Key events
Jeremy Whittle reports on stage nine:
Ok, that’s it from me. Jeremy Whittle’s report from Ussel will be with you soon. Until next time.
Tom Pidcock has been speaking to TNT about the issues he had in the final 30km:
“My shifter stopped working and I couldn’t change gear and I realised I could only change at the top, but then in the sprint I was focusing so much on the sprint, I was on the drops and then that bottom wasn’t working so I started sprinting and couldn’t change gear, then I had to go on my hoods. My bike was perfect the whole race and then when the win is there, it doesn’t work. I didn’t fix it with the kick, that didn’t do anything.
“Matheiu is a difficult one to beat in those situations, so it would have been difficult anyway. I’m happy for a good day racing and it’s a nice way to go into the rest day.
“I was feeling pretty good. I came across last to the breakaway, felt pretty good all day. It would have been nice if someone as fast as Mathieu was not there but ah well.”
ShareGeneral classification standings
And here’s the yellow jersey standings after stage nine:
1. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) 32hrs 17mins 04secs
2. Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma-Lease a Bike): +2mins 42secs
3. Isaac Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG): +3mins 27secs
4. Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe): +3mins 30secs
5. Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek): +3mins 34secs
6. Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM Team): +3mins 55secs
7. Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe): +4mins 00secs
8. Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious): +4mins 21secs
9. Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek): +4mins 57secs
10. Egan Bernal (Netcompany-Ineos): +9mins 12secs
ShareStage nine results
Here’s today’s official top 20:
1. Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) 3hrs 27mins 51secs
2. Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) “
3. Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team) “
4. Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost) “
5. Filippo Ganna (Netcompany-Ineos): +6secs
6. Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) “
7. Michael Matthews (Team Jayco Al Ula) “
8. Nicolas Breuillard (TotalEnergies) “
9. Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies) “
10. Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost) “
11. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) “
12. Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) “
13. Isaac Del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) “
14. Alex Aranburu (Cofidis) “
15. Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) “
16. Tiesj Benoot (Decathlon CMA CGM Team) “
17. Ramses Debruyne (Alpecin-Premier Tech) “
18. Yannis Voisard (Tudor Pro Cycling Team) “
19. Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) “
20. Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) “
Van der Poel has been speaking to TNT: “It was a super hard day, the start of the Tour was not super great for our team, but I think like always we stayed calm. We have a really nice group here and kept believing that it will turn around, maybe not today but second or third week, but it’s really nice to go to the first rest day with a first win.
“[The heat] was for sure better than the first few days. I was struggling and finding it difficult to recover, even from the easier [stages]. The past few days I’ve felt a bit better and today I finally had some legs to go for it.
“I was not so sure [about the sprint], I spent a lot of energy trying to keep the break alive with all the pressure from the bunch. The roads are horrible, head winds and we fought for it and I’m happy to finish it off.”
That was Van der Poel’s third stage win at the Tour de France, very impressive performance from the Dutchman. It will be interesting to hear what Pidcock says about the mechanical issue.
Behind the leaders, it was Filippo Ganna who nabbed fifth behind Baudin.
Updated at 11.29 EDT
Van der Poel win stage nine!
He did lead it out and no one could go with him. Pidcock didn’t have the kick and finishes third behind Johannessen.
“El diablo” cheers and sees off another stage. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 11.39 EDT
500m to go They’re all following Van der Poel. Can he go from the front?
1km to go No moves yet as the gap gets to 25 secs.
2km to go When does these four start looking around? Baudin can’t beat Pidcock or Van der Poel in a sprint, who knows what Johannessen has left in the tank.
4km to go The gap is down to 40 seconds but the leaders get back in formation and pull away again.
Updated at 11.22 EDT
6km to go Lidl-Trek are working away on the front but surely this is gone for them now? They’ve squandered this stage through indecision.
8km to go The leaders have 45secs on the peloton. It will be one from these four and Pidcock looking comfortable.
11km to go The leaders are on an uncategorised climb before the run into Ussel, they’re taking regular turns on the front to keep this gap out at 70km/h.
16km to go Lidl-Trek are working on the front of the peloton to try and get Pedersen into this finish, but they’re running out of road. The acceleration from Van der Poel knocked the team carrying the green jersey off their stride. The four leaders have 56 seconds.
