Tour de France: Simon Geschke wins stage 17, Chris Froome retains overall lead

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July 22nd, 2015
Back Tour de France: Simon Geschke wins stage 17, Chris Froome retains overall lead

The Tour de France entered the Alps on stage 17 and the victory went to a breakaway rider. Simon Geschke (Giant-Alpecin) attacked his breakaway companions before the penultimate climb of the day and then managed to hold on to the advantage through the climb, the treacherous subsequent descent and also on the final climb. This is the biggest win of his career as he has never won a Grand Tour stage before.

Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) tried to catch up with Geschke but hit the deck on the descent and eventually arrived fourth, behind second-placed Andrew Talansky (Cannondale-Garmin) and third-placed Rigoberto UrĂ¡n (Etixx - Quick-Step). The general classification did suffer some modifications as third-placed Tejay van Garderen was forced to quit the race early on due to illness. Later on Alberto Contado crashed on the final descent and eventually lost over two minutes, dropping to fifth position overall.

Chris Froome and Nairo Quintana proved that they are the two best riders at the Tour, they arrived together at the finish, a few seconds behind Alejandro Valverde and Vincenzo Nibali. The Italian looked in much better shape this time, he tried to attack on the penultimate climb but eventually lost the wheels of Froome and Quintana when the two attacked each other in the final kilometer of the stage. Alejandro Valverde moves up to third overall after Van Garderen dropped out of the race.

Thursday's stage 18 will be another extremely difficult one in the Alps. The course takes the riders from Gap to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne through 186.5km and no less than seven registered climbs. The biggest one ends at around 40km from the finish, it's the Col du Glandon, a 21.7 kilometre-long climb at 5.1% average gradient. Here are the outright Tour de France odds at Bet365 with four stages to go:

Chris Froome - 1.083 Nairo Quintana - 7.00 Alejandro Valverde - 67.00 Alberto Contador - 81.00 Vincenzo Nibali - 151.00

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