Shortly after the start, Laurent Mangel initiated an attempt to escape, which was followed by Rubén Pérez , José Iván Gutiérrez , Blel Kadri , Geraint Thomas and Jérémy Roy . The Europcar team of the overall first Thomas Voeckler let it go and so the lead increased to up to nine minutes. The initiator of the attack also prevailed in the intermediate sprint against Roy. Once again, Mark Cavendish was the first in the field to pass the sprint classification, this time followed by Mark Renshaw . Now the pace of the field, which is still led by the Europcar team, has been stepped up and increased by the BMC Racing Team . The lead of the group, which was led by Thomas on the first mountain, fell again, whereby Gutiérrez could no longer follow the pace and fell back. Meanwhile, Johnny Hoogerland pulled away from the field, followed first by Sylvain Chavanel , and later by Roman Kreuziger . After a while, however, Hoogerland fell back again. In the mountain classification, it was again a lack that claimed the maximum number of points and won.
In the downhill, Thomas had slight problems twice, which meant that he lost touch with the leaders. In the field, Thomas Voeckler, Peter Velits and Andreas Klöden also went down, and Klöden was injured. The Leopard Trek team now took the lead . With 50 kilometers to go, the fallen Gutiérrez and Thomas caught up with the leaders again, while Hoogerland was caught again by the field. On the climb to the Tourmalet, Kreuziger tried to catch up to the top. In the field, Europcar briefly led the field again before Leopard Trek took over again. Robert Gesink and Tony Martin also fell victim to the tightening of the pace . Meanwhile, Pérez, Thomas and Roy drove alone at the front, before Thomas drove alone for a short time, but was later caught up by Roy again. Behind them, Chavanel was caught up again by the field. Roy was the first to climb the Tourmalet, followed by Thomas and Kadri. Laurens ten Dam was the first of the reduced field to secure the last point with sixth place, with only Pérez and Kreuziger in between.
On the descent, Kreuziger was overtaken by Mangle and Ten Dam, while Samuel Sánchez attacked together with Jelle Vanendert , and Philippe Gilbert and some companions also pulled away slightly. For a short time, Klöden caught up with the field, which was led by Jens Voigt for a time and caught up with Kreuziger shortly afterwards. The field in which Voeckler was still and was accompanied by Pierre Rolland was steadily shrinking. There was no response to the Dries Devenyns attack . Meanwhile, Sánchez and Vanendert had reached the top, shaking off both Thomas and Roy. The group around the yellow jersey, in which there were frequent changes in leadership, gradually caught up with all the outliers except for Sánchez and Vanendert, most recently Roy and Thomas, who was named the most combative driver.
Of the favorites for the overall standings, Andy Schleck attacked first , but he could not leave Alberto Contador behind. Also Cadel Evans attacked unsuccessful. Then Fränk Schleck tried three times. The third time he was able to pull away when he noticed he was being let go. He fought his way up to almost the top duo, but couldn't reach it. Sánchez won the stage ahead of Vanendert and Fränk Schleck, with which he also secured the dotted jersey . Behind them, the other favorites got going when Ivan Basso attacked. Evans and Andy Schleck also went with them and were able to pull away from Contador and so 13 seconds out on him, before Damiano Cunego crossed the finish line. Voeckler lost a little more time, crossed the finish line with Pierre Rolland and was able to defend his yellow jersey in ninth place.
^ Diary of the stage. (No longer available online.) July 14, 2011, archived from the original on July 17, 2011 ; Retrieved July 14, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.letour.fr
Denis Galimsyanow ( KAT ): Disqualification after the stage: time limit exceeded