Tour de France 2019: Geraint Thomas unhappy with Ineos pace after falling behind Egan Bernal in standings

After another gripping instalment of this Tour de France, perhaps the strangest part is that we are still no closer to learning who might actually win it. Instead we were simply reminded of one of cycling’s golden rules: when the road climbs high into the sky and the air thins out, always beware a small Colombian man.

Nairo Quintana escaped in the early breakaway and then attacked off the front, scaling the gruelling Col du Galibier solo and racing down the other side to clinch the third Tour stage of his career in brilliant fashion. It was the quintessential Quintana performance, dominating one of the giant late stages like a rider worthy of the yellow jersey having long since abandoned hope of winning it. He climbs to seventh overall and is back on the fringes of contention, but it is surely too little too late.

Back down the mountain road, his countryman Egan Bernal got the call to attack the yellow-jersey group, leaving behind GC rivals including his team-mate Geraint Thomas, Thibaut Pinot, Steven Kruijswijk and the maillot jaune of Julian Alaphilippe. Thomas briefly surged and Alaphilippe briefly cracked, but they all came over the line together around 30 seconds behind Bernal, who climbs from fifth to second overall, 1min 30sec back from Alaphilippe and five seconds ahead of Thomas.

“It’s a great day for Colombia,” said Bernal. ”I’m very happy for Nairo Quintana, he deserves it. He’s a rider who’s given a lot to our country and today he showed he’s one of best riders in the world. Geraint told me to attack to spark the race in the last climb. Now we have two very hard days ahead of us.”

What does it all mean? Perhaps it means Alaphilippe won’t be caught. But then you remember the two tough days to come, both finishing on high summits with no final descent for the Frenchman to recover lost ground as he did so expertly here. Perhaps it means Bernal will win his first Grand Tour. But then you remember the experience of Thomas, the strength Pinot showed in the Pyrenees, the sheer unwavering consistency of Kruijswijk, and now you’re not so sure.

For Thomas’s part, he was left frustrated that his team-mates didn’t have the firepower of Team Sky in recent years. His super-domestique Wout Poels gave out early on the Galibier and it meant the pace was set by a less natural climber in Dylan van Baarle. “I wanted a hard pace and unfortunately we weren’t running quite hard enough,” Thomas said. “We ran out of guys. Egan was given the call to attack. I hoped that would kick it off but it didn’t really. I had a little dig just to see if anything would happen. It was a good day for Egan, he gained some time.”

The day was made complicated for Ineos by Quintana, who scuttled away with the early breakaway as they scaled the hard Col de Vars and even harder Col d’Izoard six minutes ahead of the peloton. Quintana was nine minutes down on the yellow jersey before the start of the day, a significant chunk of time, but he had a couple of Movistar helpers and could not be allowed to make up too much ground.

Ineos domestique Jonathan Castroviejo has been a passenger at times during this Tour but he took it upon himself to put in a monstrous shift for his leaders here, driving the yellow-jersey group into the foot of the Galibier with a dual mission of keeping Quintana in reach and hurting Alaphilippe’s legs.

Then came the final climb itself. Have you ever watched a terrible play while stuck in the middle of a row, trapped terrifyingly in your seat as it goes on and on and on? That is something like the Col du Galibier, a 23km ascent which gets gradually steeper, reaching 10 per cent gradients near the summit, a Tour de France classic and a brute to break all but the hardiest climbers. For Quintana and Bernal, it is right in their comfort zone.

It was around halfway up when Bernal charged away from the other GC contenders, through the thick crowds cheering and cajoling the riders. Thomas waited, then gave chase. Pinot and the rest followed but Alaphilippe seemed completely cooked as he was left behind. Yet the Frenchman is a brilliant descender and he flew down to Valloire to rejoin them.

Down at the finish Quintana was already celebrating his victory, while a visibly exhausted Romain Bardet rolled in second having collected enough King of the Mountains points to take the polka dot jersey from Tim Wellens’ shoulders. Then came a few breakaway stragglers and among them was Bernal, before Thomas, Alaphilippe and the rest half a minute later.

“I did my best, I have no regrets,” said Alaphilippe. “It could have been much worse when you look at the stage. The attacks of Bernal and Thomas put me in trouble but at the end I came back on the downhill. I took some risks and I’m still in yellow.”

And after all that, we know less now than we did at the start.

“There’s two big, big days now,” said Thomas. “We knew it would be hard to do anything to drop Alaphilippe today, but there’s two more big days to come and a lot of racing to be had. I feel good.”