Matteo Trentin took over from his room-mate Mark Cavendish as a stage winner on the 100th Tour de France as he beat Michael Albasini over the line in Lyon.
Italian Trentin won what turned into a mini-sprint finish as the remnants of a long 18-man breakaway contested the honours with Chris Froome and the rest of the peloton more than six minutes back down the road.
Cavendish won yesterday’s stage 13 to Saint-Amand-Montrond but it was Trentin’s turn today as Omega Pharma-Quick Step enjoyed their fourth stage success of the Tour.
The breakaway had formed at the very start of the 191km stage along the rolling roads from Saint-Pourcain-sur-Sioule, which featured seven categorised climbs but all of them minor compared to the daunting Mont Ventoux which awaits tomorrow.
Jens Voigt, Lars Bak and Blel Kadri were the first to make their move, but as they struggled to make it stick several others followed in a series of counter-attacks, and the original trio eventually got away in a much larger group of 18.
A peloton led by all seven remaining Team Sky riders showed no sign of chasing them down at any stage, with Sky more concerned with protecting Froome from any more attacks such as the one which allowed Bauke Mollema and Alberto Contador to cut 69 seconds out of his lead yesterday.
That move, led by Contador’s Saxo-Tinkoff squad, raised further questions over the strength of Froome’s supporting cast at the Tour as injury and elimination have hit Team Sky, and this morning Froome told Sky News he was regretting the absence of last year’s winner Bradley Wiggins through injury.
However, they did their job without him today as Froome retained his two minute 28 second advantage over the Dutchman Mollema, with Contador remaining 17 seconds further back.
Dan Martin and Nicolas Roche also came home in the big group, with Martin holding 11th spot and Roche dropping one place to 36th.
