Tour de France 2019: Pinot wins stage 14 as Alaphilippe extends lead – as it happened

That’s all from me. More fun to come tomorrow, from Limoux and Fois Prat d’Albis, with three category one climbs along the way. Bye for now!

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Laurens De Plus speaks for a very happy Jumbo-Visma:

It’s crazy. Even if we don’t have the yellow jersey it’s like we’re living the yellow dream this year. Also for our team it’s a surprise that we are so strong. I said it already a few times, I think it’s a unique chance for Steven Kruijswijk to get on the podium of even more. I hope he can stay on his level like this and maybe wonderful things will happen.

Geraint Thomas has had a chat. He says he felt “quite weak” from the start:

I just didn’t feel quite on it from the start. Just quite weak. At the end I knew I had to try to pace it. I didn’t really attempt to follow them when they kicked. I felt it was better to ride my own pace and limit my losses that way, rather than trying to stay with them and blow up at the end. It was a tough day out there. I’m just a bit disappointed, but it is what it is. I just tried to limit the damage. Still a lot to come, and hopefully I’ll feel a bit better tomorrow.

Here’s a report on today’s stage, which ended with France celebrating both a stage winner and a yellow jersey wearer.

Thibaut Pinot is on the podium, collecting a bouquet, waving it about and looking a bit chuffed.

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Julian Alaphilippe had never finished in the top 40 of a mountain stage before *. Today, powered somehow by the yellow jersey, he came second. Nobody is taking him lightly now.

* Actually he had. Sorry. Misinformed.

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And here’s today’s top 10:

All change in the GC:

Called it:

Nairo Quintana completes the stage, 3min 23sec behind Pinot.

Geraint Thomas crosses the line, about 35sec behind the yellow jersey!

A brilliant win for Thibaut Pinot, and Alaphilippe comes second!

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130m to go: Pinot goes, and can anyone catch him?

400m to go: The stage winner will surely come from this group: Alaphilippe, Kruijswik, Bernal, Buchmann, Pinot and Landa.

1km to go: Geraint Thomas is left behind! Six riders are at the head of the race, with Alaphilippe among them.

1.2km to go: Jakob Fuglsang has also been dropped. Alaphilippe is still looking comfortable.

1.5km to go: Thomas has dropped back since last I mentioned him, with Alaphilippe right behind him once again.

2km to go: The camera cuts to Quintana, entirely on his own, nobody anywhere near him, slogging up the hill.

3km to go: Gaudu is dragged back innto the pack, and three Jumbo-Visma riders are at the front now. Steven Kruijswijk is perfectly placed.

4km to go: David Gaudu attacks! Where has that come from? He doesn’t get very far, mind.

4.5km to go: Geraint Thomas movess up to fifth, and Alaphilippe, who had been marking him, doesn’t immediately respond. He’s still clinging on to the leading group, with one rider behind him.

5km to go: Barguil has been caught, and this is anyone’s day.

5.5km to go: Richie Porte, 15th in the GC this morning, has also been dropped, we’re told.

6km to go: So it looks like the ambitions of Nairo Quintana, Adam Yates and Dan Martin, ninth, 10th and 11th in the GC rankings this morning, to win this race will end today.

6.3km to go: Julian Alaphilippe still seems entirely comfortable. He moves up the peloton to sit on the wheel of Geraint Thomas.

7km to go: David Gaudu tries to lead Thibaut Pinot away from the peloton, but they’re not allowed to break free.

8.3km to go: Barguil still leads, but by just 11 seconds. “They say every sports ground has its own sound. The Lord’s murmur and so on. But nothing is quite like the sound of the Tour,” writes Sandy Balfour. “I’m about 6km from the summit, so the Peloton is what, 20 minutes away? 30? It doesn’t matter. Around me people are bickering, laughing, joking in maybe 10 or 12 languages. And every now and then someone reads something in their phone or hears something and suddenly a hush of anticipation descends. People crane their necks. A couple shove to the front. But there is nothing to see and soon they are back to talking about other things. For riders it’s all about the end. For spectators it’s all in the anticipation. Because let’s face it, for 99.9% of the day there is nothing to see. But we wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

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9.3km to go: Gesbert is hauled in, and Warren Barguil attacks!

