Tour de France stage 21 – Live coverage | Cyclingnews – Cyclingnews.com

Cavendish is back in the pack too and climbing this little rise. His stage really starts once we hit Paris, and we’re just on the outskirts now.

We’re on a bit of a rise and Uran jokingly turns to the camera and pretends that he’s in trouble. I think he’s pretending anyway. 72km to go.

Another great read from Alasdair Fotheringham today:

O’Connor: I hope to wear the Tour de France yellow jersey one day

Back of the bunch and former teammates Chris Froome and Dylan van Baarle are in conversation. 

We’re about 20km from the racing to really start with the final 52km of the stage all taking place over the 8 laps of the Champs Elysees. 

78km to go

Just spotted someone in a Postal jersey, which is probably the most exciting bit of action we’ve had in the last 45 minutes. Don’t worry, things will get better the closer we get to Paris. 78km to go.

EF have moved up towards the front as a few riders drift back and take on some food. There’s a bit of a discussion going on at the moment with UAE heavily involved. 

We’re almost into the final 90km of the stage and it’s Movistar and UAE who are sat on the front for now.

Pogacar has dropped back into the middle of the peloton and is talking to Matthews, who is an outsider for the sprint this evening. 

Mikkel Bjerg takes the single point at the top of the ascent. 

We’re on the climb but it’s irrelevant in a number of ways. 100km to go on the stage.  

We’re coming up to the fourth cat climb but UAE are still on the front and having their photos taken. I can’t remember if they do this for every team. 

Jakob Fuglsang has not started the final stage and he’s the only non-starter. One can assume he’s just going to use this to rest ahead of flying to Tokyo… Unless he’s just decided to get an earlier flight. 

And now we see Pogacar and his seven teammates go clear of the bunch to have their photos taken by the press on motos. 

And we’re racing on stage 21 of the Tour de France. It’s still a gentle pace with UAE Team Emirates in new jerseys to celebrate their second straight overall win. It’s basically white with a yellow band over the chest.

Just over 2km to go in the neutralized zone. We’re almost racing but the pace won’t shoot up right away as we’ve still got some pictures to take and some champagne to drink. 

Wout van Aert near the front and just chugging down a bidon. He’s a big contender today but he did go hard yesterday and he’s not as quick as Cavendish in a straight line. He’s still a rider to watch in the finale though.

We’re just crossing the Seine and the pace is still really gentle at the moment as you would expect for the final stage of the Tour de France.

Our very on dep ed, Laura Weislo wrote this great story about Franck Bonnamour (B&B Hotels p/b KTM) who was voted as the most aggressive rider of the 2021 Tour de France, winning the €20,000 prize for ‘super-combatif’ after a vote from the French jury.

Would you like to know more?

We have 8.5km of a neutralized zone to start with as we see Uran bringing up the rear. He had a really tough final week and dropped from second on GC to tenth. He’s smiling today and I think he’s on the flight to Tokyo this evening. He was second at the Games in London, and could be a contender nine years on.

Huge crowds at the start this afternoon as we see Pogacar on the startline. He’s all smiles of course, and so is Cavendish. 

Riders have gathered on the startline and we’ll be rolling out soon enough.

We do have a fourth cat climb soon after the start, and there’s an intermediate sprint with around 26km to go.

This is the first time we’ve been in Chatou for a Tour de France stage start. The town has been used in smaller races in the past but never the Tour. The sun is out this afternoon and we’re expecting dry conditions for the rest of the day.

Kwiatkowski has been pretty honest about his team’s tactics in the Tour de France.

“We came with the mentality of using the guys who could be potentially close on GC – Richie [Porte], Tao [Geoghegan Hart], Richard [Carapaz] and G [Geraint Thomas], to fight against the favourites, which was obviously [Tadej] Pogačar [UAE Team Emirates],” Kwiatkowski told Cyclingnews before stage 19.

“But because of the crashes we couldn’t go with that plan. It was all focussed on Richard. We couldn’t use the strength of the team in terms of putting the pressure on the others with just attacking with the other GC guys, we had to put pressure like the old-school Sky and wait for them [the opposition] to crack.

“We did it for a couple of guys [opponents] but [race leader] Pogačar was unbreakable. So we are proud of what we achieved, but we always had an appetite for more.”

