Unsurprisingly, the Tour de France wasn't won or lost on the Col du Galibier, nor on the breakneck descent to the line in Valloire, where Movistar's Nairo Quintana won the stage, Egan Bernal (Team Ineos) took time and race leader Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep) more than held his own. However, there was enough evidence to suggest how the next two stages in the Alps will be raced.
On reflection, stage 18 of the Tour was perhaps the quietest of the mountain stages so far, with the pulsating action in the Pyrenees eclipsing what we saw on the Col d'Izoard and the Galibier. There were several reasons as to why that was the case. Firstly, fatigue has truly started to set in. Those powerful surges from Groupama-FDJ's Thibaut Pinot cannot be maintained for a week, while the responsibility taken by Jumbo-Visma on the Tourmalet and on the road to Foix have been replaced by a more cautious approach.
In the Pyrenees, we saw more explosive racing because of the terrain, but also because it was early enough in the race for bold attacks, with riders, such as Pinot, needing to go on the offensive after losing needless time in the crosswinds. Now that the race is in the critical phase and all the riders know roughly where they stand concerning each other, the margins of error are finite. There's still not a single team that can control a stage from start to finish, and, with two summit finishes to come, stage 18 was about reassurances of resources as much as racing.
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However, what we witnessed on stage 18 was merely the opening act in a trilogy of stages that will decide this year's podium. If Thursday's stage had finished at the top of the Galibier, the situation may have been different, but the long descent to Valloire changed the mentality of the peloton and how they raced the parcours.
Movistar once again took up the fight early on with a brisk pace that thinned out the peloton on the Col d'Izoard, but their efforts petered out on the second half of the climb as they ran out of ammo and realised that they were simply chasing down a break that contained their own rider – Quintana – and his fresh optimism of winning the stage and mounting a top-five challenge.
Team Ineos search for answers
Team Ineos assumed control in the valley between the penultimate and final climbs, and again on the lower slopes of the Galibier, but for most of their time on the front, they were conceding time to Quintana and the rest of the break. It was only when Bernal attacked with 3.2km to go before the summit that the GC race properly came to life.
Movistar have a part to play
Alaphilippe and Bernal
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via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/tour-de-france-bernal-on-the-hunt-but-alaphilippe-remains-resolute-analysis
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