Tour de France Power Rankings - Stage 11

The sky's the limit now.. or maybe the target after Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome vaulted their way up the General Classification to take the top two spots.

Stage 11, Tour de France 2018

The devil's own... Source: Getty Images

It's often a tough task to tell at a glance which teams are doing well at the Tour de France, there are 22 of them going around France, each with their own objectives and strengths. 

So borrowing a tool from other sports, Cycling Central will run a Power Rankings during this Tour de France. It's a quick guide from stage to stage of which teams are excelling and which are unlucky or faring poorly.

1. Team Sky (up six positions)

Team Sky spent the stage fighting off a few adventurous attacks from Movistar and Sunweb, before sending their big names off to battle with the other favourites at the top of La Rosiere. They got help from Bahrain Merida, but a lot of it was their own firepower and they've shown that they have plenty. 

Now with a commanding position with the top two in the battle for yellow, it's Sky's Tour to lose from here. 

Best Results: 2nd - Team Time Trial, 1st (Stage 11) Yellow Jersey Geraint Thomas, 3rd (Stage 11) 2nd GC - Chris Froome

2. BORA-hansgrohe (down one position)

Barring misadventure, Peter Sagan looks set to equal that imposing record of six green jerseys set by Erik Zabel. The Slovakian isn't getting much competition at the moment and looks set to saunter into Paris in green.

Majka's tumble on the cobbles has put paid to any general classification ambitions the Pole may have had. He's well off the pace now and will likely switch to hunting for stages from here.

Best Results: 1st (Stages 2+5), 2nd (Stages 1,4,8), 3rd (Stage 7), 1 day in Yellow, Green Jersey - Peter Sagan, 13th GC - Rafal Majka.

3. Quick-Step Floors (down one position)

Again Julian Alaphilippe got himself into the breakaway, but despite winning the sprint to the top of Montee du Bisanne, he was put under pressure by Fortuneo-Samsic and was squeezed out of the front group. 

He'll now face a battle for the polka dots, which is likely to be the main goal from here for Quick-Step Floors, along with stage wins with Fernando Gaviria.

Best Results: 1st (Stages 1+4), 2nd (Stage 7), 1 day in Yellow - Fernando Gaviria, 1st (Stage 10) - Julian Alaphilippe, 3rd (Stage 5) - Philippe Gilbert , 3rd (Stage 9) - Yves Lampaert, 15th GC - Bob Jungels, 3rd Team Time Trial.

4. Lotto NL-Jumbo (no change)

It's been a stealthily good GC campaign for the Dutch squad. Primoz Roglic and Steven Kruijswijk haven't attacked much yet, but they are yet to be dropped badly and are sitting prettily up there in 5th and 6th overall.

They are still a bit far down on time to really use their numbers effectively, especially with little inclination shown by either to attack so far. Roglic in particular comes in with really strong form from Pais Vasco and Romandie.

They also had a win in the grupetto, as Groenewegen managed to drag himself through the stage within the time cut.

Best Results: 1st (Stages 7+8) - Dylan Groenewegen, 5th GC - Primoz Roglic, 6th GC - Steven Kruijswijk

5. Team Sunweb (up seven positions)

Tom Dumoulin took the attack to Sky with a sneaky move on a  descent to get away from the peloton. He was very strong from there, he was brought back gradually by the Team Sky train, but still had plenty in tank to respond in the later stages and kept going all the way to the line, even rolling Froome for second place on the stage.

The Dutchman moved his way up to third overall and looks to be the best chance of taking the fight to Thomas and Froome. 

Best Results: 2nd (Stage 11), 3rd GC - Tom Dumoulin 

6. BMC (down three positions)

Greg van Avermaet is out of yellow after eight days of fighting to keep himself up there. The team got plenty of publicity from having the Belgian on top of the podium every day and cruising around the peloton in yellow. 

Now they've got to scrape with the rest of the teams for results, Damiano Caruso was fourth on Stage 11 and looks like he could be able to take a stage win later in the race.

Best Results: 1st - Team Time Trial, 2nd (Stage 10), 8 days in Yellow Jersey - Greg van Avermaet

7. Bahrain Merida (down two positions)

Bahrain Merida were afraid of helping out Team Sky on Stage 11, with Franco Pellizotti and Domenico Pozzovivo lending a hand on the front. Vincenzo Nibali had a decent day, but didn't have the punch to go with the key attacks late. 

Bahrain Merida will have to think of some creative ways to get some time back, as Nibali looks unlikely to do it just by himself with his current climbing form. 

Best Results: 2nd (Stages 2+5) - Sonny Colbrelli, 2nd (Stage 10) - Ion Izagirre, 9th GC - Vincenzo Nibali

8. UAE Team Emirates (no change)

Dan Martin is bloody minded at the moment, storming his way up the climbs. He let himself be distanced on a few of the early attacks, before unleashing his own massive effort. 

He's looking one of the best of the climbers, but he's at a big disadvantage when it comes to team support and his position on GC after losing time on the early stages.