The full story is here.

Anyway we’re about 15 minutes from the roll out on stage 21 of the Tour de France.

Mads Pedersen, van Poppel. I really did a terrible job of listing off the sprinters still in the race.

I’ve just been informed that the finish straight is 700m this year (was 400m before) so we’ll have a longer sprint than normal. That probably just means that the leadout will be even more important and timing will be everything. Morkov will have it dialed in, for sure, but Quickstep can’t take on the entire chase once a break does get clear.

Jasper Philipsen… totally forgot to mention in when talking about sprinters still in the race. He’s had two seconds and three thirds in this year’s race and can’t be discounted in the sprint. Given what we’ve seen so far he’s probably Cavendish’s main rival.

We’re about 45 minutes from the roll out on stage 21 of the Tour de France.

Meanwhile Alasdair Fotheringham has written this excellent feature on Jonas Vingegaard, who will finish second overall in his first-ever appearance at the Tour de France.

Jonas Vingegaard: from fish factory to Tour de France podium.

Ineos heads into Paris with a rider on the podium but it’s not the result that they wanted with Carapaz in third and no stage wins for the team. Here’s what the Ineos leader had to say:

“This year three was a different way of racing in the Tour, with more sporting aggressiveness,” he said.

“There are very few riders in the world who can win the Tour. I didn’t make it this year, but I’m sure I’ll do it one day.”

Would you like to know more?

“I think there will be a lot of attacks because it will be difficult to control the race. Until the first passage on the Champs, it will be calm. I will try something anyway.”

Those are the words of Gilbert who is also riding his final Tour de France. Well, that’s not 100 per cent but he’s strongly hinted at this. I think he’s going to be in a move. I can imagine Van Avermaet going on the attack too but the last winner from a break in Paris was Alexandre Vinokourov, way back in 2005. 

Some chatter about a break surviving on the Champs Elysees today because of a lack of sprinters still in the race. That’s very, very unlikely with Jumbo, QuicStep, ISN, and BikeExchange all keen on a sprint. DSM too, in fact. Yes, we’re missing some sprinters but this is destined to finish in a bunch gallop.

We’re just over an hour away from the start of the final stage of this year’s Tour de France.

Mark Cavendish and his 34 Tour de France stage wins – Gallery

Another contender for today is Wout Van Aert. He won the TT, and he won the Ventoux stage but today he’s going for the sprint. All of Belgium – minus Lefevere and QuickStep – will be cheering him on. Here’s a photo of him gobbling up kms on his time trial bike.

You can also bookmark our Olympic Games 2021 coverage right here. That page will have everything you need to know, and more.

We spoke to Jakob Fuglsang, on a related note. He’s off to Tokyo tonight, along with a gaggle of Tour riders. He thinks that his subdued ride in the Tour is down to his second jab. He was second in Rio though, and here are his thoughts on all of the above.

Would you like to know more?

Before we get wrapped up in Tour stuff let’s spend a bit of time talking about the Olympics because despite covid cases exploding and cases now being detected in the athlete village it looks like the Games are going ahead. Here’s the full schedule of events, times, and locations. For most of you, it’ll mean staying up late or getting up very, very early. 

We’re about 90 minutes away from the official roll out. If this is your first rodeo, the riders will amble along as they sip champagne and pose for awkward photos with their teammates. Then we’ll hit Paris, the speed will increase, we’ll do some laps and then we’ll have a sprint. Game over.

Keep an eye out for Andre Greipel today. I don’t know if he’ll up there or not but the German is racing his final Tour de France and he announced just yesterday that he will be retiring at the end of the 2021 season. He’s won in Paris, and he’s got 13 stages to his name, and ISN, have stated that they are ‘all in’ for him today. 

All the jerseys are wrapped up today but here’s how things look in the overall standings. 

All eyes on Mark Cavendish today who is aiming to set a record for the most Tour de France stage wins by a rider. He’s currently tied on 34 with Eddy Merckx but win today and he’ll be out in front on 35. He’s won in Paris before, a number of times, but this is different, because it’s not every day a rider beats one of Merckx’s records. 

Good day to you. Welcome to our live race text coverage from stage 21 of the Tour de France. It’s the final stage and we’re finally heading to Paris.