Tour de France 2019: stage 13 individual time trial and Vos wins La Course – live!

19 July 2019 10:49
Geraint Thomas among favourites for 27.2km stage in PauBack in Pau: 20 years on from Armstrong’s first Tour winEmail Barry or tweet @bglendenning with your thoughts 11.49am BST 11.47am BST Heartbreak for Amanda Spratt as Marianne Vos sweeps past her on the final climb with just 300 metres to go, pulls away from her and wins at her leisure to CCC Live. 11.45am BST 500m to go: Spratt hits the ramp near the finish, but is passed by Marianne Vos. 11.44am BST 1km to go: Spratt gets out of the saddle again, while Trek Segafredo go to the front of the bunch. 11.43am BST 2.0km to go: Spratt ploughs on, her face a mask of pain. The peloton can see her . 11.41am BST 2.5km to go: Spratt leads by 12 seconds. At the front of the bunch, CCC Liv and Team Sunweb finally appear to have got their act together and are hunting her down. 11.38am BST 6km to go: Hats off to Annemiek van Vleuten, Spratt’s team-mate, who is successfully disrupting any efforts the bunch are making to get themselves organised. At the moment, Riejanne Markus of CCC-Liv is trying to tow them along to get her team-mate Vos into contention. 11.36am BST 7km to go: The gap from Amanda Spratt to the chasing posse goes back out to 33 seconds, then back into 19. Can she hang on? 11.34am BST 7.5km to go: Spratt is out of the saddle, her legs pumping . The gap is back out to 20 seconds in the wake of the aforementioned indecision and disorganisation in the pack, where the riders are squabbling over how best to organise their chase. 11.32am BST 10km to go: Some indecision in the peloton, where Van Vleuten is policing the bunch on behalf her Aussie teammate up the road. 11.30am BST 11km to go: The peloton has Spratt in their sights, her lead now down to just nine seconds. 11.29am BST 12km to go: It’s worth noting that Spratt’s Dutch team-mate, Annemiek van Vleuten is trying to win her third consecutive La Course title. She is currently chasing down Lucinda Brand and Marianne Vos, who are trying to bridge the gap from the peloton to Spratt. The gap is dissolving, however. 11.23am BST 16km to go: Marianne Vos and her CCC Liv domestiques are towing the bunch along as Spratt, who was previously in a five-woman breakaway before dropping her travelling companions and striking for home on her own. 11.20am BST La Course: You join us with 17 kilometres left of this year’s La Course, a race in which Annemiek van Vleuten, Anna van der Breggen, Marianne Vos and Lizzie Deignan are among the field of big-name cyclists riding five laps of the Individual Time Trial course their male counterparts will tackle in the Individual Time Trial later this afternoon. Described today by the Dame Sarah Storey as “a token gesture” even if “it’s better to have any race than no race”, this year’s La Course is currently being led by Mitchelton Scott rider Amanda Spratt, who has a lead of 28 seconds over the chasing pack. 11.12am BST 11.12am BST 11.07am BST William Fotheringham: “At least one or two of the favourites who are weaker time triallists should be effectively put out of the reckoning. Continue readingread full article

Source: TheGuardian