Tour de France 2024 Stage 14

July 13, 2024 The mountains return to the Tour, this time the Pyrenees await. A flat start out of Pau takes the riders over three passes including Le Tourmalet to finish on the summit of Pla d'Adet. The race started aggressively with countless attempts to make a break. It took until 99KM to go when the peloton shut down, leaving two groups up the road to form the break. The two front groups never fully joined together before Le Tourmalet but a total of around 20 riders eventually merged on the lower slopes. UAE set the pace in the peloton and had the break at 4 minutes with 10KM still to climb to the top. Sean Quinn of EF-Education EasyPost rode at the front of the break for nearly the entire climb but it was Oier Lazkano of Movistar who led the break over the top of Le Tourmalet to take the Souvenir Jacques Goddet for the first to cross the summit. The break was reduced to 10 riders with around 3 minutes 40 second gap. Their lead was down to 3 minutes when they hit Hourquette d'Ancizan with 36.5KM to go. The break started to split with 6KM to climb as Ben Healy of EF-Education EasyPost, David Gaudu of Groupama-FDJ, Louis Meintjes of Intermarché-Wanty, Michał Kwiatkowski of Ineos and Lazkano went clear. They stayed together over the top with the points being taken by Gaudu but their lead was down to 1 minute 15 seconds as Marc Soler of UAE was driving the pace in the bunch. The five leaders hit Pla d'Adet with their gap in tact but UAE seemed intent on making a move. Healy went solo on the steep lower section. In the GC group, Adam Yates of UAE attacked with 7.3KM to go and quickly got 25 seconds. At 4.7KM from the finish, Tadej Pogačar of UAE sent a searing attack that no one could follow. He bridged to Yates and Yates accelerated. Healy was caught and dropped in the process. Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike linked up with Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quickstep and the pair worked to close the gap to Pogačar. Yates' shift was done at 4KM to go leaving Pogačar to pull out time. In that moment, Evenepoel dropped away from Vingegaard, leaving the individual pursuit of Vingegaard and Pogačar that we have seen a few times this Tour. Pogačar went under the 1KM to go banner with 24 seconds on Vingegaard. Pogačar stormed to the win pounding his chest, 39 seconds ahead of Vingegaard and 1 minute 10 seconds ahead of Evenepoel. Pogačar now leads overall by nearly 2 minutes to Vingegaard who swapped spots with Evenepoel for second place.