The 10 most dramatic Tour de France stages of the 21st century

It’s all entirely subjective, of course, and that’s the point. The debate has always been a part of the joy when it comes to discussing the Tour de France, and for every stage included on this (rigorously chronological) list, there were at least five more that warranted serious consideration.

There is an obvious bias towards days that affected the general classification in this list, and indelible 21st Tour men like Mark Cavendish and Peter Sagan can feel rightfully aggrieved that none of their many days in the sun made the final cut. 

There may be a degree of recency bias, too, with three stages from the post-pandemic era of racing. Then again, some might argue the 2020s deserve even more prominence given the remarkable intensity of the action.

Plenty will feel we have opted for the ‘wrong’ Chris Froome moment on Mont Ventoux, too, but the stunned silence in the press room in Bedoin that sweltering afternoon in 2013 underlined the drama of what was unfolding before our eyes.

And note, too, that we deliberately opted for the expression ‘most dramatic’ rather than ‘greatest.’ The feats of Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis and Alberto Contador listed below didn’t endure in the record books due to doping offences, but they remain a part of the emotional history of the Tour all the same, and that is reflected in the choice of title here.

His name doesn’t appear in the record books, of course, but those seven empty spaces on the roll of honour ironically serve only to underline Lance Armstrong’s impact on the history of the Tour. He got his comeuppance at the end of the morality play, but the Tour’s most notorious anti-hero left his mark all the same. As with Tony Soprano, we couldn't ever quite look away, even after the screen faded to black.

The 2003 Tour was by a distance the most dramatic of the Armstrong era, precisely because he was at his most vulnerable. Although he took the yellow jersey at the Alpe on stage 8, it was a pyrrhic victory as Joseba Beloki had hammered him with a succession of attacks.

Beloki sensed weakness, and he continued in the same vein on the Côte de la Rochette in the finale the following day, even after dangerman Alexandre Vinokourov had crested the summit alone in front.

On a broiling day, the melting tarmac made for a particularly gnarly descent. Beloki locked up his rear wheel approaching a corner and fell heavily, breaking his femur, elbow and wrist in the process. He would never reach such exalted levels again.

Armstrong, meanwhile, somehow avoided coming down and then took spectacular evasive action, weaving his way off the road and into a field, cutting the corner and then rejoining the race. Bad luck, it seemed, was something had happened only to other people.

Vinokourov won the stage, and Armstrong saved yellow. He would endure more scares later in the race as Jan Ullrich hit his stride, but the tone had been set in Gap. Nothing could knock Armstrong off his stride – at least until Jeff Novitzky started asking the right questions years later.

There’s a fair argument that the most dramatic day of the 2006 Tour came before it even started, when favourites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso were barred from competing due to their implication in Operacion Puerto.

Still, the race itself trundled on in their absence, and when yellow jersey Floyd Landis cracked unexpectedly at La Toussuire, the race fell into the lap of Oscar Pereiro, who had gained half an hour in a break in week two. 

Landis, now eight minutes down in 11th place, was seemingly out of the hunt, and when he attacked on the Col des Saises with 120km to go the following day, it looked like a show of defiance rather than a serious attempt at winning the Tour. Even when Landis dropped GC men like Carlos Sastre and Andreas Klöden, the move seemed destined to peter out.

Instead, the American powered inexorably onwards, catching the break on the Aravis and extending his lead over the Col de la Colombière and hanging tough on the Joux Plane. 

Landis would win in Morzine by almost six minutes to move to within half a minute of the yellow jersey and he would complete the comeback in the final time trial. “It was a longshot,” Landis said. “I didn’t know if it would work or not, but I had nothing to lose.”

Yet lose he did. Days after the Tour, it emerged that Landis had tested positive for testosterone, and he was stripped of his victory. On top of the public shaming, a period of tragedy and turbulence followed in his personal life. 

Landis emerged as an unlikely proponent of clean sport – or more accurately, of fairness – when he blew the whistle on Lance Armstrong’s doping in 2010. He has retained a wry view of the professional peloton and built a life for himself outside of it. 

