{"id":1312856,"date":"2019-07-26T16:20:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/egan-bernal-storms-into-tour-yellow-amid-icy-chaos\/"},"modified":"2019-07-26T16:20:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T22:20:00","slug":"egan-bernal-storms-into-tour-yellow-amid-icy-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/egan-bernal-storms-into-tour-yellow-amid-icy-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Egan Bernal storms into Tour yellow amid icy chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A worker uses a snow shovel to clean the road of the nineteenth stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 126,5 kilometers (78,60 miles) with start in Saint Jean De Maurienne and finish in Tignes, France, Friday, July 26, 2019. Tour de France organizers stopped Stage 19 of the race because of a hail storm as Julien Alaphilippe lost his yellow jersey to Egan Bernal. (AP Photo\/Thibault Camus)<\/strong>
AP | AP<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

TIGNES, France \u2014 In an instant, and just as it was becoming even more thrilling, the most exciting Tour de France in decades became truly bizarre, and got a new leader \u2014 Egan Bernal of Colombia \u2014 who looks all but certain to hold the yellow jersey to Paris on Sunday.<\/p>\n

A violent hailstorm threw cycling\u2019s greatest race into chaos on Friday, forcing organizers to cut short a nail-biting stage in the high Alps because riders were speeding, unbeknownst to them, headlong toward a road that had suddenly become covered with ice and giant puddles and cut in half by a rockslide.<\/p>\n

Concerned for riders\u2019 safety on mountain roads that can be dangerous at the best of times, race organizers made an on-the-spot and extremely rare decision that the stage couldn\u2019t continue.<\/p>\n

The shockwave was immediate and heavy in repercussions. Unable to reach the planned finish at the ski station of Tignes, organizers decided that riders\u2019 placings would instead be based on their time at the top of the highest mountain pass of this Tour \u2014 the Iseran, at 2,770 meters (9,090 feet) above sea level \u2014 which leading riders, but not all, had just scaled when the race was stopped.<\/p>\n

And just like that, Bernal found himself in the yellow jersey.<\/p>\n

He flew away from Julian Alaphilippe on the climb and reached the top 2 minutes, 10 seconds ahead of the Frenchman, who had held the race lead for a total of 14 days.<\/p>\n

Not only is Bernal the new leader, but he also now looks almost certain to stay in yellow all the way to Paris, because Stage 20 on Saturday will also be shortened, again because of expected storms and landslides. The now truncated route of just 59 kilometers (37 miles), shorn of two of its three planned climbs, is no longer likely to be hard enough for Bernal\u2019s rivals to make him crack.<\/p>\n

Still, from the way he stormed up the Iseran, few could argue that Bernal would be an undeserving winner. Having powered up the climb, Bernal was speeding down hairpins on the other side, with Alaphilippe hot on his trail, hoping to save his race lead, when they received the order to stop racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really know what happened. I was speeding, attacking, and everything was going well and then they told me to stop. I didn\u2019t want to stop,\u201d Bernal said through a translator on French television. \u201cWhen they told me that I was the race leader and I had the yellow jersey, I couldn\u2019t believe it and I still can\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Organizers scrambled to deal with the disarray and riders clambered off their bikes, not immediately sure what was going on. Exceptionally, there was no winner of Stage 19, because no one had reached the finish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Tour is crazy,\u201d race director Christian Prudhomme said. \u201cWe would never have imagined a day like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having made France dream of having a first Tour winner since 1985, and having contributed more than anyone to make this Tour more memorable than most with his punchy riding, Alaphillipe lost the race lead as the Champs-Elysees in Paris was almost within touching distance.<\/p>\n

Prudhomme said the hair-raising speeds of Bernal, Alaphilippe and other riders on the downhill from the Iseran in part prompted the decision to stop the race there and then.<\/p>\n

Bernal, who races on the Ineos team, was 1:30 behind Alaphilippe at the start of the stage. Now, the last obstacle for Bernal to negotiate is the long final climb to the Val Thorens ski station on Saturday in the shortened Stage 20, putting the 22-year-old in an ideal position to become the first Colombian to win cycling\u2019s biggest race.<\/p>\n

Prudhomme said riders\u2019 timings at the top of the Iseran were taken the old-fashioned way, with a watch. Normally, organizers furnish riders\u2019 placings almost immediately after each stage. On Friday, organizers first provided delayed provisional standings and then tweaked the results in official standings that took about three hours to finalize.<\/p>\n

Bernal now leads Alaphilippe by 48 seconds. Defending champion Geraint Thomas is third, 1:16 behind Bernal \u2014 not 1:03 back as organizers first announced.<\/p>\n

Alaphilippe said he\u2019d been bracing to lose the lead on the tough Alpine stage, but no one had imagined it would happen in such dramatic circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cI gave it all, I don\u2019t have any regret,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been beaten by stronger than me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sudden storm turned summer into almost winter in just minutes, with a dusting of white covering what had been lush summer pastures of green. A snowplow driver tried to clear away the slush, throwing up waves of water, on the road flooded with torrents of water and ice.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the first time that Alpine weather had thrown Tour organizers\u2019 plans into disarray. At the 1996 Tour, what had been planned as a 190-kilometer (118-mile) stage from Val d\u2019Isere to Sestrieres was slashed to just 46 kilometers because of snow, with both the Iseran and Galibier passes not climbed as planned.<\/p>\n

Black storm clouds could be seen looming on the horizon as Bernal went over the top of the climb.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A worker uses a snow shovel to clean the road of the nineteenth stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 126,5 kilometers (78,60 miles) with start in Saint Jean De Maurienne and finish in Tignes, France, Friday, July 26, 2019. Tour de France organizers stopped Stage 19 of the race because of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1312856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 08:56:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}