Stage 20 of the Tour was a 22.5 kilometer technical route around Marseilles the begins and ends at the Orange Velodrome. The route also included a climb up to the Notre-Dame de la Garde (~2 km @ 9% grade).
American Taylor Phinney capped off an exceptional first Tour by setting the early standard of 29:21 after starting 4th and catching all but one rider in front of him. Phinney’s time was beaten shortly after by Maciej Bodnar who finished in 28:15. This would turn out to be the winning time of the day and is a bit of poetic justice as Bodnar just missed winning a stage from the breakaway earlier in the Tour.
The race between the contenders went according to form with Froome finishing 3rd on the stage with Uran right behind in 8th, 25 seconds behind Froome. Bardet gave it his best effort but lost almost 2 minutes to Froome and barely held onto a podium spot by 1 second of Mikel Landa. Fabio Aru and Dan Martin had solid rides but didn’t do anything to affect the overall standings.
I liked the start/finish inside the stadium. The cheers that greeted each rider rolling down the ramp and again at the finish line were amazing. It was good to hear crowds on the level of soccer or football associated with the sport of cycling.
Stage 21 is the ceremonial stage into Paris with the sprint finish on the Champs Elysees. Even though Landa is only 1 second off of the podium it is unexpected (and frankly would be against Tour tradition) for Sky/Landa to attack in order to take back the needed time.
It has been a great Tour and honestly a lot more entertaining than I expected at the beginning of the race. I’ll have a post Tour wrap up article up in the next few days.
Three Weeks in July 