Van Avermaet Charges to Glory in Rodez; Sagan Settles for Points Lead

Greg Van Avermaet of BMC made Belgian hearts soar with a perfectly timed attack inside the final few hundred meters to win the 13th stage of the Tour de France in Rodez. Van Avermaet emerged from the peloton on the uphill approach to the line on this tricky stage, blasting away the hopes of the sprinters and just managing to hold off Peter Sagan of Tinkoff-Saxo as the two dashed for the line ahead of AG2R's Jan Bakelants. Van Avermaet made his jump from the bottom of the 500 meter uphill portion of the home stretch, a long effort, but he managed to scatter his rival stage hunters across the road and claim his first career Tour de France stage win. The win was also a Belgian first in this year's race, while a first mass-start win for BMC after taking both time trials.

The expected breakaway was led by Rodez native Alexandre Geniez of FDJ, along with Cannondale's Nathan Haas, Pierre-Luc Perrichon of Bretagne-Seche, Thomas De Gendt of Lotto-Soudal, Europcar's Cyril Gautier, and LottoNL's Wilco Kelderman. They hovered three-plus minutes off the front of the race over the heavy roads of the Tarn, but Tinkoff-Saxo made it clear that they intended to bring Sagan to the line.

Things got interesting (in a not necessarily good way) with about 55km to go, following the first rated climb of the day. A split opened up in the peloton, with Astana's Vincenzo Nibali, the 2014 Tour winner, and André Greipel, the green jersey hopeful, caught behind the gap. While their teams went to work closing up the gap, AG2R's Jean-Christophe Péraud took a nasty spill out of an echelon, rolling his body across the road and suffering plenty of scrapes and bruises. Péraud took time to recover, but managed to not only resume racing but to catch the peloton, and only dropped off the peloton in the final few KM, when his start status for tomorrow was safe.

With 23km remaining, Haas sensed the break disintegrating and made his way alone up the road. The Queenslander opened up a small ten-second gap, but caused the rest of his breakmates to reorganize and take up the pursuit. They rejoined, then splintered permanently with Kelderman, Gautier and De Gendt still holding 50 seconds with 10km remaining. Giant-Alpecin spent much of the day at or near the front, aiming to put John Degenkolb in position to win, while Orica-GreenEdge made an appearance on behalf of Michael Matthews, who had garnered attention in the Pyrénées for his hold on last place overall, the Lanterne Rouge. FDJ and MTN-Qhubeka also got involved as the sprint took shape, and of course it wouldn't be a stage battle without Etixx-Quick Step. The peloton roared into Rodez, descending from the hills at 75kph, and only just reeled in the break on the final uphill with the line in sight.

Sagan's Tour continues to be a quixotic one. He reversed a slight intermediate points deficit to Greipel by coming second on the stage, with the German nowhere in sight, and now holds a lead of 24 in the Points classification. But he missed out on a stage win, and his Tour stage victory drought still dates back to 2013.

The heads of state arrived on time, led by maillot jaune Chris Froome of Sky, sixth on the stage. His remaining GC rivals were attentive to the finish and came in with Froome, even as the rest of the peloton was split to pieces.

Results:

GC, unchanged:

Points: