Tour de France: Dani Martinez wins Puy Mary stage

Primoz Roglic stretched his lead in the yellow jersey as Dani Martinez won stage 13 of the Tour de France.

The punishing gradients of the summit finish on the Puy Mary gave the general classification standings a major shake-up as defending champion Egan Bernal was distanced by Roglic, who now leads the Tour by 44 seconds from his close friend and fellow Slovenian Tadej Pogacar.

Jumbo-Visma’s Roglic had followed an attack from Pogacar in the final kilometres of the 191.5km stage from Chatel-Guyon, and together they took 38 seconds out of Bernal, who faded in the finale after his Ineos Grenadiers had done so much of the work to set the pace on the approach.

That saw Pogacar climb up to second place, now 44 seconds behind his compatriot, with Bernal third, 59 seconds down.

The 21-year-old Pogacar, who will rue the 81 seconds lost in crosswinds in stage seven, might now be the most likely challenger to Roglic.

When the day began, the top 10 was the closest it had been at this stage of any Tour since 1947, but final climb changed all that.

Frenchmen Guillaume Martin and Romain Bardet began the day in third and fourth place but were both distanced on the climb, with Bardet having also suffered a crash earlier in the day.

Bernal is the first of four Colombians behind Roglic and Pogacar in the standings, with Rigoberto Uran, Nairo Quintana and Miguel Angel Lopez making up the rest of the top six.

Adam Yates sits seventh, one minute and 42 seconds down, having doggedly stuck with the main group of contenders as long as he could despite saying earlier this week he was seeking opportunities to lose time and so gain freedom to seek stage wins.

Stage honours went to another Colombian as Martinez beat Lennard Kamna to the line in a slow-motion sprint, the two riders looking utterly exhausted after a day that included seven categorised climbs.

The last of them was the most brutal, and was enough to break the ambitions of Kamna’s Bora-Hansgrohe team-mate Max Schachmann, who had set off solo as the race moved into the final 20km.

Schachmann – looking strong less than a month after he was hit by a car during Il Lombardia – was caught with 1.6km to go to leave Martinez and Kamna to slug it out, and they looked like two punch-drunk boxers as they approached the finale.

Martinez entered the Tour as an outside contender given he won the Criterium du Dauphine last month after Roglic and Bernal had dropped out, but a stage two crash hit those ambitions early on.

“I am very, very happy,” the EF Education First rider said. “It’s been a tough Tour for me after the crash, I was struggling to find my best form, but I’ve been feeling really good and psychologically to win a stage feels really amazing.”