Tour de France 2019: stage 13 individual time trial – live!

We have four checkpoints today: The first is at Ceriset at the 7.7km mark, the second is at Cote D’Esquillot (15.5km), the third is at Juancon (21.9km) and the fourth and all important one is at the finish in Pau (27.2km). There are eight riders out on the road already.

Our first four riders are away: Tony Martin has just set off and as a former world champion, will certainly be one to watch. He may not be as good as he used to be, but he’ll fancy his chances to day and will almost certainly set a time to beat. In the early stages, however, he doesn’t look like he’s going at full gas.

166 riders left: Rohan Dennis and Giacomo Nizzolo quite the Tour yesterday, one on the back of a hissy-fit and the other due to injuries sustained in a crash the previous day. Jasper Philipsen was also withdrawn by UAE Team Emirates, his employers having decided that half a Tour was enough for the 21-year-old Belgian.

Currently in last place on GC, Yoann Offredo will be the first man down the ramp today and will set off in approximately five minutes. It’s difficult to imagine he’ll be too fussed about he gets on. Once he’s set off, riders will go off at one-minute intervals.

Mitchelton Scott’s stage 12 diary

It was another good day for the Australian team, who won their second stage of this year’s Tour, when Simon Yates completed his set of Grand Tour stage wins. Matteo Trentin also took the combativity award and the team can now focus on trying to get Yates’s twin brother Adam as high as possible up the General Classification. He is currently in 7th place, 1min 47sec behind Julian Alaphilippe.

The curious abandonment of Rohan Dennis

While passing through the feed zone yesterday, Rohan Dennis decided to dismount his bicycle and quit this year’s Tour. Almost 24 hours later, mystery continues to surround the Australian’s decision. The world ITT champion, Dennis was among the favourites for today’s stage, but abandoned the Tour despite not being ill or injured. Although he was spotted near his team bus at the end of the stage, he refused to speak to reporters and his team were vague when asked about what happened too.

“We actually expected a big effort from him tomorrow,” said Bahrain-Merida sports director Gorazd Stangelj. “It was his decision today to stop in the feed zone. We tried to speak with him. He said, ‘I don’t want to talk’ and just abandoned the race. His condition is not bad, he’s good enough to perform at the Tour de France. For sure it has nothing to do with his condition.”

A notoriously spiky character, Dennis is rumoured to be unhappy with the Merida time trial bike he is obliged to use because of his team’s sponsors. Speaking to Lance Armstrong’s The Move podcast, former Radioshack and US Postal team director Johan Bruyneel, suggested there was also talk that Dennis spat the dummy because there was something wrong with the skin-suit he was due to wear today. It didn’t fit, or hadn’t turned up … something like that. While Bruyneel’s every utterance should be taken with several shovelfuls of salt, for obvious reasons, he is exceptionally well connected in the world of professional cycling, so there may well be more than a grain of truth to what he is saying.

Tour de France

With the ladies finished, it’s time to return our focus to the gentlemen, who have their Race of Truth this afternoon. Marianne Vos and chums did five laps of the circuit they’ll have to complete this afternoon. While this is ostensibly a day off for the majority of riders, it should go some way towards sorting out the men among the GC contenders from the boys. But first, a recap on stage three, which was won by Mitchelton Scott rider Simon Yates yesterday. Jeremy Whittle was there for the Guardian …

V for Victory (and Vos): Marianne Vos takes her second La Course, having won her first five years ago on different terrain. “I feel really good, I came with good motivation from the Giro Rosa,” she says, having won four stages in the Italian race.

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.

500m to go: Spratt hits the ramp near the finish, but is passed by Marianne Vos.

1km to go: Spratt gets out of the saddle again, while Trek Segafredo go to the front of the bunch.

2.0km to go: Spratt ploughs on, her face a mask of pain. The peloton can see her …

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.

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.

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?

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.

10km to go: Some indecision in the peloton, where Van Vleuten is policing the bunch on behalf her Aussie teammate up the road.

11km to go: The peloton has Spratt in their sights, her lead now down to just nine seconds.

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.

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.

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.

William Fotheringham: “At least one or two of the favourites who are weaker time triallists should be effectively put out of the reckoning.