow jersey for a day before dropping it to Pogacar in the Galibier stage, where he lost all his chances of playing for the general classification this year.

He then turned into a stage hunter, showing great activity but failing to materialise in a Tour locked down by the favourites and the sprinters since the stage of the white paths on 7 July.

“The goal at the start was the general classification, but (after the Galibier) we knew it was over. Winning a stage means a lot. It’s the biggest race in the world. Only the best are here,” he said.

The first Ecuadorian to win the Tour, Carapaz finished 37 seconds ahead of Briton Simon Yates, followed by the arrival of dozens of riders who had broken away at one point or another during this completely wild day, “a junior race for 120 km,” according to Pogacar.

Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma team was particularly active, sending several riders to the front. Perhaps to try to serve as a relay for an attack by their leader. In the end, they mainly allowed him to limit the damage, before the Herculean labors of the coming days.