Julian Alaphilippe stuns Geraint Thomas to win Tour de France time-trial and keep yellow jersey

The Frenchman was supposed to lose time here, and the question coming into the stage was whether he could limit the damage. Instead he smashed Thomas's time

Julian Alaphilippe stunned Geraint Thomas and the rest of the Tour de France field to win a stage 13 time-trial around Pau by 14 seconds and strengthen his hold on the yellow jersey. The Frenchman was supposed to lose time here and the question coming into the stage was whether he could limit the damage; instead he beat Thomas’s time and smashed chunks out of the rest too, stretching his lead in the general classification over second-placed Thomas to 1 min 26 sec.

“I didn’t really expect that,” Thomas said of Alaphilippe. “He’s obviously the one to watch. If he can keep that up then he’ll win. But there’s a long way to go and some hard stages to come now.” Thomas seemed a little frustrated with his own ride and revealed a small chink in his armour for the first time. “That last bit, I didn’t feel like I really had it,” he said. “In the final 8km I didn’t have that last five per cent.”

Even so, it was still an exceptional ride by the reigning champion, who finished second on the stage and took significant time out of the rest of the top 10. Coming into the stage that seemingly would have constituted a great result for Team Ineos, but Alaphilippe looks so strong right now that he cannot be ignored – even if he is dismissing his own chances.

“We don’t have a team to win the Tour de France, without any climbers,” he said of his Quick-Step line-up, who are designed to win individual stages on the early flat and hilly stages rather than attack in the mountains. “I just went full gas and I see what I can do until the line, and my sporting director said to me you are 10 second up, and I give everything. I can’t believe it.”

The Danish national time-trial champion Kasper Asgreen set the running early in the day until his time was beaten by the Belgian who stormed to a memorable breakaway victory on stage eight, Thomas De Gendt.

De Gendt would have been one of the first to ride past his compatriot Wout van Aert lying on the ground on the roadsid after the 24-year-old clipped a metal barrier on a fast right-hand bend. Van Aert, who sprinted to victory on stage 10 riding in his first Tour de France, was tipped to challenge for the win on the time-trial too and was running only a few seconds behind De Gendt’s pace when he suffered the nasty looking crash. He was quickly treated on the sideline before being taken to hospital in an ambulance.

“Wout van Aert unfortunately has to abandon the race after his crash,” his team Jumbo-Visma tweeted. ”He is conscious and has a flesh wound at his right upper leg.”

Soon the big hitters came down the start ramp. French climber Thibaut Pinot and Colombian Rigoberto Uran both finished in the top 10, as did Alaphilippe’s team-mate Enric Mas, taking the young rider’s white jersey from Ineos’s Egan Bernal in the process.

Julian Alaphilippe comes into the finish (Reuters)

Jumbo-Visma’s leader Steven Kruijswijk clocked sixth to climb to third in the GC, but like the rest of the field he was no match for Thomas who crossed the line 22 seconds quicker than the man who had sat in the hot seat for an hour, De Gendt.

In pursuit back down the road, the luminous yellow figure of Alaphilippe was surging under the flamme rouge, driven up the brutally steep final climb by the now maniacal French fans around him. He crossed the line with his tongue out in typically extrovert style before being mobbed by his Quick-Step team. “Woohoo!” he screamed, as his second mightily impressive win of this Tour began to sink in.

On Saturday the peloton return to the mountains to take on the great Tourmalet, one of the most imposing of all the Pyrenean climbs, where Alaphilippe’s climbing capabilities will be severely tested. Yet whatever happens from here on in – and who really knows what comes next – Alaphilippe has already delivered more than he could ever have been expected to. Perhaps the strangest part is that you get the sense he is done yet.