2015 Tour de France Stage 10 Results & Recap
Stage 10 of the 2015 Tour de France is in the books. The final results and standings are below, followed by our recap of how the race unfolded.
Race Recap
Froome crushes competition in first major summit finish
Chris Froome dropped a high explosive onto 2015 Tour de France, going on the attack from the select group of favourites on the first major summit finish at La Pierre-Saint-Martin and putting more than a minute into Nairo Quintana (Movistar), who was beaten for second on the stage by Richie Porte (Sky).
"I’m at a loss for words. That was unbelievable," Froome said after his conquest. "I couldn’t believe it when I asked the guys to push hard a little bit and we were hearing on the radio that the big names were getting dropped. It was textbook from the team, the guys rode such a good race. I’m over the moon to be able to finish it off for them."
Froome put even more time into Tejay van Garderen (BMC), Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) and defending champion Vincenzo NIbali (Astana), who was the first of the fab five dropped. Van Garderen put in a solid display to finish 10th on the stage and keep second place, albeit now down 2:52 on Froome.
"I don’t think today was my best day, but it wasn’t all bad," van Garderen said. "I’m still keeping a good GC position, and, yeah, I think the first mountain day is always tricky. We’ve done almost two weeks without climbing any real mountains, so it can be kind of a shock to the system, especially after a rest day. I feel like it should go better from here, and I’m definitely still happy with where we’re sitting."
Just as in the opening portion of the race, Froome was the best of the pre-race favourites, and his attack with 6.5km from the summit dealt a devastating blow to his rivals.
Quintana was the only rider with Froome and teammate Porte when the attack was made, but even he slipped back to lose just over a minute. He did enough, however, to move into third overall, now 3:09 from the maillot jaune.
Nibali, who was already 2:22 behind on the GC at the start of the day, saw his hopes of a title defense fly out the window as he was dropped early and shelled a further 4:50.
The final member of the Fab Four, Contador, was one of many victims of the pre-selection that preceded Froome’s attack, and came across the line 2:50 down.
"I didn’t feel great at all today," Contador said. "I couldn’t really breathe very well and if you can’t breathe then you can’t feel your legs and as a consequence I couldn’t really feel good. I did not feel good at all today, it just wasn’t my day today. I usually go well on those sorts of days but it just didn’t go well."
How it unfolded
The stage was rolling all the way to the start of the hors-catégorie Pierre-Saint-Martin, a 15km long climb with an average gradient of 7.4 per cent. It was Movistar who were on the front from the start and the ferocity of the tempo manifested itself in Nibali, Rigoberto Urán, Joaquim Rodriguez, Thibaut Pinot, and Jean-Christophe Péraud all being dropped early.
The front group was already considerably thinned by the time Sky hit the front as the gradients rose above 10 per cent on the steepest middle section of the climb. Yet it was Quintana’s teammate Alejandro Valverde who threw the cat among the pigeons, with a double dig that appeared to leave Froome in slight difficulty.
He must have been bluffing, though, as he held on while Contador, van Garderen, Pierre Rolland, Adam Yates, and other members of that 15-strong elite group lost contact. Alone with Quintana and Porte, Froome wasted no time making his move and ploughed up the mountainside to take a stranglehold on the yellow jersey and leave the rest of the field stunned and thoroughly demoralised.
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