Tour de France 2018: race heads to Alpe d’Huez on stage 12 – live!

26km to go: That’s despite Robert Gesink, Kruijswijk’s team-mate, moving to the front of the Team Sky group to disrupt their chase for a while.

27km to go: The leaders are nibbling into Kruijswijk’s lead, which over the last few minutes has gone down 30sec to 5min 30sec

28km to go: “Great stuff from Kruijswijk but we’ve seen this before on L’Alpe d”Huez stages,” notes Gary Naylor. “The mountain flings riders all over its virages and two minutes can go in five. Watching EPO “flatten” the monster was one of the more disappointing elements of that unlamented era.”

Here’s the final 13km of today’s stage in profile:

35km to go: “I can’t say whether Kruijswijk is a definite contender for this year’s GC but my word what a ride he’s putting in today. I really hope he has enough in the tank to stay away,” writes George Young. “He was leading the 2016 Giro d’Italia in the final week when he misjudged a bend on a descent and smashed into a wall of snow. Whilst he quickly remounted and finished the race, the injuries to his hip & arms knocked him out of contention for the maglia rosa in the closing stages.” Here’s that crash in full:

37km to go: There are five Sky riders at the front of the yellow jersey group, followed by three from Movistar.

38km to go: They’re still going downhill after the Col de la Croix de Fer, and will be for a while. When they reach Allemont in about 15km the terrain will level out for a bit, before the final climb up the Alpe d’Huez. Kruijswijk’s virtual race lead is currently at 3min 28sec.

43km to go: “Could you, or some of our more learned (than myself) followers, inform me of whether our friend Mr Kruijswijk is a definite threat to the eventual winner of the yellow jersey, or is this more of an impressive stage win type scenario?” wonders Richard Dennis. He was certainly aiming to have a tilt at the Tour for the first time this year, at the age of 31. “I’ve never targeted the Tour de France like I am now,” he told Cycling News earlier this year. “This will be the first time.” He is having an extraordinary day, and has a virtual lead of over three minutes.

51km to go: Barguil is second over the Col de la Croix de Fer, well behind Kruijswijk. He, Mikel Nieve and Majka are in a little three-man group trying to claw back time on the leader.

54km to go: There are just four Team Sky riders in the group trying to push the peloton forward: Froome, Thomas, Egan Bernal and Michal Kwiatkowski.

55km to go: “Why has Greipel abandoned?” screams Jake Schuster. “Two of his biggest rivals fell out yesterday he could have cleaned up the remaining sprinters this Tour!” No explanation yet, but it has definitely happened.

56km to go: The Gaviria reports have however been confirmed by his team.

57.5km to go: And as soon as I report that, it’s reported that Poljanski has not in fact abandoned. Much more of this and I am going to abandon reporting the abandonments.

58km to go: More abandonments I hadn’t reported: Pawel Poljanski of Bora Hansgrohe, Rick Zabel of Katusha-Alpecin and André Greipel of New Lotto Soudal have all fallen.

59km to go: Less than 5km to go on the Col de la Croix de Fer, and Kruijswijk is having an extraordinary day. His lead over the yellow jersey group is now at 6min 12sec, and nearly 3min ahead of anyone else.

60km to go: Another sprinting casualty: Fernando Gaviria is said to have abandoned.

62.5km to go: Steven Kruijswijk is still flying off on his own. He’s now 1min 30sec ahead of what was once the leading group, and 5min 40sec ahead of the yellow jersey group.

64km to go: The tour will soon pass through Saint-Sorlin-D’Arves. They don’t do things by, ahem, arves in this place: they even have a town mascot, AKA some bloke in a cow costume. Sorlinette, the mascot involved, has its own Facebook site and everything.

71km to go: Steven Kruijswijk has launched a solo bid for glory, and has a 25sec lead over the rest of the leading group. He has the virtual yellow jersey on his shoulders, but it doesn’t appear to be weighing him down.

72km to go: Howard Appleby has a solution to my cherry problem: “Put both bags of cherries into one bowl. Wait a few minutes and they’ll start separating and then the English cherries will jump out, unless the Belgians kick them out first!” I have concluded that I should just eat them all, and then repeat the test tomorrow with fewer stupid errors.

74km to go: So with Groenewegen, winner of two stages this year, joining Cavendish and Kittel on the sidelines, there is some savage sprinter-scaring going on at the moment.

75km to go: “The Lacets are no where as bad as they look,” writes Richard Parker. “Apart from a couple of short sections they are not too bad. They are fantastic to ride though.” The scenery is absolutely exhilarating, though I’ve mainly seen it courtesy of helicopter-based cameras.

78km to go: There’s news filtering through of another abandonment, with Dylan Groenewegen of LottoNL-Jumbo deciding that all these mountains aren’t really for him.

80km to go: “If you approach the town from the other direction does it bill itself as the capital of cycling descents,” writes Jonathan Miller of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, “or is it uphill both ways?” I think it’s the town’s proximity to lots of hills that they’re celebrating. It’s a bit like a tropical island celebrating the quality of the swimming available there even though, being an island, it’s the only place for miles around where you can’t actually swim.

82km to go: On today’s official timings the earliest anyone was expected to arrive in Saint-Jean was 3.05pm local time, which suggests the pace so far has been unexpectedly fast.

83km to go: The big news of the day is that when I went to the greengrocers this morning they had two batches of cherries, one from Belgium and one from England. So I did the only reasonable thing and bought a handful from each box. England and Belgium went head-to-head twice in the World Cup, but this, I imagined, would be the biggest bout of all.

Though obviously I put the two batches of cherries in identical paper bags, and now I have no idea which is which.

84km to go: Pierre Rolland is well ahead as he goes through Saint-Jean-de-Marienne. Team Sky and the rest of the peloton are more than four minutes behind.

87km to go: The results of the category two climb of the Lacets de Montvernier:

1. Pierre Rolland (5 points)
2. Julian Alaphilippe (3)
3. Serge Pauwels (2)
4. Robert Gesink (1)

88km to go: Next up is the day’s one sprint, to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. The town bills itself as the world capital of uphill cycling. It’s about 3km away.

90km to go: This picture is even scarier.

91km to go: Just look at the state of this. The fourth-toughest climb of the day, and it’s absolutely brutal.

92.5km to go: Pierre Rolland is out on his own, 25 seconds ahead of the rest of the breakaway group.