Tour de France: Barguil victorious in short, chaotic stage to Foix

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Warren Barguil (Sunweb) won stage 13 of the Tour de France in Foix at the end of a gripping afternoon of Bastille Day racing in the Pyrenees. Fabio Aru (Astana) retained his yellow jersey but saw Chris Froome's Sky teammate Mikel Landa add himself to the list of contenders for final overall victory on a stage that raised many more questions than it answered.

Barguil beat Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo), Nairo Quintana (Movistar) and Landa in a four-man sprint, while Aru came across the line 1:48 back in a group containing Froome, Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale) and Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale-Drapac). Aru remains 6 seconds clear of Froome and 25 seconds ahead of Bardet in the overall standings, but Landa is now 5th overall at 1:09. Quintana – seeming irretrievably distanced 24 hours earlier – has moved to within 2:07 of the overall lead.

With three mountain passes crammed into a little more than 100 kilometres, the second day in the Pyrenees was always going to prove difficult to control for the maillot jaune Aru, particularly as his Astana team is so depleted by injury. Despite his isolation, the Sardinian rode with considerable sangfroid in a fragmented and reduced yellow jersey group, basing his strategy squarely around staying in contact with Froome. Aru was promptly across to Froome's wheel when the three-time Tour winner unsheathed a stinging attack near the summit of the final climb, the Mur de Péguère.

"From the spectators' point of view (it was) very exciting, but I stayed calm, in spite of the attacks," said Aru, whose chief lieutenant Jakob Fuglsang abandoned early on with two fractures in his wrist. "My teammates have fallen, some are injured, and that's why I was alone. The next few days will be better for them. I know what counts is to get to the end of each evening."

Indeed, by day's end, it was Froome who appeared more discommoded by the way the stage had unfolded, accelerating repeatedly on the run-in to Foix even though his teammate Landa was up the road in the winning break.

"Yesterday was a difficult day for me but today I felt a lot better and we played a good strategic game with our team," Froome said. "We've got a lot of faith in Mikel and I think that he showed today that he's a real threat now for the overall title in Paris. It's a great card for us to play especially now that Astana don't have the numbers to control the race."

The Tour organisers have shown an increasing penchant for inserting short mountain stages into the parcours ever since the miniature epic to Alpe d'Huez in 2011, and, just like that remarkable afternoon six years ago, it was Contador who proved the catalyst for a breathless race, bobbing clear near the summit of the day's first climb, the Col de Latrape, with some 75 kilometres still to go.

Landa, delegated by Sky to follow Contador's seemingly inevitable early move, was alive to the possibilities. After initially leaving the heavy lifting to Contador, he began to combine with his fellow countryman over the Col d'Agnes and Mur de Péguère, and they duly opened a lead of more than two minutes on the fractured yellow jersey group.

Quintana joined the attacking at the base of the Agnes, launching an acceleration that saw him and king of the mountains Barguil stalk Contador and Landa all afternoon. They finally made contact with the leaders at the summit of the day's third ascent, the tough Mur de Péguère.

Behind, Aru was isolated, but would not be tempted into showing his hand, preferring to stay with Froome, Bardet and Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale-Drapac) than commit himself to pegging back Landa et al. In short, he was prepared to concede the day's battle rather than gamble and risk losing the entire war.

A little over a week from Paris, and with six riders within 92 seconds of the maillot jaune, there are myriad possibilities and precious little margin for error.

How it unfolded

Barguil's day began as it ended, at the front, as the Breton joined Thomas Voeckler (Direct Energie) on the offensive as soon as the flag dropped, but they were soon brought to heel amid the flurry of early attacks ahead of the category 1 Col de Latrape. Alessandro De Marchi (BMC) forged ahead shortly afterwards, first in the company of Philippe Gilbert (Quick-Step) and Sylvain Chavanel (Direct Energie), and then alone as the road began to climb.

De Marchi was still in front come the summit of the Latrape, but his adventure would peter out shortly afterwards as the day's pivotal move took shape behind him. When Contador accelerated two kilometres from the top, he was joined by Landa and Barguil, and they proceeded to lead the race onto the day's second ascent, the Col d'Agnes with a lead of 20 seconds over an already thinned out yellow jersey group.

Only Landa could match Contador's forcing on the lower slopes of the Agnes, and the Spanish duo quickly stretched their lead over Aru, Froome et al. Barguil, meanwhile, found a rather deluxe chasing companion when Quintana, sensing the lack of cohesion in the yellow jersey group, opted to launch an acceleration of his own. They would be joined by Sky's Michal Kwiatkowski, though the former world champion was under strict instructions to sit on the wheels rather than collaborate.

By the summit, Contador and Landa were 30 seconds clear of the chasers and 2:30 ahead of the Aru group. Just when Landa was on the point of becoming virtual race leader, however, Aru found a most unexpected ally of circumstance in the shape of UAE-Emirates, who set a tempo at the base of the Péguère, ostensibly in support of Louis Meintjes, that helped to keep the escapees' lead under control.

Contador began to betray signs of suffering by the time the leaders reached the steepest section of the Mur de Péguère, but Landa's pedalling still seemed almost effortless as he took up the pace-making. Even so, Quintana and Barguil – who had dropped Kwiatkowski – finally made contact near the top, while behind, Dan Martin's pressing and Froome's subsequent acceleration brought the eight-man yellow jersey group to within 1:43 as they began the descent to Foix with 27 kilometres remaining.

While the leading quartet collaborated well on the drop to the line, there was rather less cohesion among the chasers, with Froome, Bardet and Uran all attempting to go clear. In the closing kilometres, Martin and Simon Yates (Orica-Scott) did manage to break the deadlock, and they would gain nine seconds on Aru by the finish.

Barguil, despite having lost by the narrowest of margins to Uran on stage 9, held his nerve well in the four-up sprint and responded decisively when Contador opened his effort from a distance. He became the first Frenchman to win on Bastille Day at the Tour since David Moncoutié's solo triumph in Digne-les-Bains in 2005.

"This completely makes up for last Sunday. This just felt so good today," Barguil said. "I was really on top of it. 800 metres from the end, I felt like I was on top of it. Alberto Contador went on the attack. I went on the outside of him and then back in and I knew that I would be the fastest."

Behind, meanwhile, there were the faintest shades of Carrera's infamous tactics at Sappada on the 1987 Giro about the way Froome and Kwiatkowski rode so willingly on the front of the chase group despite their teammate Landa's presence up ahead. But then again, on an afternoon of such chaos, joined-up thinking was at a premium. It was every man for himself.

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