After that Tour, and before news of Landis’ positive test, Vélo Magazine’s cover story on the American described it as “The Tour with a human face.” They were derided at the time, but almost twenty years later, you’d have to conclude they weren’t entirely wrong. Landis abides.

Alberto Contador was the favourite for the 2010 Tour, but the Spaniard was subdued in the opening skirmishes and his rival Andy Schleck emerged from the Alps with a 41-second lead and the yellow jersey. Although Contador stole back a handful of seconds at Mende in the second week, Schleck felt he had his number in the mountains.

Schleck looked to prove the point on the Port de Balès, attacking near the summit and catching Contador flatfooted, but the yellow jersey was suddenly forced to stop pedalling and slow dramatically after slipping his chain.

What was so obvious to television viewers might - might - not have been immediately apparent to Contador in the heat of the moment. But in any case, he certainly wasn’t going to hang on around to investigate. Contador blasted past Schleck, while the Luxembourger climbed off his bike and struggled to reseat his chain.

By the time Schleck got moving again, Contador was already almost half a minute up the road. By the finish in Bagneres-de-Luchon, he would lose 39 seconds to Contador, who took yellow by just eight seconds. 

That evening, the Tour formally entered the social media era when Contador recorded a YouTube apology video to Schleck, but the deed was done. Though below par, Contador repelled Schleck’s attacks on the Tourmalet in the final week and then did enough in the final time trial to seal the yellow jersey – by 39 pointed seconds. 

The polemic rumbled on a little longer before it was overtaken by a weightier debate. In September, it emerged that Contador had tested positive test for clenbuterol during the Tour, and though he fought the case all the way to CAS, he would be stripped of the yellow jersey. Schleck was the winner of the 2010 Tour after all, but he might have got there sooner without Chaingate.

It’s easy to forget in the supersonic 2020s, but there was a time when Tour de France contenders raced conservatively. Caution was the byword for anybody with designs on carrying the yellow jersey to Paris.

In 2011, however, ASO slipped a little experiment into the route. Stage 19 to Alpe d’Huez was a mere 109km in length, a novelty in an era when mountain stages were tests of endurance above all else. If the condensed nature of the stage – with the Télégraphe and Galibier packed in before the Alpe – provided the dynamite, then Alberto Contador was the spark. 

Contador had nothing left to lose. He was 7th, some 4:44 off yellow, and struggling with a knee injury. Notionally, he was still chasing the Giro-Tour double, but his unresolved doping case from the previous year meant that he was not guaranteed to keep those titles even if he won them. 

With all that in mind, Contador opted to let rip, attacking repeatedly on the Télégraphe, with only Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans and surprise yellow jersey Thomas Voeckler able to follow. Evans dropped back to the chasers after a mechanical problem, while Voeckler was distanced yet opted to keep chasing alone. Contador’s attack was uncharted ground, and nobody seemed to quite how to respond.

Schleck and Contador led over the Galibier, but they were eventually brought back by Evans et al on the approach to the Alpe. Once there, Contador kicked all over again in a last bid to tear up the Tour despite his obvious fatigue. He couldn’t quite manage it, getting caught and later dropped by stage winner Pierre Rolland.

Behind, a flagging Voeckler surrendered his yellow jersey to Schleck, but the Luxembourger uneasy smile on the podium told its own story. He hadn’t managed to shake off Evans, and the Australian would win the Tour in the next day’s time trial. 

Contador, meanwhile, would later be stripped of his 2011 Giro and his eventual fifth place in this Tour. But he still left an imprint.

Chris Froome’s visit to Mont Ventoux in 2016 was more dramatic in many ways, given that a crash saw him abandon his bike and run, and only the intervention of the jury kept him in yellow. 

But the abiding image of Froome on the Ventoux is from 2013, with the attack that launched a thousand questions about the probity of his efforts and those of Team Sky, who so dominated the Tour between 2012 and 2019.

During his run of four Tour wins, Froome made a habit of burning off opponents on summit finishes. Ax-3-Domaines in 2013 was the first, shuddering example, while Pierre Saint Martin in 2015 was the most dominant. The most visually striking, however, was Mont Ventoux in 2013.

