While usually the game of cat and mouse in the final kilometres of a flat stage of the Tour de France between pursuers and pursued is clearcut, there are times when the way the chasing peloton lets its elected victims believe in the chance of victory before dashing their hopes can seem acutely sadistic.
Alexander Kristoff's win here, his second of the Tour, was one of those times. In the shadow of the Roman Arena Jack Bauer and Martin Elmiger made a doomed attempt to win the stage in a finish redolent of a pair of gladiators being put to the sword after being given the thumbs up.
After spending every pedal turn of the 222km stage – the third longest of the race – in front, all of seven pedal revolutions separated Bauer from the finish line when Kristoff swept past him with less than 25m to the line. For once the sprinters’ teams miscalculated the chase but after two stages through the Alps and a tough run across the south of France they could be forgiven for having stiff legs.
Behind Bauer and Elmiger, the Swiss national champion, the pursuit was mainly led by Andre Greipel’s Lotto and Kristoff’s Katusha, including his lead-out man Luca Paolini, whose fearsome beard has earned him the nickname barbone, the tramp.
Marcel Kittel’s Giants kept a watching brief and at the bitter end the peloton seemed to have a distinct lack of firepower. Either Bauer or Elmiger would have merited the win.
Crumbs
Bauer’s Garmin-Sharp team are gathering what crumbs they can after leader Andrew Talansky was forced to pull out after a series of crashes.
Elmiger is a member of the Swiss team IAM who are riding their first Tour and, like Garmin, have nothing to show for two weeks’ hard work as yet. But at least their sprinter Heinrich Haussler finished best of the rest behind Kristoff.
It was different for Bauer. He had left Elmiger for dead with 100m to go and was within reach of New Zealand’s first ever individual stage win in the Tour when Kristoff and the others came haring past. Understandably he collapsed in tears.
Kristoff's win in itself indicates how tough this Tour is becoming. Since taking the bronze medal in the London Olympic Games behind Alexandr Vinokourov and Rigoberto Uran, the 27-year-old, born in Oslo, has quietly been building a fine curriculum vitae after coming through the ranks of the Continental Tour teams Glud & Marstrand and Maxbo-Bianchi.
Last year his biggest victory was a stage of the Tour of Switzerland but he was in the hunt in some of the most difficult one-day classics on the calendar: the Tour of Flanders, Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix, placing fourth, eighth and ninth respectively.
This has been his best season, with a dozen wins, most importantly Milan-San Remo, but the manner in which he took Italy’s “Classic of Classics” explains in part how here he finished in front of riders who are faster on paper: Kittel, Greipel and Bryan Coquard, not to mention Peter Sagan.
Milan-San Remo is the longest classic and this year it was wet and cold, and the cut and thrust in the final kilometres cut the lead group down to 27.
Similarly, when Kristoff took his first Tour stage in Saint-Etienne on Thursday it came at the end of a day of ups and downs, if in searing heat.
Rather than a pure speedster, the Norwegian functions best when the hills, the distance and the pace blunt the other sprinters’ legs.
Tomorrow, after what seems like an indecently brief 48 hours without climbing, the Pyrenees loom into view. Guardian service