Best Results: 1st (Stage 6), 10th GC - Dan Martin 

9. Trek-Segafredo (up three positions)

A very poor day for Bauke Mollema, tumbling out of GC contention. He'll pick himself back up for later in the Tour, if he can recover his legs. 

It'll be a tricky rest of the Tour for Trek-Segafredo without Mollema leading the way in the mountains.

Best Results: 1st (Stage 9) John Degenkolb, 5 days in KOM jersey - Tom Skuijns

10. Movistar (no change)

You can't fault the team for attacking intent, but it wasn't the smartest move with Valverde from 54 kilometres out. Team Sky still had essentially all their riders left to chase and did just that, meaning the Valverde was essentially empty when the rest of the GC contenders were up the front and firing. 

They'll need to thin out the Team Sky train before attacking next time if they want to take meaningful time on the British squad.

Best Results: 3rd (Stage 6), 11th GC - Alejandro Valverde, 7th GC - Mikel Landa, 9th GC- Nairo Quintana 

11. AG2R-La Mondiale (up two positions)

Romain Bardet looked very frisky on the final rise to the line on Stage 11, but his little attacks and surges went without reward. 

Pierre Latour is in the young rider's jersey for the moment and looks set to fight for it against Guillame Martin (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) and Egan Bernal (Team Sky). It would be a decent prize, but the team is all about Bardet's success.

Best Results: 2nd (Stage 6) - Pierre Latour, 8th GC - Romain Bardet

12. Mitchelton-Scott (down three positions)

It was described as unexpected loss of form where Yates was feeling fine right up to point where the attacks started to fly and the British team leader went backwards.

The team had Mikel Nieve up the road and he was well on his way to a potential stage win when Yates blew up so it would have been worth the effort of dropping him back to save Yates a few seconds versus a potential stage win. It was agony late on for Nieve, Yates and the rest of the team.

Best Results: 5th - Team Time Trial, 16th GC - Adam Yates

13. Astana (down two positions)

Jakob Fuglsang dropped off the pace before the attacks started flying and finished off getting passed Valverde, even with the Spaniard's early efforts.

It's been a bit of a nothing Tour outside of Fuglsang's bid for GC and if he continues to go poorly, the Kazakhstani squad will need to scramble for results elsewhere.

Best Result: 12th GC - Jakob Fuglsang 

14. Direct Energie (no change)

It's hard to dislike the French team, they've been on the front foot consistently and been trying to create action even on the stages where there was nothing doing.

Best Result: 3rd (Stage 10) - Rein Taaramae

15. Lotto Soudal (up two positions)

Not much going on for Lotto Soudal here, but at least Andre Greipel survived the stage.

Best Result: 3rd - Andre Greipel - Stage 4

16. Cofidis (up three positions)

They moved up slightly on the back of a good performance by Jesus Herrada. They'll continue to look for the breakaways and take the win that has eluded them at the Tour de France since Sylvain Chavanel won Stage 19 in 2008.

Best Results: 5th (Stages 1+7) Christophe Laporte

17. Wanty-Groupe Gobert (down one position)

Guillame Martin is in the fight for the white jersey and the mountains stages are likely to be entirely revolving around helping the young Frenchman in his fight against Pierre Latour.

Best Results: 3 days in KOM jersey - Dion Smith

18. Katusha-Alpecin (no change)

Ilnur Zakarin had a bounceback of sorts as he rose five places on GC, but he's not really relevant to the pointy end of the yellow jersey battle as he's just under five minutes down on Thomas.

Marcel Kittel abandoning is pretty horrible news for the Russian team, even if it wasn't really working out early in the race.

Best Results: 3rd - Marcel Kittel - Stage 1, 13th GC Ilnur Zakarin

19. Groupama- FDJ (down four positions)

They've got some decent riders and they'll be very keen to give their riders a chance in the breakaway to take a potential win on the road to Alpe D'Huez. 

Best Result: 3rd - Arnaud Demare - Stage 2

20. Fortuneo-Samsic (no change)

Great to see a Pro Continental squad take to the front of the race with numbers and put the World Tour riders under stress. The French team did a great ride to eject Alaphilippe from the breakaway and help Warren Barguil to get as many points for the KOM jersey as possible. 

They'll need to keep the effort up on the remaining mountain stages. 

Best Result: 1 day in KOM jersey - Kevan Ledanois 

21. Dimension Data (no change)

Just as it looked like Dimension Data may be propelling their way into relevance in the race with a few decent showings from Serge Pauwels in the breakaway, Cavendish and Renshaw finished outside the time cut.

Pauwels is now second in the battle for the KOM jersey and is the sort of rider that gets himself in the break nearly every day.

Best Result: 5th (Stage 10) - Serge Pauwels 

22. EF Education First-Drapac (down nine positions)

Rigoberto Uran has dropped out relevance in the fight for any position on the general classification and with it has gone a lot of the purpose with the team. They'll need to regroup and find a way to get something out of the Tour.

Best Result: N/A

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10 min read
Published 19 July 2018 11:25am
Updated 19 July 2018 11:30am
By Cycling Central
Source: Cycling Central


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