Manuel Quinziato, winner of the Point d’Appui for the 2013 Tour de France.
Quite sadly, an abandon by Lieuwe Westra of Vacansoleil-DCM on the last stage of the 100th edition of the Tour France, on its way into Paris, left the tour with 169 finishers. We would have been much happier to see Westra finish the tour and not to proclaim a Point d’Appui for the race.
Alas, we do have a 2013 Point d’Appui, but it is well deserved. Manuel Quinziato of BMC Racing finished 2 hours, 39 minutes and 34 seconds behind the winner, Christopher Froome of Sky, to win the 2013 Tour de France maillot gris.
Quinziato started the race with a good first stage, finishing nine places ahead of the middle. On Stage 2, he slipped back to 106th place, but over the next ten stages, he slowly worked his way forward in the peloton to get to the fulcrum position on Stage 12. After a strong finish in Stage 13, he moved up eight places, peaking at 73rd place in Stage 16 when he got into a break of 26 riders that survived to the finish in Gap. Quinziato, though, limited his damages for the Point d’Appui by finishing 26th out of the 26-member break.
By Stage 19, he had dropped back to the middle, finishing on Les Cuspides on 19 and 20. The abandon by Westra and no significant changes on the final day of romps on the Champs allowed Quinziato to finish on the fulcrum and win the Point d’Appui.
Quinziato finished 1 hour, 48 minutes and 21 seconds ahead of the Lanterne Rouge, Svein Tuft of Orica-GreenEdge.
The rider with the time closest to the median for the 21-day race proved to be Thomas Voeckler, the French rider for Team Europcar.
The stage-by-stage general classification results for Point d’Appui:
- Stage 1 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 2 – No fulcrum. Markel Irizar of RadioShack Leopard, winner of the Point d’Appui in the 2011 Tour de France, was on Les Cuspides.
- Stage 3 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 4 – Pavel Brutt of Katusha
- Stage 5 – Sergey Lagutin of Vacansoleil-DCM
- Stage 6 – Vasil Kiryienka of Sky Procycling. Kiryienka was the winner of the Point d’Appui in the 2012 Tour de France.
- Stage 7 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 8 – Adam Hansen of Lotto Belisol
- Stage 9 – No fulcrum. Vasil Kiryienka was eliminated from the race after coming home too slow on the stage.
- Stage 10 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 11 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 12 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 13 – Jonathan Castroviejo Nicolas of Movistar Team.
- Stage 14 – Simon Clarke of Orica-GreenEdge
- Stage 15 – Julien El Fares of Sojasun
- Stage 16 – Alberto Losada Alguacil of Katusha
- Stage 17 – Alberto Losada Alguacil of Katusha
- Stage 18 – Matteo Tosatto of Team Saxo-Tinkoff
- Stage 19 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 20 – No fulcrum.
- Stage 21 – Manuel Quinziato of BMC Racing
Point d'Appui 