MOLLEMA GOES IT ALONE TO TAKE TOUR STAGE WIN
BAUKE Mollema soloed to victory on stage 14 of the Tour de France in Quillan to take his second career win in the race. Mollema attacked out of a breakaway with 42 kilometres left of the 184km stage from Carcassonne and quickly built a lead of more than a minute which held over the final climb of a day before the long descent to the finish.
The Trek-Segafredo rider had plenty of time to celebrate on the line before Patrick Konrad beat Sergio Higuita to second place 64 seconds later, while Michael Woods was fifth after a day in the break that will move him into the polka dot jersey as leader of the king of the mountains classification.
The peloton rolled in almost seven minutes after Mollema crossed the line, but though Tadej Pogacar was unmoved in the yellow jersey there were changes at the top of the general classification as the Tour reached the Pyrenees.
Guillaume Martin was part of the break, and though he finished 88 seconds behind Mollema, that was enough to move him up seven places to second, dislodging Rigoberto Uran and knocking Jonas Vingegaard out of the podium places.
However, the Frenchman’s rivals will remain confident he will drop away in the final week, either in the high mountains to come or, if he survives those, in the stage 20 time trial.
“It’s amazing to win a stage again,” said Mollema, who also won stage 15 of the 2017 Tour. “It was a super hard day, it took 80 or 90 kilometres until the break finally went but the team was amazing, they made sure we didn’t miss anything at the start of the race.
“It was a nice group (in the breakaway), a lot of strong guys, but we were not working together so well, there were two guys not really turning. I was feeling good so I thought, ‘Let’s go from far’ and I did 40 or 45 kilometres alone. It was a hard final but I’m super happy I made it.”