19km to go After a well-timed advertising break on TNT we missed what happened with Pidcock live but the replays show him kicking his rear derailleur. That appears to have worked and he’s back in with Van der Poel, Johannessen and Baudin.
22km to go Pidcock has a mechanical issue and is losing touch. Disaster for the Briton, just when he’d got in the perfect position for a battle with Van der Poel to go for a stage win.
Austrian rider Felix Grossschartner cycles ahead of the pack of riders. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 11.13 EDT
23km to go Simmons and Gee, the two Lidl-Trek riders in the break, are struggling. This is changing the arithmetic for Pedersen in the chase group.
24km to go Van der Poel has gone, Johannessen has gone with him and Pidcock is in pursuit.
26km to go This is falling apart for the breakaway. Pidcock and Van der Poel are getting frustrated as the others aren’t working. Now they hit the climb…
29km to go Van der Poel has little burst off the front of the lead group, I think he was just seeing who might come with him and it was Pidcock who responded. Those kind of games cost time and the gap back to the peloton is now less than a minute.
Day of the Jackal fans keep coming. “I’m just back from a St Malo – Nice (and beyond) solo ride,” Writes Alex. “And in Nice passed the hotel the Jackal popped in to telephone his contact in Paris, to learn the police knew about the mission. Also, fans of the film will be pleased to hear the old France-Italy border crossing building where his bag is searched, along with a dozen similarly blonde tall men, is still there!
32km to go The slope on Mont Bessou hits 7.3% for nearly a kilometre and the leaders are working their way up towards it now. Once they’re over that climb then I expect the temporary truce to end and the likes of Pidcock will light the fuse.
35km to go Netcompany-Ineos are working on the front of the peloton, apparantly trying to boost Egan Bernal’s GC place. Bernal is 11th on GC and Pidcock, who is up road, is 38 seconds behind him in 15th.
41km to go The gap is now nearly 80 secs. It looks like UAE are stepping off the effort. That’s good news for the eight riders up front, who are working well together. It’s about 15km until they reach the final categorised climb and after that there is a little kick up on the run into the finish.
49km to go The gap has stabilised at around a minute as we roll towards the final categorised climb on Mont Bessou in about 25km.
56km to go Pidcock takes the mountains points. If he wants to win the break has to work together to pull away again.
57km to go UAE are really pushing with the peloton on the Côte de la Croix du Pey, a category three climb that hits 6%, they’re keeping their options open because it’s very unlikely they put much time into the other GC contenders. Is this about punishment?
59km to go UAE are shrinking the gap to the breakaway, it’s now less than a minute, but why? Is Pogacar planning an assault? It’s aggressive but his team’s pace is also bringing Pedersen back into it.
Correspondence! “I have no idea who will win this,” writes Gavin Dunn, “but a propos of not much, Ussel (county town of Correze, apparently) features in The Day of the Jackal (the book). The Jackal stops there in his resprayed Alfa Romeo to eat toast and eggs in a late night cafe, on the way to his lover’s chateaux where he planned to lie low. The cafe was in the Place de la Gare. You don’t get that on TNT.”
Lovely stuff. As ever, send me your thoughts via the link at the top of the page.
69km to go Mads Pedersen appears to have latched back on to the peloton, with two Lidl-Trek colleagues up the road he might not be as out of it as I previously assumed.
74km to go Alex Baudin (EF-Education-EasyPost), Pablo Castrillo (Movistar) and Lennert van Eetvelt (Lotto Intermarche) are the riders I’m yet to namecheck in the breakaway. Van der Poel has just done a big turn on the front to grow the gap to 1min 25secs. They’ll need more than that.
Trek’s Mads Pedersen wearing the green jersey meets a devilish prawn fan en route. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersShare
Updated at 09.56 EDT
81km to go Johannessen and Simmons are set to be joined by Pidcock, Gee, Van der Poel, plus a few others. The winner comes out of this group now, I think.
82km to go Mads Pedersen is out of the back of the peloton.
83km to go Just as I ask myself, what is going on with Pidcock and co? The camera cuts to him leading a trio going after Simmons and Johannessen.
88km to go Simmons and Johannessen have made a move to leave behind that larger breakaway group and pulled out 20 seconds. I’m not sure that’s great racing from the break, why work so hard to establish a platform and then let two up the effort to go off? It says to me they had more to give.