Mayhem on Ventoux as the yellow jersey loses bike and has to run

Where do I even start? It was a day in which so much happened but only one thing stood out. A moment that will burn deep into Tour folklore. The sight of Chris Froome, with the yellow jersey on his back, surrounded by fans, running up Mont Ventoux. His bicycle nowhere to be seen, his Tour in tatters as chaos reigned in the final kilometres of a stunning stage.

I can only imagine what was going through the minds of those at the side of the road as Froome came running past? What was going through the minds of the Team Sky management, behind in the team car, as Froome told them through the radio that his bike had broke and that he had set off on foot in a desperate bid to limit his losses?

The rules state that you must cross the line with your bike. They do not appear to mention covering a portion of the course without your bike. Not that there is ever a time in which you'd prefer to do this. As such I also wonder what was going through the mind of Chris Froome? Especially when his rivals passed him, when he looked behind to see a sea of people and no team car. Many cyclists would have slammed their bike into the ground and stood at the side of the road waving their hands in frustration. But with no idea how long he might be standing there, Froome reacted as a champion should, as someone so focused on the task at hand might. Always thinking he figured the only logical move was to get as far up the mountain as he could. Wait for a team mate to come to him, or neutral service, or maybe even the team car. What if he'd reached the line before any of this? Did he know the rule? He ran for what seemed like a few hundred metres. It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen in cycling. And I thought I'd seen it all in this sport.

Neutral service did arrive, but the size and quality of the bike presented to him was so bad that he might have been better staying on foot. The bike looked like it had been sitting on top of a Mavic neutral service car since sometime in the early 90s. He lasted a few hundred metres on it before climbing off once more. A team-mate passed him, and then the Sky car arrived. By the time Froome did cross the line, it seemed as though his Tour had collapsed around him. He had finished well behind Nairo Quintana, whom he had left for dead earlier on the climb. He lost time to Bauke Mollema and Richie Porte, both of whom he had been on the attack with when disaster struck.

The provisional standings didn't make for good reading, though it could have been worse. It had Froome as being almost 1 minute down on Adam Yates, though with the time trial to come tomorrow there was belief that he could yet recover his loses.

As it turned out the race referees sat down for meeting, dusted off the rule book and tried to find some common sense. And that they did. Froome and Porte got the same time as Mollema who had come out of the incident least affected. It was still time gained on Quintana et al., though perhaps not as much as it might have been without the crash. It kept Froome in yellow and actually extended his lead, to 47sec over Yates and to 54sec over Quintana.

The officials had no choice but to find a solution to the madness. In part, it was they who caused it -- albeit with little choice. Twenty-four hours before they had decided to move the finish 6km down the mountain due to dangerous winds up on the exposed part of Mont Ventoux. As a result 6km worth of fans came down the mountain as well and the organisation were unable to reconstruct the barriers on time. The typical mountain stage will have its final 2km fenced off, but on this day, with limited time, only the final 500m had barriers.

In the decisive moment, the camera motorbike got blocked by the mass of fans and Richie Porte slammed into the back of it. His nose hitting the camera lens. Froome went down too; so did Mollema. The Dutchman was first up and on his way, but Froome's bike was damaged. He was in trouble and the only way he could see out of it, was to set off on foot.

This wasn't a mechanical, nor was it a crash by rider error. Nor even did it happen 50km from the finish. This was an unavoidable incident for the riders on a decisive stage within touching distance of the finish. And it involved three of the main contenders for the Tour de France yellow jersey. Think back to the early days of this Tour when the red kite banner came down on top of Adam Yates, blocking himself and the chasing bunch. The times got rejigged so not to cost Yates the small lead he had built up beforehand because of an unavoidable incident. It was about being logical and not letting a crazy moment to have a decisive influence over the outcome of the race.

Lost in it all was a superb win by Thomas De Gendt out of the day long break. Another story lost was the vulnerability of Quintana despite two attempts to attack earlier on the climb. Also the loss of time by Daniel Martin who drops to 9th at 1min 56sec. And the continued rise of Adam Yates who only lost time to Mollema on the line and who remains with a minute of Froome.

There were so many talking points that got lost in the noise of chaos of that unbelievable stage. I've been watching the sport for 25 years and I thought I had seen a lot of crazy things that only this sport could serve up. I remember Bugno hitting the fan with his bike in '92. The sit down protest at the '98 Tour. Piepoli being knocked off by a fan in 2002. Armstrong taking to a field to avoid a crash in 2003. And who can forget the Orica bus getting stuck under the finishing line in 2011? But despite all that, I've never seen anything quite like Chris Froome in the yellow jersey running up Mont Ventoux.

You look back to the iconic images of the sport: Anquetil and Poulidor bumping elbows on the Puy de Dome in '64 ... LeMond and Hinault hand in hand on the line at Alpe d'Huez in '86 ... Stephen Roche through the mist to La Plagne in '87. All moments captured in an image. And then today: the image cutting to Froome, in yellow, sans bike, running it.

Burned into Tour folklore forever.

And beyond even that. The whole thing: Froome running, fans everywhere, cars coming past him, motorbikes swerving, horns going off, the helicopter hovering low, Richie Porte trying to squeeze between Froome and a passing officials car, the confusion, the noise, the madness. It all served to encapsulate the mayhem of the Tour in a single moment. It laid bare the single minded focus of everyone just trying to get themselves up the mountain as fast as possible. To hell with what chaos was going on around them.

It may have been absurd, but it was epic.

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It took an hour or more for the revised standings to come through but when they did the overall classification after 11 stages was confirmed as thus:

1. Chris Froome (Sky) in 57h11'33"

2. Adam Yates (Orica-BikeExchange) @ 47"

3. Nairo Quintana (Movistar) @ 54"

4. Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) @ 56"

5. Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale) @ 1'15"

6. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) @ 1'32"
7. Tejay Van Garderen (BMC) s.t.
8. Fabia Aru (Astana) @ 1'54"
9. Daniel Martin (Etixx - Quick Step) @ 1'56"
10. Joaqium Rodriguez (Katusha) @ 2'11"
11. Richie Porte (BMC) @ 2'22"