2011 Tour de France, Stage 12 to Stage 21#Stage 15

(44,4 km / h)

Niki Terpstra (QST )

The 15th stage of the 2011 Tour de France on July 17, led over 192.5 km from Limoux to Montpellier. On this flat stage there was a sprint and a mountain stage of the fourth category. There were still 170 of the 198 registered riders at the start.

Race course

Shortly after the start initiated again Mickaël Delage a breakaway and pulled Niki Terpstra, Samuel Dumoulin, Mikhail Ignatiev and Anthony Delaplace with. They could quickly open a lead of over three minutes on the run from HTC -Highroad field before this increased the pace again. Several riders went out and the distance remained stable. As a result of this first decreased slightly, but then reached the outlier a maximum lead of four minutes. The mountains classification Ignatiev won the intermediate sprint Delage just before Dumoulin. The intermediate sprint of the field Mark Cavendish won against José Joaquín Rojas and Philippe Gilbert. The projection of outliers was now just over a minute.

22 km before the finish was Ignatiev his Mitausreißer behind him, but was overtaken by Terpstra. While the three pursuers were caught shortly afterwards from the field, the two talked for a while forward. Terpstra was a few kilometers from the finish and the Russians behind and was afterwards honored as most aggressive rider, while the Russian was found six kilometers from the finish. Then Gilbert attacked and took Terpstra three kilometers from the finish one. He was followed by Anthony Roux and Marco Marcato. However, this attempt to escape was soon over and Danilo Hondo sat at the front of the field, where also showed the Sky Procycling team. In the final sprint Cavendish finally sat down again against its rivals Tyler Farrar and Alessandro Petacchi and celebrated his fourth stage win of this tour.

Mountains classification

• Côte de Villespassans, Category 4 ( 82 kilometers; 208 m, 2.2 km at 4.6%)

Scoring

• Intermediate sprint in Montagnac ( 146.5 km, 44 m)

• Target in Montpellier ( 192.5 km; 55 m)