9.5km to go: A couple of Movistar riders have been sent back to rescue Quintana.

10km to go: Movistar presumably haven’t been pulling the peloton all day for Nairo Quintana: he has now been dropped. On Colombian Independence Day, he’s on his own.

10.5km to go: Andrey Amador, who seems to have been at the head of the peloton for about half the stage, finally drops off the pace. An immense effort from the Costa Rican today.

12km to go: Dan Martin, 11th in the GC this morning, is falling away as well. Adam Yates, coincidentally, was 10th.

12.5km to go: Patrick Konrad had to change bikes and thus finds himself behind the yellow jersey group, stuck with Adam Yates and his mates.

13km to go: Gesbert is now on his own, 30 seconds ahead of the yellow jersey group, which is still being led by Movistar, with a gaggle of Ineos riders tucked in behind.

14km to go: Adam Yates is having a very bad day, and is struggling again with a lot of climbing still to come.

15km to go: Elie Gesbert has joined Romain Sicard at the front, 45 seconds ahead of anyone else.

17km to go: The first couple of dozen mentions of Tourmalet in the Guardian all concerned a horse of that name, which apparently did quite a lot of winning in the 1860s. The first mention in a cycling context was in a report on the 1924 race: “...Then come, in the Basque country,, the Justices of the Peace, those calm, inhuman shoulders of the great Pyrenean range; Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin, which no car can climb without resting to cool, which separate and inexorably classify the racers ... the hardest test humanity has invented for the ultimate strength of legs.”

19km to go: Sicard goes through Esquièze-Sère, and from here there is nowhere to go but up.

20km to go: Whooosh! Sicard is now 1.30sec ahead of the peloton. Gesbert and Calmejane are about 30sec closer.

25km to go: We have a new leader: Romain Sicard has gone on his own!

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27km to go: All but two of the Movistar team are in the peloton, helping Nairo Quintana as best they can.

30km to go: The route almost immediately heads uphill, gently at first, towards the Tourmalet. “Just saw a gendarme herding cows to keep them off the road,” writes Gareth Thomas (a while ago, back when there were cows milling about). “Why don’t farmers herd their own cows to keep them safe if they know the TDF is coming through? Happens every year.” They presumably think that if the Tour didn’t want to run the risk of rider-bovine interactions they would make sure the route didn’t go anywhere near their cows.

31km to go: Wellens is first to finish the sprint, with the front three about to be caught by a chasing five.

33km to go: Sagan might have dropped out of the breakaway but he’s still got some fuel in the tank, and he’s been leading the yellow jersey group as they haul in the remainers. They’re now just 45sec behind the leading trio.

34km to go: There is an intermediate sprint to Pierrefitte-Nestalas, with the finish line just a couple of kilometres away now.

35km to go: Adam Yates, thanks in no small part to his brother Simon, has been dragged back into the yellow jersey group.

38km to go: The leaders pass Argelès-Gazost, home of the Pyrénées Animal Park, apparently very much the place to go if you want to feed a marmot.

42km to go: Of that 17-strong breakaway group, only eight remain. The front three (Nibali, Wellens and Gesbert) have a 30-second lead over the other five, with the peloton 1min 15sec back.

47km to go: The leaders pass through Aucun. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is a town called None.

49km to go: The riders descend at wild pace. Here is the confirmed points distribution from that category four climb:

52km to go: The next 25km or so are mainly descent, before the big stage-concluding climb.

55km to go: I haven’t really mentioned Julian Alaphilippe, but he’s looking fairly comfortable in the peloton.

56km to go: Nibali tries to stick with Wellens, and fails. Another 10 points for the polka-dot jersey wearer.

56.5km to go: It’s Wellens and Nibali, side by side with 400m to go.

57km to go: The leaders are just 1km from the top of the climb, but behind them the peloton, still being dragged uphill by Movistar, is on the hunt. They are just 1min 23sec behind now.

58km to go: There are a lot of cows grazing on the edge of the road. One of them has to be shepherded away by spectators to prevent a potentially horrific if milky pile-up.

58km to go: Three go alone at the front, looking for the points at the top of the climb. Nibali, Wellens and Gesbert are the leading trio.

59km to go: 2.5km of climbing still ahead of the leaders. Adam Yates is also now struggling.