BARCELONNETTE: Belgian Victor Campenaerts won stage 18 of the Tour de France as an escape dominated a race around the spectacular lake Serre-Poncon in the Alps on Thursday.

Overall leader Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia and defending champion Jonas Vingegaard were relaxed as the escape pulled 15 minutes clear, the pair saving their thunder for a trio of decisive days in the 2024 Tour which finishes in Nice on Sunday.

Pogacar retained a 3min 11sec lead on Vingegaard as the peloton rolled gently over the finish line at Barcelonnette 13min 41sec after the winner.

The Lotto-Dstny rider, a former one-hour world record holder, wept at the finish line as he spoke with his wife via video at the finish.

In many ways Campenaerts shared the limelight on Thursday with the 20km long artificial lake Serre-Poncon with turquoise blue waters that run off the Alps to 90m deep in spring.

This was an opportunity for the lesser mortals to take centre stage on a Tour dominated by a tense tussle for the title, with one-day specialists jostling to get in the breakaway.

Thirty of them battled around a series of lake resorts cheered on by holiday crowds with 22km of categorised climbs that splintered the escape into mini groups in pine-wooded hills that spared them some of the sizzling 33 Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) heat.

On a stage billed as the prettiest on the route Norwegian Tobias Johannessen of Uno-X fell on a tight downhill corner overlooking the lake, but avoided the disaster of plunging into a ravine.

Eritrean break out star Biniam Girmay retained the green sprint jersey ahead of Jasper Philipsen as the escape group took the intermediate sprint points way ahead of the peloton.

The final three stages are all potential game changers with Friday’s run taking the peloton to 2,800m altitude before a huge descent sure to provide an edge of the seat experience for the armchair viewer.

Saturday is also mountainous with two mountains and another downhill finale. But the final stage could shake up the standings even more with a 34km individual time trial from Monaco to Nice.

On Wednesday, Richard Carapaz of EF Education-EasyPost climbed solo to victory on stage 17, a 178km ride from Saint-Paul-Trois-chate­aux to Superdevoluy.

Carapaz, who has also won stages on the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana, finished 37 seconds ahead of Jayco Alula’s Simon Yates to claim his first win on the Tour de France, with Movistar’s Enric Mas third, nearly a minute behind.

The 31-year-old Carapaz also became the first Ecuadorian to win a stage at the Tour.

His attack in the mountains, about 13km from the finish, helped the Olympic champion breeze to victory but there was a battle in the general classification behind him as Pogacar retained his yellow jersey.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2024