Thor Hushovd showed his world championship winning colours, after a stunning descent, to take Stage 13 of the 2011 Tour de France.
Hushovd, who was in yellow for much of the first week, and David Moncoutie tracked down Jeremy Roy, who had been out on his own for some time. The Norwegian wasn’t going to stop there and left the other two, but he couldn’t relax in the final kilometre. With some very tight bends, it was all too easy to crash and Moncoutie was bearing down on him. Hushovd finally took the stage by 10 seconds and become the first world champion to win a stage, since Oscar Freire in 2002.
The world champion broke free of the peloton, in the middle of the stage, which caused a series of riders to follow in his wheel, including Moncoutie and Roy. The breakaway ballooned to 10 riders, before losing some to the pace, while Roy built up his own lead. After his mammoth effort, Roy has become the new holder of the polka-dot jersey with a five point lead over Samuel Sanchez. There has been no outright contender for the mountain jersey and there is still a lot to play for in some of the bigger mountains.
Steegmans out
Stage 13 started with the news Gert Steegmans had pulled out, after finishing second to last in stage 12. Behind him was Denis Galimzaynov, who finished well outside the time limit and almost an hour down on the winner Sanchez.
Several attempts at breaking away were made early on, but the peloton wouldn’t let anything go up the road. Sylvain Chavanel took 15 riders with him, but they were brought back after only 3 km of riding. With still 115km of the stage left, a rather weary looking, Andreas Kloden climbed off his bike and in to the team car. The German has suffered several crashes and the previous day’s on the descent of the Hourquette d’Ancizan was just too much. Kloden has been struggling to move, with his back injury, and even finding it difficult to take his own shoes off. RadioShack are now left with only four riders, after a very tough tour for the American outfit. Lars Boom later called it a day, after being dropped by over 5 minutes to the peloton.
Voigt down but not out
The feeding zone caused a few issues, as Jens Voigt went down and had to change his bike. By now Hushovd and his band of riders were in hot pursuit of Roy, who was slowly succumbing to the speed of Moncoutie. It wasn’t until the riders finally hit the misty summit of the Col D’Aubisque, that they really started to reel the Frenchman back in. In the space of 10km the Norwegian had almost bridged the gap to Moncoutie.
Despite the gap closing pretty quickly, it looked like Roy had done the job and become the first Frenchman to win this year. His hear was broken when Hushovd finally passed him with 2km to go and barely paused to look at him. A huge grin on the big Norwegian’s face showed the immense effort, which had gone in to securing this victory.
Voeckler holds on for another day
Back in the peloton, Thomas Voeckler kept up with the big boys to maintain his stranglehold on the yellow jersey. There was no movement in the top ten, of the GC, and Voeckler will live to fight another day. The Europcar rider is fighting hard to keep this jersey as long as possible, could he do the unthinkable and bring it to Paris? There is a long way to go, but the plucky rider will not go down without a fight. Mark Cavendish still holds a 13 point advantage over Jose Joaquin Rojas, in the green jersey competition.
Stage 14 will be an unrelenting mixture of categories, before the mountain top finish, on the haut category, Plateau de Beille. This is certainly not one for the light hearted and will push some of the sprinters to the limit. Voeckler will have to fight hard to keep his jersey and is likely to lose some time to the other contenders.
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