When Majka won stage fourteen on the slopes on Risoul he escaped from the peloton early, bided his time in the break, and then struck out impressively on the final climb to ride his way to Tour de France glory. Four days later he followed the same script, with an eye on the KoM Jersey Majka followed an early move by his closest rival for that competition, Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha Team). However once the race had settled down Majka was happy to ride in the second group on the road, letting others, including his team mate Nicolas Roche, compete with Rodriguez for the KoM points, while saving his strength for an assault on the final climb.
Rodriguez, along with Frank Schleck (Trek Factory Racing) and Ion Izagirre (Movistar) were able to follow Majka’s first move, but not the second when, with a little assistance from a race motorbike, Majka powered clear and successfully bridgde over to Roche, Pierre Rolland (Team Europcar) and Amaël Moinard (BMC Racing Team). He followed Roche’s pace for a while before leaving that group behind in chase of Giovanni Visconti (Movistar) who had been leading the race up the Pla d'Adet climb. Majka caught Visconti and then, with 2.4km remaining, dropped the Italian with a powerful attack. From there Majka seemed to coast to the finish, winking at the television camera, claiming a second memorable stage victory, and seizing control of the KoM Jersey.
The pace had been frantic at the start of the stage, an eight man break had escaped without Joaquim Rodriguez so Katusha drilled the peloton towards the first climb of the day, limiting the break to a 35” advantage at the foot of the Col du Portillon. Rodriguez attacked from the peloton, and after some excitement a twenty two man group found itself at the head of the race with a slender advantage. Rodriguez, as part of a group with Bauke Mollema (Belkin Pro Cycling), Nicolas Roche (Tinkoff-Saxo), Alessandro De Marchi (Cannondale), Kristijan Durasek (Lampre-Merida) and David Lopez (Team Sky), led the race over the Col du Portillon, with amuch larger group in pursuit.
That larger group caught them on the descent before Vasil Kiryienka (Team Sky) broke clear ahead of the Col de Peyresourde. Kiryienka worked away on his own, intent on increasing his advantage over the peloton. There were several attacks from the chasing group behind Kiryienka, most notably from Mollema, but there was no concerted chase until Roche and Jesus Herrada (Movistar) went clear of the other breakaway riders.
Roche and Herrada were caught before the third climb of the day, the Col de Val Louron-Azet, and Kiryienka was caught before cresting the climb, allowing Rodriguez to claim maximum KoM points once again. Meanwhile back in the peloton the action had started, FDJ were the first to raise the pace, then towards the top it was AG2R who took control, providing a platform for an ambitious attack from Romain Bardet on the descent.
Bardet had opened up a 35 second gap by the time he reached the final climb, but strong riding by FDJ slowly brought him under control, and once he was close his AG2R leader, Jean-Christophe Peraud bridged across, followed by race leader Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), Tejay van Garderen (BMC) and Thibaut Pinot (FDJ), but not by a struggling Alejandro Valverde (Movistar). Nibali would later launch attacks of his own which only Peraud could follow, and that pair rode to the finish together, crossing the line in 3rd and 4th place. Valverde was able to recover towards to the top of the climb, after some pacing by his team mates; he caught and passed Pinot, Bardet and van Garderen and held onto his 2nd overall position, it wasn't his greatest day on a bike but he showed good fight to limit his losses. Valverde admitted he had struggled after the stage:
"I had a bad moment for sure. But I always had my team-mates with me. I was able to recover my rhythm and to limit the damage with Nibali and Peraud. It's true that I have close rivals in Pinot and Peraud but Peraud is the one I fear the most because he's very good in time trials."