Tour de France peloton enters Jura mountains in Stage 15

A group of 30 riders formed an early breakaway as the Tour de France peloton headed into the Jura mountains in Sunday’s brutal Stage 15.

Jarlinson Pantano secured his maiden stage win at the Grand Tour after beating Poland’s Rafal Majka in the closing metres of the 160 kilometre route from Bourg-en-Bresse to Culoz today.

Briton Froome retained the overall lead after his Team Sky easily controlled feeble attacks from top-10 riders Fabio Aru, Alejandro Valverde and Romain Bardet.

“There are more Colombian climbers than just Nairo [Quintana] and Esteban [Chaves]”.

It was a day filled with dramatic moments for the rider for the small IAM team, which announced in May that it will fold at the end of this season after failing to find a second sponsor.

Cavendish unsurprisingly saw things differently.

Cavendish said: “There’s two more sprint opportunities, I think”.

“This is incredible. It’s a dream come true”, he said.

His climbing prowess was then on display as he managed to make it to the top of the final ascent of the Grand Colombier in second position, and then his descending skills came to the fore as he closed a gap of around 20 seconds to Rafal Majka (Tinkoff). “I knew that if I was catching him in the descent I’d have a good chance to win”.

Briton Chris Froome maintained the race leader’s yellow jersey after finishing safely in the pack ahead of Sunday’s mountainous stage.

On a constantly undulating course, Dutch rider Dylan van Baarle made the most of the lack of co-operation in the breakaway to try his luck soon after the feed zone but was quickly joined by Tom Dumoulin, who countered him in the Cote d’Hotonnes. “I also dedicate this win to my team captain Matthias Frank who had to pull out of the Tour because he was sick”. Featuring some very steep ramps at an average gradient of 6.8 per cent, the 12.8-kilometre climb was too much to take for Nibali, who immediately got dropped.

On both occasions it was Wout Poels who brought both moves back, setting a tempo up the entire climb that no rider could hope to successfully attack from.

But each time Froome’s Sky team-mates just increased the pace at the front of the peloton and methodically reeled them back in without Froome having to do the work. Van Garderen fought all the way to the finish in the valley below, but ultimately conceded 1:28 to the other GC contenders and dropped from sixth to eighth overall.

With Monday’s 209km stage 16 from Moirans-en-Montagne to Berne relatively flat, Froome will be looking forward to Tuesday’s rest day in Switzerland after an unusual week on the Tour, capped by those freakish images of him running up Mont Ventoux on foot following a crash on Thursday.