Louis Meintjes wasn’t looking for a stage win when he kept pushing hard on the front of the chase group on stage 14 of the Tour de France to Mende, he just wanted to gain time and perhaps a little revenge.
The Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Materiaux rider pulled back an impressive 11:22 on his overall rivals, leaping from 13th on the GC right up to seventh place, after putting in a huge effort to make it into the 23-rider attack of the day.
“The beginning of the stage was particularly intense because of the big battle for the early breakaway,” Meintjes explained.
“I tried maybe twenty times, but it was clear that several teams didn’t appreciate my presence in the front unless they were there too. In the end, I managed to escape but after all these efforts I felt that I didn’t have the legs anymore to fight for the stage win.”
Meintjes finished second behind Tom Pidcock at L’Alpe d’Huez but on the road to Mende, moving up the GC was the goal of the day.
“To win as much time as possible on the peloton it was important for me that the group stayed as big as possible and that the cohesion stayed as good as possible,” Meintjes said, seen doing long turns on thee front and upping the pace whenever another rider missed a turn.
Michael Matthews (BikeExchange-Jayco) attacked to trigger a split in the break with 50km to go and others went with him, but Meintjes still found allies to drive the pace and keep the gap to his GC rivals as large as possible.
“During the last part of the stage there were many attacks and luckily for me, there was always a team missing in the front so always some riders eager to help me keeping the group together,” Meintjes said.
Matthews rode away with the victory after the final climb to Mende but finishing in 10th, 1:12 behind the Australian, made Meintjes one of the biggest winners of the day.
The 30-year-old who finished in the top ten of the Tour de France in 2016 and 2017 once again moved up into the top echelons of the leader board.
“I’m happy with my second day on the attack here in the Tour de France,” said Meintjes.
“It was a good opportunity for a payback for all [the] guys making my life hard in the flat stages and I managed to take back time on my competitors in the general classification.”
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