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On the toughest day of racing at the Tour de France, Australians stood tall in influencing the direction of the stage.
A very strong breakaway contained five Australians, and three of those were key players in the stage, with Jack Haig (Bahrain Victorious), Ben O’Connor (AG2R-Citroen) and Chris Harper (Jayco-AlUla) putting their own ambitions and putting themselves at the disposal of their team leaders who were aiming to push their way up the overall standings.
They were helping out Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious), Felix Gall (AG2R-Citroen), and Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) respectively, all three riders within the top 10 on the general classification and looking to move their way up the standings.
That meant that they were plenty of other teams looking to limit their advantage, with Australian contender Jai Hindley’s BORA-hansgrohe and INEOS Grenadiers the main teams to aid Jumbo-Visma in the chase of the breakaway.
Haig took up the pace-making early to push the escapees’ advantage out, and then tackled the early slopes of the final ascent, the Col de la Loze, on the front of the breakaway. When he pulled off midway up the climb, he was replaced by O’Connor, pulling all sort of pain faces as set a fierce tempo for eventual stage winner Felix Gall.
When he had suffered too much, he dropped away and Harper came to the front and set a pace that only Gall, Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) and Rafal Majka (UAE Team Emirates) could follow. After a kilometre or two of that, Gall took the opportunity to attack, immediately putting a big gap into the group.
Harper paced behind for Yates, and when the former Vuelta a Espana winner jumped off in pursuit of Gall, he was only able to shorten the advantage of Gall by the finish. The up-and-coming Austrian climber struggled his way up the final steep slopes to the finish in Courchevel, taking victory and vaulting his way up the general classification and the mountains standings.
Yates was second, and Bilbao came in third, all three moving up the general classification thanks in large part to the work of their Australian teammates.
Harper was the best-placed Australian on the stage in seventh, moving himself up to 14th overall on the general classification, though that ranking hasn't been a goal for the South Australian rider.
For Hindley, he continued the run of battling displays following the debilitating effects of a stage 14 crash., dropping away again before the final attack from the yellow jersey group had gone.
In the manic shuffle following the stage, Australia’s best-placed rider had lost another two positions on the standings, dropping to seventh overall, now 13’50 behind Jonas Vingegaard at the top of the standings.
Matt Dinham (Team DSM) and Nick Schultz (Israel Premier Tech) were also present in the breakaway, both dropping away on the final climb, but showing that they’ve got some good legs at present as they fared better than some higher profile riders in the move.
