Richie soared into the lead of the Tour’s climbers’ competition on stage 19, crossing the summits of the Col de Vars and Cime de la Bonette first to take maximum points, before gritting his way up the final climb to Isola 2000 to finish fourth on the stage and add four more points to his tally.

After starting the day in fifth place in the KOM competition, he now leads by 14 points with two stages to go in the 2024 Tour de France.

The Olympic champ joined the early break on the slopes of the Col de Vars, thanks to a massive effort from his teammates, first from Sean Quinn, Rui Costa, Marijn van den Berg, Stefan Bissegger, and Ben Healy to keep the breakaway’s advantage in check, and then from Neilson Powless, who dropped back from the move to pace Richie to the front of the race after he had attacked to bridge from the peloton.

This stage has been marked in Richie’s race book from the start of the Tour. Three massive cols above 2000 meters, including the mythical 2800-meter Cime de la Bonette, packed into 144.6-kilometers of Alpine racing, is the terrain our racer from the high mountains of Ecuador loves.

Once he was in the break, Richie rolled through, keeping his cool and taking all the points on offer, until the final climb where he made a determined effort to go for the stage.

Once the yellow jersey had passed him, Richie rode his pace to the top of the ski station at Isola 2000, where he crossed the line fourth.

Richie will race to defend his polka dot jersey tomorrow in another fearsome mountain stage in the Alps. Stage 20 will take the Tour from Nice, over the Col de Braus and Col de la Colmiane and finish at the summit of the Col de la Couillole. Richie will go for every point he can get to try to stay in polka-dots until the very end!

Our main objective today was to get the mountain jersey. My team did a great job to allow me to get into the breakaway on the day and once I was there I fought to get as many points as possible. Once I arrived at Isola 2000 with an advantage, I tried to fight for the stage victory. I was aware that the climb is very tough and I tried to stay as close to Jorgenson as possible. However, I couldn't... and Tadej came from behind, to take away any chance of victory. Anyway, I am very happy with how the day went. This mountain jersey is a prestigious prize. All riders in my country dream of it because in Ecuador there are many mountains. Being the King of the Mountains means a lot to me. I'm going to try to keep this jersey until the end. It is my great personal goal, and the team is also supporting me a lot to achieve it.

I got into the breakaway and it was a little bit bigger than we were expecting, so I was a l bit nervous because the guys behind had to chase before the first climb. It was my job to disrupt the breakaway a little bit so that they would have a better chance of bringing the gap down. I heard Richie trying to bridge and the pace went pretty high in the breakaway as soon as we hit the climb so I was a little bit worried that Richie would have a hard time bridging so I asked on the radio if I should go back because I couldn’t see if he was bridging quick enough. In the end, I went back to help him get across to the breakaway and it was probably one of the hardest five minutes of my life this deep into the Tour de France but we had a clear goal and I knew that he was our best chance to win today and get the mountain points so I would say I’m really satisfied with the way things worked out.

I feel super good. Last year I fought so hard for mountain points. I know how difficult it is to wear the jersey and to win mountain points, so to have a teammate wearing it and to have the potential to win it, that’s a really, really nice feeling.

We all slayed ourselves for Richard to bridge across to the break in the first 20 minutes of a four-hour stage, so we weren’t really involved in the race, other than him. It was pretty picturesque out there and it went all according to plan, so we are stoked!