Hello and welcome to live coverage of stage 18 of the Tour de France - the second of two Alpine stages that could well decide who ultimately wins the yellow jersey. It's a 179.5km ride from Briancon to the Col d'Izoard, where we will witness the first ever summit finish on this mythical climb.

Time to get serious: the break moves onto the Cat.1 Col de Vars (9.3km at 7.5%). Straight away, riders are off the back while Serge Pauwels moves onto the front.

The break has split in two with a leading group of 25 holding a small gap over the second group of 29. The peloton is still 7:20 back, with Team Sky and Bora Hansgrohe sharing the chasing duties on the front. The 25 are: Jan Bakelants and Cyril Gautier (AG2R-La Mondiale), Nicolas Roche (BMC), Andrei Grivko, Bakhtiar Kozhatayev and Michael Valgren (Astana), Darwin Atapuma, Kristjian Durasek, Marco Marcato and Ben Swift (UAE), Rudy Molard (FDJ), Daryl Impey (Orica), Serge Pauwels and Jaco Venter (Dimension Data), Zdenek Stybar (Quick Step), Maurits Lammertink (Katusha), Tiejs Benoot and Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto-Soudal), Nicolas Edet and Dani Navarro (Cofidis), Thomas Voeckler and Sylvain Chavanel (Direct Energie), Simon Clarke and Andrew Talansky (Cannondale) and Marco Minnaard (Wanty).

Earlier, we spoke to Chris Froome about today's summit finish on the Izoard.

It looks Primoz Roglic - who became the first Slovenian to win a stage on the Tour de France yesterday - received some fan mail after his exploits on the Galibier...

Some hefty post-prandial pulling on the front from Marcus Burghardt sees the gap come down to 7:40 for the breakaway. Burghardt working to being the race back together given the fact that his team, Bora-Hansgrophe, don't have a man in the large leading group.

Those 20 points in the intermediate sprint put Sonny Colbrelli up into third place in the rather-blunt battle for green. What was a thrilling duel between five-stage-win Marcel Kittel and the battling Michael Matthews came to an abrupt end yesterday when the German withdrew from the race moments after the Australian moved within 9pts of his tally. Kittel had crashed badly ahead of the first of four climbs and later threw in the towel on the summit of the Croix de Fer. Matthews (Team Subweb) now has 364 points and looks certain to wear the green jersey into Paris, with Andre Greipel (Lotto Soudal) on 204 points, Colbrelli now on 164pts and Alexander Kristoff - the Katusha-Alpecin rider who also crashed yesterday - on 158 points.

The peloton edges through the feed zone with most riders taking on a musette of grab ahead of the dual ascent of the Vars and Izoard. The gap is pushing nine minutes now as the riders zip through Barcelonette.

The gap is up to 8:10. In this lull before the storm, how about watching this exclusive video on Eurosport in which some top former cycling stars discuss their relationship with climbing and the mountains... Featuring Juan Antonio Flecha, Thor Hushovd, Brian #The Coash' Smith, Matt Stephens, Sean Kelly...

Sonny Colbrelli wins the intermediate sprint at Les Thuiles to single-handedly double Bahrain-Merida's race prize money. The Italian beat De Gendt and Dion Smith.

Many thought that Chris Froome would look to assert his authority on the race and pick up an elusive stage win today, but it's not looking that way: Sky are more concerned with controlling things and marking out Froome's rivals. If Froome doesn't win Saturday's time trial in Marseille - and goes on to win his fourth Tour in Paris on Sunday - then he'll become the seventh rider in Tour history to win the race without picking up a stage en route. The last? Well, discounting Alberto Contador - who did it in 2010 before being retrospectively disqualified - it's another Spaniard, Oscar Pereiro, in 2006.

Those seven leaders have been reeled in by the rest of the break, so we're back to having 54 men out in front - with a huge lead of 7:35, so it's looking like the victory will come from one of these riders and not one of the big GC favourites on the Izoard.

A reminder that Annemiek van Vleuten of the Netherlands won the women's La Course race on the Izoard earlier today. Here's how the Orica-Scott rider made history with her victory over Britain's Lizzie Deignan by 43 seconds.

Markel Irizar (Trek-Segafredo) is being tended by the race doctor. He has a cut elbow and his jersey is rather torn so the Spaniard must have taken a tumble somewhere on the descent, perhaps, from the last climb.

Chris Froome has all eight of his remaining Sky team-mates with him on the front of the peloton - with just the absent Geraint Thomas no doubt watching at home on TV. The Welshman - who wore the first yellow jersey of the race after winning the Dusseldorf time trial - crashed out on the desent of the Col de la Biche in the Vosges in that hectic stage 9 to Chambery, won by Rigo Uran.

The gap is up to 6:10 for the seven leaders over the peloton, with the remainder of the big break around 30 seconds back.

This break has had a bit of a shake up: seven riders now have a bit of a gap on the others. They are: Serge Pauwels, Sylvain Chavanel, Gianluca Brambilla, Angelo Tulik, Simon Clarke, Ben Swift and Florian Vachon.

Thomas De Gendt takes the maximum 2pts over the top of the climb ahead of Nicolas Edet, who joined the leaders before the summit. Calmejane is third over the top, with the other escapees not far behind. The peloton is still 5+ minutes back. Whatever happens today, De Gendt can't catch the leader of the KOM competition, Warren Barguil, who has 129 points, with De Gendt now on to 63. Yesterday's winner Primoz Roglic has 80pts and there are another 56pts available in the race - so he'll have to do something special if he wants to take the polka dot jersey from Barguil's shoulders.

Lilian Calmejane - a stage winner from earlier in the race - puts in the first attack from this large break. The Frenchman provokes a response from Thomas De Gendt, who has pretty much been on the offensive every day of the past week - but still has nothing to show for it.

The break are onto the first categorised climb of the day, the Cat.3 Cote de Demoiselles Coiffees (3.9km at 5.2%).

The aerial helicopter images are superb today. It certainly helps that the subject material is so majestic. This is the artificial Lac de Serre-Ponçon which didn't 'open' until 1961 after construction started six years earlier.

The gap is up to five minutes for this large 54-man break.