Tour de France: Tourmalet, summit finish the next GC skirmish on stage 6 - Preview

"This is the first skirmish in a long battle" – that was how Jayco-AlUla directeur sportif Mat Hayman described the Tour de France's first mountain stage to Laruns on Wednesday evening.

He, his team leader Simon Yates, and the rest of the Tour de France peloton will have to be ready for the next one in quick succession with attention already turned towards the second such skirmish with stage 6, the Col du Tourmalet and summit finish at Cauterets on Thursday.

The unexpectedly momentous results of the Tour's fifth stage, which saw Jai Hindley infiltrate the breakaway and shoot into yellow as reigning champion Jonas Vingegaard blew Tadej Pogačar away on the Col de Marie Blanque to the tune of a minute, will reverberate through the Pyrenees and into the morning.

The race rolls on to the shortest road stage of the first half with the 144.9km stage to the Route de Cambasque above Cauterets with 3,900 metres of climbing piled onto the 3,600 of stage 5.

Now, the questions are no longer about how far ahead of the rest Pogačar and Vingegaard will be, but about whether Hindley and his Bora-Hansgrohe team can defend yellow and for how long, and also about whether Pogačar can recover from the massive blow sustained on the Col de Marie Blanque.

Lying towards the end of one of the hardest Tour de France opening weeks in recent memory – three of the opening five days have seen GC action in the hills and mountains – stage 6 is set to host another battle between the men fighting over the maillot jaune and the podium ahead of a return to the sprints.

Flat roads and a third-category Côte de Capvern-les-Bains kick off proceedings, before the Col d'Aspin (12km at 6.5%) leads in to the Tour's most-featured climb, the Col du Tourmalet, and with it the race's first venture above 2,000 metres.

At over 70km from the line, the Tourmalet isn't expected to play host to grand GC moves – this is still only stage 6 after all, but as is often the case in Grand Tours, early mountain stages can highlight form or lack thereof.

From Sainte-Marie-de-Campan, the climb measures in at 17.1km with an average of 7.3%, while the more technical road on the other side through La Mongie towards Luz-Saint-Sauveur could see moves made (Tom Pidcock has already said never say never…)

From there, a spell in the valley towards Cauterets to the west – the 12km run providing an opportunity for regrouping – brings the riders to the final climb of the day.

At an average gradient of 5.4%, the slopes of the mountain are far from the steepest, most fearsome test of the Tour, but it's another long one at 16km. Tired legs after the tough start in Bilbao and San Sébastián, as well as the previous day's exertions, could well play a role.

At the top of the general classification, reigning champion Vingegaard will be feeling as confident as anyone, having dismissed Pogačar with a fearsome acceleration a kilometre from the top of the Marie Blanque.

The Tour is, of course, far from over, but a healthy cushion of 53 seconds over his co-favourite for the maillot jaune already feels comfortable. Will Vingegaard be keen to put the Slovenian to the sword once again? Even if the gradients at Cambasque won't sting as strongly as they did on the Marie Blanque, why not strike while the iron is hot?

A further 47 seconds up on the Dane lies Hindley. The Australian, who has already shown Grand Tour-winning pedigree at the Giro d'Italia, wasn't keen to look too far ahead into the race after his win on Wednesday, but he and his Bora-Hansgrohe team will be put to work immediately.

In Emanuel Buchmann – assisting Hindley in the break on stage 5 – Patrick Konrad, and – Bob Jungels the German team have a handful of men capable of working in the mountains, even if the other half of their team is suited to the flat roads.

"Obviously if you look through our roster it's going to be really difficult to control until Paris," Bora-Hansgrohe directeur sportif Rolf Aldag said after Hindley's win in Laruns. "That's not going to be our aim anyway, but to direct podium competitors he gained time and if we just analyse it, it's a good step forward."

He did go on to warn that Hindley had expended an awful lot of energy to secure the stage win and yellow. Could they come under attack less than 24 hours on from that triumph?

"Of course, it was a big investment," Aldag said. "He invested everything all-in. Maybe we already have eyes in the back of our heads tomorrow because he went really, really deep today."

Behind Hindley, Vingegaard, and Pogačar, clusters of GC men are forming, with Egan Bernal, Mikel Landa and Louis Meintjes shedding around three minutes on stage 5. The likes of Ben O'Connor, Tom Pidcock, Michael Woods, and Romain Bardet came in at 1:57 down, losing 19 seconds to Pogačar, the Yates twins, David Gaudu, and Ineos pairing Carlos Rodríguez and Dani Martínez.

Slowly but surely the general classification picture is forming, shaped by the roads of southern France. There'll be another reshaping on Thursday –  one skirmish down, another already on the docket.

Stage 6 information

Location: Tarbes to Cauterets-Cambasque

Date: July 6, 2023

Distance: 144.9km

Stage type: Mountain

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