Tour de France stage 13 betting preview, free tips & TV details

ITV4, Eurosport 1 & S4C from 1pm Friday

Simon Yates provided Britain with their first success of this year's Tour when winning a three-man sprint in Bagneres-de-Bigorre on a day when the major contenders decided not to get involved with three major days looming.

Yates, who is clearly in the race to support his brother Adam, was initially part of a 40-man breakaway which formed early in the day and, unsurprisingly, the Grand Tour winner proved too strong for most of his fellow escapees on the final climb. Only Pello Bilbao and Gregor Muhlberger were able to follow his wheel on the long descent but neither were able to counter Yates's well-timed sprint.

Tim Wellens picked up valuable points on the earlier categorised climbs to extend his lead in the King of The Mountains competition.

Julian Alaphilippe enters Friday's individual time trial in Pau with a 72-second cushion over Geraint Thomas and although Thomas took three and a half minutes out of him in the final time trial of last year's Tour de France, a repeat is not expected.

Alaphilippe's time-trialling ability continues to improve and this year he has won the ITT at the San Juan Internacional, finished second in the Tour de Colombia and, significantly, was fourth in the more competitive one in Tirreno-Adriatico. On that evidence it is hard to see him relinquishing the yellow jersey just yet.

Thomas will be hopeful of narrowing the gap significantly and having won the short TT and finishing third on the longer second TT in last year's Tour, anything less will be seen as a setback. However, he will need to conserve some energy for the two tough mountain stages over the weekend, so winning this particular stage will be tough and the honours should go to a rider further down the classification.

The stage looked the target of world champion time-triallist Rohan Dennis, but after a supposed disagreement with the team the Australian decided to abandon the Tour with 80 kilometres remaining in Thursday's stage.

In his absence former world champion Tony Martin has to go on the shortlist and although the German hasn't won a time trial at a Grand Tour since 2014, he confirmed he was in good form when defeating Nils Pollitt in the German nationals.

Wout Van Aert is a superstar in the making and he destroyed the opposition in the recent Criterium Dauphine TT and also won the Belgian National TT title last month. However, he has been very active in this Tour and a fresher rider such as Soren Kragh Andersen may be the answer.

The young Dane is a former Under-23 world TT champion and had some impressive results as a young pro. He was fifth in the final TT at last year's Tour and has recorded top-four finishes in the solo stages at Tirreno-Adriatico (twice) and Tour de Suisse.

Another who appeals at big odds is Yves Lampaert. The QuickStep rider won the ITT at the Tour de Suisse and was second to Van Aert in the Belgian championships, finishing just ahead of another future superstar Remco Evenepoel.

Recommendations
S Kragh Andersen
1pt each-way 14-1 Betway
Y Lampaert
1pt each-way 28-1 Betway

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