Stage Sixteen: Rui Costa Justifies My Pre-Race Hype!

Back in June, while analyzing the Tour de Suisse, I singled out Rui Costa (Movistar) as a likely high achiever in the Tour de France.  Early in the race he was within 3 minutes of Chris Froome (Sky) and sitting in GC 11th place, riding support for team leader Alejandro Valverde who was in GC 2nd place.  Then the wheels came off - literally.  The puncture by Valverde in Stage 13 forced Costa to drop back in what proved to be a futile effort to rescue Valverde, and both Valverde and Costa fell out of contention for the Yellow Jersey.  Movistar has scrambled back into the headlines with Nairo Quintana’s brilliant 2nd place showing on Mt. Ventoux, his capture of the White Jersey, and his jump to GC 6th place.  Now today, in the very next stage, Rui Costa has come roaring back!  He led the large escape group that deprived the top sprinters of any intermediate sprint points, and then attacked the escapees to capture the stage victory in the mountain town of Gap, jumping from GC 33rd place to 20th, and cutting his deficit to Froome by 11 minutes.  As frosting on the cake, he also won the award for “most combative.”

Meanwhile, Froome stayed safe in the trailing peleton, riding behind his Sky teammate Richie Porte, who fought off repeated attacks by the Saxo pair of Alberto Contador and Roman Kreuziger.  The Contador attacks dropped most of the other GC hopefuls, including Cadel Evans (BMC) and Andrew Talansky (Garmin).  However, Bauke Mollema (Belkin) and Nairo Quintana (Movistar) stayed in the Yellow Jersey’s elite 8-man peleton, retaining their top GC places.  In fact, Quintana moved up from 6th to 5th, at the expense of Laurens Ten Dam (Belkin).

With 7.5 Km to go, Contador crashed while trying to lose Froome on a high-speed descent.  Froome did not crash, but rode his bike off the road to avoid hitting Contador.  Mollema and Quintana, in a show of sportsmanship, slowed their pace to allow Contador and Froome to rejoin their little peleton and finish the race all with the same time.

If you can't bike the valleys and mountains of France, then maybe you can see them in a car, like this vintage deux chevaux we spotted while climbing Mt. Ventoux in 2011.