BELFORT, France, July 17 (Reuters) - Swiss cyclist Mauro Schmid edged Harold Tejada to win stage 13 of the Tour de France on Friday, as Briton Tom Pidcock finished third to move into the top four in the general classification, narrowing his gap with overall leader Tadej Pogacar.
Four-time champion Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was happy not to challenge for the stage and finished with the peloton more than seven minutes later, retaining a lead of three minutes and 36 seconds over second-placed Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) in the battle for the yellow jersey.
Pidcock, who was 10th in the general classification coming into the stage, moved up to fourth, and sits four minutes and 15 seconds behind Pogacar. Remco Evenpoel is third, nine seconds ahead of Pidcock.
"I can't believe it. It was an incredibly hard day right from the start," said 26-year-old Schmid (Jayco-AlUla) after his maiden Tour de France stage win.
"The whole team was motivated to get into the breakaway. We’d tried several times over the last few days, but things hadn't gone according to plan until now. I felt good from the start, it was just full gas from the very first minute."
Friday's stage, a 205.8km hilly ride from Dole to Belfort, had its first big attack about 40km in when a group of 37 riders broke from the peloton.
PIDCOCK MOVES UP THE GENERAL CLASSIFICATION LADDER
Pidcock, whose Pinarello-Q36.5 team are continuing without Chris Harper after the Australian lost a part of his thumb following a crash during stage 10, stayed in the mix as the leading group grew to 57 riders.
The peloton trailed by more than eight minutes going up to Ballon d'Alsace, the biggest climb of the day, about 30km from the finish line.
Pidcock waited until the last kilometre of the climb to launch his attack, and was the first to reach the peak as he looked to capitalise on the long descent. But with 16km to go, it was Schmid and Tejada (XDS-Astana) who sped ahead.
The chasing group led by Pidcock was 18 seconds behind the two breakaways going into the last two kilometres, but tried their best to close the gap as Tejada looked to get a solo finish.
But Schmid responded with a perfectly timed attack that got him a photo-finish win over Tejada, as Pidcock crossed the line two seconds later.
A tighter race for the yellow jersey will be the focal point again in Saturday's stage 14, a 155.3 km mountainous ride from Mulhouse to Le Markstein Fellering.
(Reporting by Vincent Daheron; Writing by Chiranjit Ojha in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Christian Radnedge)
