Critérium du Dauphiné: Bardet wins on Pra Loup

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Romain Bardet (AG2R-La Mondiale) claimed a huge victory on stage 5 of the Critérium du Dauphiné, attacking on the descent of the Col d’Allos and holding his lead to Pra Loup in what is a carbon copy of stage 17 of the upcoming Tour de France.

Tejay van Garderen (BMC) moved into the leader’s jersey after he countered a late Chris Froome (Team Sky) attack to finish second, picking up six bonus seconds in the process. Beñat Inxausti (Movistar) also managed to close Froome down and finished behind the Brit in fourth to move up to second on general classification, with Bardet in third.

Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) cracked shortly before Froome’s attack and moved out of the top ten overall. However, he has been known to measure his efforts in the Dauphiné, not wanting to go to deep ahead of the Tour, so may not be too disappointed.

It was Team Sky who forced the issue towards the business end of the stage, setting a characteristically searing pace with numbers that strung out the peloton and quickly swallowed up the remnants of the day’s break.

As they neared the crest of the Col d’Allos, AG2R-La Mondiale moved forward and Bardet sprung clear, evidently a pre-planned move designed to exploit the Frenchman’s knowledge of the local roads.

He made his way down the mountain with breath-taking grace and opened up a gap of over a minute in the space of 16 hair-raising kilometres.

He held that advantage for most of the 6-kilometre Pra Loup and crossed the line to announce himself as a bona fide contender for the Tour, though he has lost the element of surprise in terms of tactics come stage 17.

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How it happened

Daniel Teklehaimanot (MTN-Qhubeka) went on an early attack on the 161-kilometre route from Dignes-les-Bains to Pra Loup, heading off in search of mountains classification points with five categorised climbs in store.

Christophe Riblon (AG2R-La Mondiale), Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Pieter Serry (Etixx-QuickStep), Romain Sicard (Europcar), Arnaud Courteille (FDJ), Albert Timmer (Giant-Alpecin) went with him and after 13km of racing they had three minutes and five seconds on the peloton.

Arnaud Courteille was first over the Col des Lèques, with Teklehaimanot second, while that was reversed on the second climb – the Toures Aures. The Eritrean was also first to crest the second-category Saint Michel as the gap stayed steady between four and five minutes.

As BMC, protecting the leader’s jersey of Rohan Dennis, controlled things on the lower slopes of the first-category Col d’Allos, things livened up in the break with Riblon, Teklehaimanot, and Courteille losing contact.

With 30km to go, the other general classification teams came to the front to force the issue. Astana and Cannondale-Garmin made their presence felt before Sky - in characteristic fashion - turned up the heat with numbers, causing the peloton to thin and the gap to the break to plummet. They mopped up several of the stragglers, including Teklehaimanot and Courteille.

Ian Boswell in particular put in a huge shift for a large portion of the climb while race leader Dennis cracked, along with Bauke Mollema (Trek) and Jean Christophe Péraud (Ag2r-La Mondiale).

The race came back together with 24km to go and Bardet made his move just before cresting the Col d’Allos.

The Frenchman fearlessly bombed down the mountain, in contrast to the bunch led gingerly by Sky. The British squad still had more numbers than anyone else on the final climb of Pra Loup and kept the pace high. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Nibali were dropped in quick succession before Nicolas Roche came to the fore to tee up Froome’s move.

The 2013 Tour de France champion immediately opened up a gap and only van Garderen and Intxausti could stay near him, the former judging his effort perfectly to come round Froome in the final 50 metres.

By that time, though, the result had been sewn up and Bardet has thrown his hands above his head as he crossed the line 36 seconds earlier.

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