A young Nairo Quintana attacked from the yellow jersey group with intent, but Froome was simply biding his time until he reached the exposed road past Chalet Renard. After Richie Porte teed him up, Froome produced his remarkable acceleration that blew Alberto Contador off his wheel and overhauling Quintana. At one point, Froome’s high cadence gave the disquieting impression that he was simply unable to pedal quickly enough. Quintana was the only rider to finish within a minute of Froome, and the Colombian required oxygen at the summit, such was the intensity of his effort. 

The following morning’s rest day press conference was a short, tetchy affair, as Froome and Dave Brailsford defended their bona fides in the face of a decidedly sceptical line of questioning. The Sky era in microcosm.

There is an argument that the 2010 jaunt across the cobbles to Arenberg had more drama, and it produced Lance Armstrong’s succinct line of “sometimes you're the hammer, sometimes you're the nail,” but the 2014 pavé stage gets the nod on our list because it was decisive to boot. Vincenzo Nibali didn’t quite win the Tour on the rocky road to Arenberg, but he certainly put down a hefty downpayment.

On a day of continuous rain, the drama started even before the peloton hit the cobbles. Defending champion Chris Froome had already looked skittish in falling the previous day, and another crash here proved ruinous. He abandoned the Tour with an injured wrist.

His withdrawal changed the entire dynamic of a Tour where Nibali had already signalled his taste for invention by winning in Sheffield on stage 2 to take the yellow jersey. The Italian sensed a chance to hammer home his advantage here, aided by Astana teammate Jakob Fulgsang.

Most GC contenders aim only to survive the cobbles. Nibali understood that the terrain offered him the possibility of doing much more. With Froome already out of the picture, Nibali set about putting time into the remaining challenger, Alberto Contador.

Joined by Fulgang and the Belkin pair of Lars Boom and Sep Vanmarcke, Nibali would put more than two minutes into Contador by day’s end. It scarcely matter that Boom slipped away for the stage win. The biggest prize of all was already firmly in Nibali’s grasp. He wouldn’t let it go.

There was no winner, and they didn’t cover all the distance, yet somehow this stage of the Tour had everything. Above all, it says something about the magnetism of Thibaut Pinot that his early abandon endures even more prominently in the memory than the mudslide that brought an early end to the day’s proceedings. 

Julian Alaphilippe had been in the yellow jersey for ten days but Pinot, fifth overall at 1:50, looked the man most likely to end France’s 34-year drought without overall victory. Pinot had won atop the Col du Tourmalet and he entered this decisive day just 20 seconds behind Egan Bernal. 

The day of glory had arrived, but it unravelled almost immediately. Pinot was distanced on the early Côte de Saint-André and he abandoned in tears soon afterwards. It later emerged that he had a torn thigh muscle, though it was hard, too, not to think of the words of a pre-Tour interview – “If I win the Tour, I won’t have this life anymore. Do I want to change my life? No.” Whatever the reason for Pinot’s collapse, AJ Liebling’s old line about falling short of the big prize came to mind: “What would Moby Dick be if Ahab had succeeded? Just another fish story.”

Still, the world continued to turn, and the Tour rumbled on. Alaphilippe’s resistance began to fade on the Col d’Iseran, where Bernal attacked and stole a march on defending champion and Ineos teammate Geraint Thomas, though the Welshman was chasing hard.

But then the heavens opened as Bernal crested the summit, and word soon filtered through of a landslide on the descent. The decision was taken – swiftly, it must be said – to stop the race at the summit of the Iseran. There would be no stage winner, but the time would count towards the general classification.

Bernal moved into the yellow jersey, two days from Paris, to become Colombia’s first Tour winner. Thomas would have to settle for second, while Alaphilippe’s adventure had petered out. And, though he wasn’t to know it at the time, Pinot’s window as a potential Grand Tour winner had just slammed shut too.

The hybrid time trial at the end of the 2020 Tour looked like an anti-climax after Primož Roglič had outlasted his closest challenger Tadej Pogačar in the Alps. Roglič was the stronger time triallist and he held a lead of 57 seconds over Pogačar, then viewed as a promising talent rather than the second coming of Merckx. And he had distanced the youngster on the Col de la Loze two days earlier. Game over, surely.

