Swiss champion Mauro Schmid took a heroic second place after a mammoth 155km breakaway battle on a relentless and breathless stage 11 of the Tour de France.
The 25-year-old was amongst the first riders to jump clear of the peloton as the flag dropped outside of Toulouse and an epic effort saw him stay away until the finish with just one remaining breakaway companion. After holding off a charging Mathieu van der Poel in the final kilometres, the pair contested victory in a two-up sprint with the Team Jayco AlUla rider just inches from the win.
The first stage back after the opening rest day saw the peloton revitalised and ready to fight with the breakaway battle going on for some 70km. As carnage ensued behind, Schmid was already out front in a three-man move that would eventually become five.
The action in the peloton was unrelenting until a counter attacking group of five escaped the bunch and attempted to bridge across to Schmid and the other leaders. It took more than 40km for the pursuers to cut the 50-second gap down to 20, but despite the firepower in the chase, the leaders sustained a slim advantage.
As the advantage continued to fluctuate, the race exploded once again as Schmid made his move on the penultimate climb. Meanwhile, Van der Poel launched his own attack behind in a bid to finally close the gap.
The acceleration from the double Swiss champion was enough to decimate the leading group, leaving just himself and Jonas Abrahamsen at the front as they hit the final climb of the day. The duo made it over the punchy ascent with a handy lead, but with Van der Poel closing in, they couldn’t relax on the race back into Toulouse.
After a stage long break, it wasn’t until the final 400 metres that the leading pair knew the fight for the victory was between themselves. Abrahamsen launched his sprint out of Schmid’s wheel, with the Swiss rider reacting, but unable to overhaul his rival before the finish line.
Mauro Schimd:
“I think after the rest day, a stage like this, there’s many guys like me who wanted to be in the break today because the stages from here will be quite hard or a sprint. I think today was a really good opportunity, everybody recovered a little bit and it was some hard racing.
We all worked pretty well together. During the day, we all had our highs and lows but normally when you go in a break like this, you have this middle section where you can breathe a little bit and recover, but today we could never really do that so it made it quite difficult.
Then we had this chase group with some quite strong riders, and we knew it’s better to not let them come to us so we always kept pushing. On the second last climb I heard on the radio that they’re getting really close so I said yeah now it’s time to move because otherwise if Van der Poel and Van Aert come to us it will be really, really difficult.
So I rode away with Abrahamsen, he was super strong all day from the beginning. Then in the end it was so loud so actually I didn’t really hear anything in the radio, but I always heard like someone around 10 seconds. In the sprint, maybe I started a bit too early and I was a bit in the wrong gear, but Abrahamsen was also really strong.”
Tour de France stage 11 results
1. Jonas Abrahamsen 3:15:56
2. Mauro Schmid (Team Jayco AlUla) st
3. Mathieu van der Poel +7
Photo: Sprint Cycling
