Michal Kwiatkowski took a solo victory on stage 13 of the Tour de France, as Tadej Pogacar turned the screw a little further on his rival, the defending champion Jonas Vingegaard, by clawing back eight more seconds.
Kwiatkowski, a former world road race champion and also a Tour stage winner in 2020 at La Roche-sur-Foron, moved ahead of the day’s breakaway 12km from the finish at the top of the Grand Colombier climb, overlooking Culoz in the Ain department. The 33-year-old Ineos Grenadiers rider was the last survivor of a lead group that had cracked apart at the foot of the climb.
“I rank this pretty high,” he said of his stage win, “but it was a little bit unexpected because through the whole day I was thinking: ‘What am I doing here?’ What is my objective?’ So this win came completely unexpected.”
The predicted Bastille Day fireworks between Pogacar, of UAE Team Emirates, and Jumbo-Visma’s Vingegaard were muted for most of the climb with the rivalry coming to life only in the final 500 metres as the Slovenian attacked in pursuit of bonus seconds.
Vingegaard had ridden the 17km climb glued to his rival’s back wheel, as Pogacar, winner on the same summit in 2020, waited for his moment.
When the attack came, the race leader again struggled to close the gap. Pogacar held him off to the line, halving the deficit between the pair to nine seconds with two potentially decisive Alpine stages to come.
Vingegaard, however, is not indulging any talk of a Pogacar ambush. Isn’t he anxious, he was asked, given that his lead has dwindled from almost a minute to a handful of seconds?
“No,” he responded with characteristic directness. “If I win, I win; if I don’t, then I don’t.” He did acknowledge that this was a “nice rivalry” but added: “I’m confident in myself, in what I believe are my strengths. I’m still feeling very good.”
He maintained too, as he has done since the Grand Depart in Bilbao, that this race will not be won in seconds. “Yes, I still think that,” he said.
“History has shown that there’s always something happening in the really long hard stages. It could be decided in seconds, but I don’t believe that.”
For Kwiatkowski, it was a good start to three days of mountain stages. “I had my worst day in this Tour on Thursday, riding at the back, really suffering,” he said. “Today I had my best legs.”
As the breakaway exited the famous tight hairpin bends that characterise the lower section of the climb, Kwiatkowski, who had also been in the breakaway on Tuesday’s stage to Issoire, attacked alone to move clear.
But the former Milan-San Remo winner feared that the attacks among the favourites, specifically Pogacar and Vingegaard, would accelerate the pursuing peloton.
“I thought they would come, sooner or later,” he said, “but then seeing the flat section, the tail wind, the last 7km were quick. I survived the tough moments and thought: ‘Maybe this will all play in my advantage.’”
Despite the distance and gradients, the Polish rider did not flinch from the challenge of staying clear for the remainder of the long, steep climb, and rode over the line to take the British team’s first win in the 2023 Tour.
“It’s amazing to have this win after such a hard Tour so far, I have been trying so many times and I’m super-grateful,” he said. “Today I want to celebrate. Everything’s great.”
As Kwiatkowski enjoyed his victory, Ineos Grenadiers could reflect on another dogged performance from their young talents, Carlos Rodriguez, fourth overall, and Tom Pidcock, who is placed eighth.
The next two mountain stages, to Morzine on Saturday and Saint-Gervais Mont Blanc, on Sunday, will be critical to their hopes of a top-five finish. Pidcock, winner at Alpe d’Huez on Bastille Day in 2022, said: “Two pretty iconic climbs, two wins, it’s pretty special.”
Yet he remained stunned by Pogacar’s power. “It’s a 17km climb and he just rode the end like it was a bunch sprint,” Pidcock said. “I was probably doing 700 [watts] or something, so god knows what he was doing.”
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