Tour de France 2024 Stage 17

July 17, 2024 The sprinters have had their fun, now it's time for the Rouleurs and Barradeurs to shine. 180KM to the foothills of the Alps will take the riders on difficult, undulating roads with an uphill finish shortly after second and first category climbs. Aggression at the start caused by cross winds put the race into echelons. Four groups formed but after 15KM, it was all back together. The bunch was cagey and it took until 151KM to go for the first attacks to go. Four riders got away with 122KM to go including Magnus Cort of Uno-X Mobility, Bob Jungles of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Tiesj Benoot of Visma-Lease a Bike, and Romain Grégoire of Groupama-FDJ but the attacks continued behind. The peloton split, came back together and the race continued in a chaotic state. The leaders had just over a minute with 65KM to go as the peloton just tired itself out. A group would get away, then riders would bridge, closing it down and the pattern would repeat. A group of around 40 eventually pried itself out of the peloton with 54KM to go but it was so large that they lost time to the front four leaders, starting the Col Bayard 1 minute 45 seconds behind with 38KM to go. The leaders crested the Col Bayard with 30 seconds over Guillaume Martin of Cofidis and Valentin Madouas of Groupama-FDJ. A third group of 25 chasers came over 30 seconds later as the peloton sat up, over 6 minutes back. Madouas and Martin bridged to the leaders with 18.5KM to the finish and 7KM to climb on the Col de Noyer. The pure climbers started to come out of the larger chase group. Simon Yates of Jayco AlUla came across a 30 second gap in under 1KM and blew by the front riders. Stephen Williams of Israel-Premier Tech and Richard Carapaz of EF-Education EasyPost were next to pass the original break and were about 10 seconds down on Yates. Williams dropped away from Carapaz with 4KM to climb as Carapaz slowly drew in Yates, catching him with 3.2KM to climb. Carapaz hit Yates at 1.8KM from the top on a 12% section. Yates kept his pace but Carapaz had the gas to go over the top with 15 seconds. Carapaz put in second after second into Yates on the 3.8KM climb up to Superdévoluy and took the stage win 37 seconds ahead of Yates. Enric Mas of Movistar, who had a strong climb of Noyer but missed the move when it went, finished in third place. In the GC group, it all looked neutralized until Tadej Pogačar of UAE attacked with 1.5KM to go from the top of the Col de Noyer. Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike got within a bike length but went too deep and had to slow. Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quickstep and Vingegaard went over the top 10 seconds down and descended together. They caught Pogačar before the final uphill to the finish. Evenepoel attacked Pogačar and Vingegaard to take advantage of them marking each other out. Evenepoel took 12 seconds out of Vingegaard on the line. Pogačar sprinted, beating Vingegaard and putting 2 symbolic seconds into him, another chink out of Vingegaard's armor.