Louis Meintjes continued to fly the flag for South Africa at the Tour de France on Thursday, clawing some more time back in the mountains over the 179.5 kilometre stage between Briancon and Izoard.
Whether that time will be enough for him to overtake Best Young Rider rival Simon Yates by Paris on Sunday is doubtful, but the tiny South African will go down fighting.
Thursday saw him ending seventh on the gruelling stage, 37sec behind French winner Warren Barguil of Team Sunweb.
And he was just 17sec behind the yellow jersey of Chris Froome. Importantly, he made up another 22sec on Yates in the white jersey struggle.
What should be secure though, is another top 10 finish in the general classification. The Rio Olympian lies eighth overall, 6:52 behind Froome and a solid 1min 30sec of ninth-placed Barguil.
In last year’s Tour de France Meintjes also finished eighth, 6:58 behind champion Froome.
Fellow South African Daryl Impey continued a gradual climb up the GC and now lies 49th, 2:01:45 back.
Then it’s the Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka riders Reinardt Janse van Rensburg (119th, +3:27:09) and Jaco Venter (158th, +4:11:50).
In the Best Young Riders competition, Meintjes is 2:06 down on Yates, certainly safe of second spot, with Germany’s Emanuel Buchmann more than 20min adrift in third.
Meanwhile, the African-based Team Dimension Data were in the mix once again as the team had no less than three riders in the break of the day. At the end, Serge Pauwels did well to defend his Top 20 place in the general classification.
Early on the day’s stage, a big group got away from the peloton. Team Dimension Data for Qhubeka had been very attentive near the front and managed to get Venter, Steve Cummings and Pauwels into the group. However, the collaboration up front wasn’t great and the break split up several times.
Towards the top of Col de Vars, four riders managed to get a gap on the rest of the breakaway. After the descent, Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) decided to go solo. However, he was later joined – and then dropped – by Darwin Atapuma (UAE Team Emirates). Pauwels was chasing with what was left of the initial breakaway a bit further down.
With five kilometres to go, the strong Belgian was caught by Barguil, who had attacked from the peloton. Pauwels continued to fight hard on the steep slopes, while Barguil bridged across to Atapuma at the front. Ultimately, Barguil soloed to victory, while Pauwels crossed the line in 20th place. He’s now 18th in the general classification.
With just three days left in this year’s TDF, the route now moves away from the mountains, but that relief is somewhat tempered by the fact that it’s the longest stage of the tour, 222.5km between Embrun to Salon-de-Provence. Mainly flat and downhill, the final category three climb, the Col du Pointu, comes 45km from the finish.
It’s a day when a breakaway could work, or everything could boil down to a sprint finish.
Salon-de-Provence was once home to the prophet Nostradamus… one wonders if he would have foreseen any chance of Meintjes making up more ground before Saturday’s individual time trial.
Picture of Meintjes in action on Thursday courtesy of © Tim De Waele/Getty Images