Australian team fall short of lofty goal but earn huge consolation

Saint Michel-de-Maurienne: The Australian Mitchelton-Scott team will “wait until the dust settles” from the Tour de France that finishes on Sunday and “take the emotion out” before dissecting what went wrong in their bid for overall victory by their star British rider, Adam Yates.

“Now is not the time for us to analyse what happened,” Mitchelton-Scott head sports director Matt White told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Front-runner: Adam Yates had been the man targeted for overall victory but that plan fell apart on stage 14.Credit: AP

“There’ll be a time and a place, a week … 10 days from here … when the dust settles to take the emotion out of what's happened. Then you can sit and analyse what happened there.”

At a glance, it is a textbook response by a sports team coming to terms with having fallen short of a lofty ambition that was understandable based on Yates’ pedigree, especially after investing so much time, energy and resources.

But Mitchelton-Scott have found, or earned, the near-perfect consolation for their setback. They will still finish in Paris with a swag of stage wins that will make this their most successful Tour.

Many teams set out to try to win one stage, believing that win will make a successful Tour. Avenging a scuppered overall classification bid as Mitchelton-Scott have done mid-race by winning a stack of stages is another challenge altogether.

Going into Friday’s 126.5km 19th stage from Saint Jean-de-Maurienne to Tignes, the second of three Alpine stages in this 106th Tour, the team had an astonishing four stage wins.

“Regardless of what happened, it is one [Tour] that we will never forget … This many stage wins is a pretty big feat in the Tour de France and it’s been a special one,” White said.

Only one other team boasted four wins by Friday, the Dutch Jumbo-Visma outfit whose leader Steven Kruijswijk was also in contention then for the overall win. The Belgian Lotto-Soudal team had three stage wins, two of them by Australian sprinter and Tour debutant Caleb Ewan. Ewan, 25, added to his stage 11 victory in Albi last week with another win on stage 16 at Nîmes on Tuesday.

Mitchelton-Scott’s purpose when the Tour began on July 5 in Brussels was to support Yates’ bid to improve on his fourth place overall in 2016 when he also won the white jersey as best young rider.

Success: Daryl Impey celebrates on the podium after winning the ninth stage of the Tour de France.Credit: AP

But once Yates’ hopes collapsed in the Pyrénees on stage 14 when he finished 25th at 6 minutes 42 seconds to the French winner Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ), the team immediately turned to trying to win stages instead. The next day in the Pyrénees on stage 15 to Foix Prat d’Albi, Yates’ twin brother, Simon – the winner of last year’s Vuelta a España – won, adding to his stage 12 win.

Mitchelton-Scott’s other wins came in stage nine to Brioude courtesy of South African champion Daryl Impey, and on Wednesday when Italian Matteo Trentin won stage 17 from Pont du Garde to Gap at the foot of the Alps where this most exciting of Tours was destined to won or lost.

After Thursday’s 208km 18th stage in the Alps from Embrun to Valloire won by Colombian Nairo Quintana (Movistar), six riders were still vying for overall victory with 2 minutes 14 seconds between them: Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick Step), who still led overall then; Colombian Egan Bernal (Team Ineos); Welsh Tour champion Geraint Thomas (Team Ineos); Dutchman Steven Kruijswijk (Jumbo-Visma); Frenchman Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ); and German Emmanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe).

Pending the outcome of Friday’s 19th stage, the Tour could even be decided on Saturday’s final day in the Alps, the 130km 20th stage from Albertville to the summit of Val Thorens.

Tour organisers may have missed British four-time Tour champion Chris Froome and last year’s Dutch runner-up Tom Dumoulin, both not in the Tour due to race injuries. But their absence opened up the race to a level not seen for years.

It is arguably the most exciting Tour since 1989 when American Greg LeMond overcame French leader Laurent Fignon on the final day time trial to win by a record lowest margin of eight seconds.

“It's probably one of the toughest, if not the toughest, back ends of the Tour de France in modern times,” said White. “It's probably one of the most entertaining Tours for a long time.

“Regardless of who wins, it's been a different Tour because no team has dominated it, or taken control of the race, or has been able to strangle the race as Sky [now Ineos] have in the past.

Headline act: Simon Yates crosses the finish line to win the 15th stage in Prat d'Albis.Credit: AP

“We've seen the most open Tour de Franc in 10 years or so.”

The French narrative to this Tour was sparked by Alaphilippe. He won stage three in Epernay to claim the yellow jersey and hold it until stage six. But then he took it back on stage eight. He held it going into the Alps, in a reign that saw him surprise by winning the stage 14 time trial in Pau.

However, it was the emergence of Pinot as a serious contender for overall victory since his stage 14 win on the Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrénees that really inflamed local expectation that France may at long last get to celebrate its first Tour winner since Bernard Hinault in 1985.

The answer to that, we will know on Saturday.