After an exhausting day in the Tour de France John Degenkolb took 4th on the uphill finish of stage 13, as Greg van Avermaet was the strongest of the punchers. 

Stage 13 went from Muret to Rodez and covered 198.5km. The first 100km were mainly flat roads as the second part included 3 GPMs on rolling roads. In hot conditions six riders made the day’s break and Team Giant-Alpecin did much of the work to control the gap.

After 140km Team Tinkoff – Saxo took over the control at the bunch and the breakaway group gave their all to make it to the finish. In the finale the bunch had a hard time to swallow up the breakaway, as they were caught in the final sprint, making it a close call.

Greg van Avermaet (BMC Racing Team) was the strongest on the difficult uphill finish and won his first Tour de France stage. John Degenkolb sprinted to 4th after great work by the team. Warren Barguil finished 16th and maintains his 11th place in the GC.

“I felt very good, had a good position 300m from the finish and went very deep, but at the end I didn’t have the legs to beat the others, it was a little too hard for me," Degenkolb said.

“We cannot blame anyone as it was a super team effort. We took responsibility and had the ‘balls’ to take initiative. All my teammates worked very hard and completely gave their all. I have very much respect for them and it is too bad I could not pay back those efforts, but we cannot do anything about it anymore. It was hard for everyone and in the end I was out of power.

“We tried it, saw the chance, took the chance, but did not win.”

Ramon Sinkeldam added: “It was an extremely hard day as I did a lot of pulling in the first 100km and after that 70km of chasing to make the time split, so I am really exhausted at the moment.”

Coach Marc Reef reflected: “Is was the maximum result today. Three guys were stronger and there was nothing to do about it. We knew that we had a chance and we went for it.

“We had our goal and did a lot of chase work at the front of the bunch. First Ramon [Sinkeldam] and Georg [Preidler], then Roy [Curvers] and Albert [Timmer] and for the finale we had Simon [Geschke] and Koen [de Kort]. Warren’s [Barguil] aim was to recover as much as possible before the Alps. They all did a great job and we can only be proud of that.

“The conditions were very tough with the heat and we hit an average pace of almost 42 km/h, which is really fast on a course like today’s with its difficult final uphill.”