Jonas Abrahamsen won the dramatic 11th stage of the Tour de France. Tadej Pogacar fell in the final, Matthieu van der Poel attacked too late.
Extra Jonas Abrahamsen won the dramatic 11th stage of the Tour de France. Tadej Pogacar fell in the final, Matthieu van der Poel’s impressive attack was late. The Dutch came third. Mauro Schmid landed in second place.
Despite the fall with the main field, Pogacar reaches the goal. The competitors had waited in the Slovenes after they had gone to the ground through no fault of their own. Another driver had driven the title defender into the front wheel 4.1 kilometers before the finish. Pogacar fell on the left side, but quickly sat on the bike again.
At first glance, the profile of the 11th stage looked a bit like a flat stage. But on the 156.8 kilometers with start and finish in Toulouse, there were many small hills, so 1,700 meters of altitude came together. Almost nine kilometers before the finish, an 800 -meter -long ramp with twelve percent climb was waiting on average.
This also influenced the racing strategy of the teams, which were able to look at the route exactly on the day of rest. “We don’t go out of a sprint, simply because the mountain is too steep in the final,” said Phil Bauhaus before the start of the sports show. His team Bahrain Victorious is therefore planning with a top group. The second German sprinter Pascal Ackermann said that he believed the route tour “had changed many opinions”.
Many attacks and unrest in the main field
After the start, the long search for an outlier group began. Jonas Abrahamsen, Mauro Schmid and Davide Ballerini were able to break away early. But the trio didn’t really get away because there were always new attacks in the field. Many drivers still wanted to come forward. The pace was correspondingly high in the first hour at 51.7 km/h.
After almost 75 kilometers, Fred Wright and Mathieu Burgaudeau were able to unlock to the top. There were also new attacks from the main field. There was almost no calm phase, and the classification drivers also briefly caught. Suddenly you saw Jonas Vingegaard in the front of the lead, a smaller group seemed to be settled, Primoz Roglic was not there. A few kilometers later everything went together again.
Persection group with van der Poel and van Aert
The next, five -member chase group was then prominently occupied. Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel were there, as did Quinn Simmons, Arnaud de Lie and Axel Laurance. The top group was 3:30 minutes ahead 15 kilometers before the finish line, 22 seconds behind the pursuers.
Schmid and Abrahamsen then blew up the top group with an attack and were the first to go into the final climb and went over the crest as a duo, 26 seconds behind van der Poel. The Dutch had literally left all other outliers with an impressive start on the steep ramp.
Vingegaard attacked the last meters in the haupfeld, but could not shake off his competitors. Together we went into the descent. Pogacar fell 4.1 kilometers before the finish line and fell hard on the left shoulder. The Slovenian was cleared by another driver. Fair Play in the field, the favorite group was waiting for Pogacar and the defending champion was quickly back in the field.
12th stage: First mountain arrival in the Pyrenees
The first Pyrenees stage is coming up on Thursday. Over 181 kilometers it goes from Hautacam. The final climb to the ski station is 13.6 kilometers long with an average of 7.8 percent climb. Jonas Vingegaard achieved an important stage victory here in 2022 on the way to his first tour victory. The pace sharpening of Wout van Aert is already legendary in the final. Tadej Pogacar went flying and Vingegaard won as a soloist. A new exchange of blows of the tour favorites on the 12th stage is likely.