Not quite. When Pogačar scorched through the flat opening section, Roglič’s lead didn’t look quite so imposing. Roglič himself, meanwhile, didn’t look quite so comfortable. The new helmet that had appeared cutting edge on the start ramp now looked like a garish accoutrement, and it began slipped backwards on Roglič’s head as he began the climb to La Planche des Belles Filles.

Pogačar, by contrast, seemed to be eating up the road. With 4km remaining, he was already the virtual yellow jersey, and he would put more than two minutes into Roglič to become Slovenia’s first Tour winner. 

The day’s enduring image was provided by Roglič’s teammates Tom Dumoulin and Wout van Aert, who watched gloomily as events unfolded on the big screen at the finish. Roglič and Jumbo-Visma had controlled the Tour throughout but neglected to deliver the knock-out blow. Right before the bell, Pogačar produced a haymaker and Roglič ended up on the canvas. Such is the nature of the hurt business.

When Tadej Pogačar lined up for the 2022 Tour de France, he was an even more overwhelming favourite than he is now. The reason was simple: to that point, the Slovenian had appeared invulnerable. The consensus that he would romp to another victory in 2022 hardened when he took yellow in the opening week while chief rival Primož Roglič lost time to a crash on the cobbles.

Everything changed, however, on one dizzying day in the Alps. Jumbo-Visma’s aggression began on the Télégraphe but the most damaging combination came on the Col du Galibier, when Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard took turns to attack Pogačar, isolating him with a vicious array of accelerations.

Pogačar seemed to enjoy the game, tracking each move before responding with one of his own that only Vingegaard could follow. At the top of the Galibier, it looked as though as Pogačar alone could withstand the Jumbo-Visma onslaught, and he even jokingly mimed a ‘full gas’ gesture to the cameras in the valley before the Col du Granon.

But after running up a costly bill on the Galibier, Pogačar suddenly found himself settling the account on the final haul to the line. When Vingegaard attacked 6km from home, Pogačar was unable to follow and he cracked completely on the approach to the summit, his pedalling leaden and yellow jersey flapping open.

Pogačar lost more than two minutes and the yellow jersey, but, above all, he lost his sense of invulnerability. After flying too close to the sun in the opening half of the Tour, he fell dramatically to earth here. The Tour’s Pogačar era suddenly took on a different hue. Vingegaard would take the stage, the lead and, eventually, the race itself.

For two weeks of the 2023 Tour, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard couldn’t be separated. The Tour’s two big beasts traded big blows on successive days in the Pyrenees in week one, each dropping the other, before settling into a pattern of tit for tat accelerations in week two. Every acceleration from one was countered by the other, and only 10 seconds separated them by the second rest day.

Yet Vingegaard kept telling anyone who would listen that the Tour would be won by minutes rather than seconds, an assessment that flew in the face of those who believed it would play out like Fignon and LeMond in 1989. He wasn’t wrong.

Vingegaard had one hand on the prize after the stage 16 time trial to Combloux, where he put some 1:38 into Pogacar, but even then, nobody was prepared to rule the Slovenian out, not in a Tour where every action from one favourite produced an equal but opposing reaction from the other.

It wasn’t to be. The grand offensive from Pogacar never materialised and instead, it was a procession for Vingegaard. The drama here wasn’t provided by the suspense but by the sense of shock.

Pogacar’s travails on the Col du Granon the previous year had felt like an aberration, but the punch-drunk feeling repeated itself on the Col de la Loze as Jumbo-Visma forced the pace. Indeed, when Vingegaard hadn’t even attacked when Pogacar began to slide off the back off the group 7km from the top.

That was the Dane’s cue to move, as he accelerated effortlessly clear. It scarcely matters that his progress was briefly arrested by a stalled car. Pogacar’s challenge had ground almost to a halt behind, and his concession call was broadcast almost in real time. “I’m gone, I’m dead,” Pogacar told his teammates, a communication that was also relayed on the television coverage.

By the finish over the other side of the Loze in Courchevel, he would have conceded almost six minutes to Vingegaard. The Tour was lost.