[Closed] Tour de France Stage 14 - Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux > Mende

Morning all, after what felt like a bit of a rest stage yesterday we have more hills today. I’m still on an iPad with crap signal so apologies in advance for the typos and mistakes.

Anyway, without further ado.

The Route: 188km into the Massif Central Starting west the race crosses the Rhone and then heads up the Ardèche gorge. Things climb after the intermediate sprint, the difficulty isn’t the gradient but the rough roads and twisting course up to the Col de la Croix de Berthel, listed as 9.1km but the road is uphill for double the distance. After more climbing around the flancs of Mont Lozère there’s a descent down into Balsièges and a fast run to Mende.

The Finish: the profile doesn’t do it justice. 3km at 10.1% doesn’t sound too bad but the second kilometre is more like 12-14% and it’s an eight minute effort for the best. What it makes it so much harder is that because it’s so steep it’s hard to make up for lost ground so all the big teams will be going elbow-to-elbow to place their leader into place. The race won’t be decided here but time gaps can appear. Once over the top there’s 1.6km to go before the flat finish line on the runway of Mende airport.

What the profile look like?

Nothing on the last 5KM that I can find so you’ll have to use your imagination. Interesting looking climb in the middle though.

Lovely, this looks very breakaway friendly then, a Steve Cummings stage if he was riding I’d guess.

The Contenders: a hilly route, a sharp climb and a flat finish? This has Julian Alaphilippe (Quick Step) written all over it. He’s so obvious that he’ll find it hard but because he can finish well out of a small group he can play different cards.

Several contenders for the stage today belong to teams with ambitions for the overall classification so they might do well to rest rather than attack, but Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) could be in the mix. This leaves the likes of Omar Fraile (Astana), Rudy Molard (Groupama-FDJ), Damiano Caruso (BMC Racing) and Dimension Data pair Serge Pauwels and Tom Jelte-Slagter although they’re infrequent winners. Jelle Vanendert(Lotto-Soudal) could find the steep climb to his liking

There’s also a wave of GC riders who have seen their plans for July fall part and a consolation stage win could still ensure their team have something to cheer about. Riders who won’t threaten the top-10 include Adam Yates(Mitchelton-Scott) and Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo).

Finally there’s the chance of a frantic race and the GC contenders get involved. Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) can win a sprint and Dan Martin (UAE Emirates) is perfect for a finish like this.

And as ever, a look to yesterday.