no-man's-land 70" behind the leaders. On the second climb, the Col du Portet d'Aspet, Rasmussen caught and stayed with the two leaders and the three went over the summit with a lead of 3'50" over the peloton. A substantial group (a grupetto) were dropped on the ascent by the main peloton. As the riders passed through the feedzone Tyler Hamilton abandoned. The trio extended their lead on the flatter part and had a 5'00" advantage over the Col de Core. On the fourth climb they pulled out a little further and the chasing peloton dropped many riders including Iban Mayo and Thomas Voeckler, Roberto Heras was also finding it tough. On the Col d'Agnes Voigt and Rasmussen dropped Chavanel and in the twenty-strong chasing group the five US Postal riders started to push harder. At the summit the leading pair's advantage over the peloton had fallen to 3'40", Voeckler was a further minute back, with Mayo a surprising 14'05" adrift. Over the Port de Lers Voigt stopped working and simply followed Rasmussen over the summit, 3'50" ahead. Behind them the chasers joined up, forming a thirty-strong group including Voeckler, who had fought his way back. At the start of the final climb Voigt and Rasmussen held an insufficient 3'10" lead. On the final climb US Postal led the chasers. The group quickly started losing riders, again including Voeckler. By the time the gap had been cut to 1'30" the chasing group had shrunk to just eleven, notables were Armstrong, Ullrich, Leipheimer, Mancebo and stage 12's winner Basso. By the time Voight was caught, Armstrong's group was just four – himself, teammate José Azevedo, Georg Totschnig and Ivan Basso. Rasmussen was quickly caught too, but Armstrong powered on and shed Totschnig and both the previous leaders. Azevedo led the other two into the last 8 km before falling away, by 5 km to go the two leaders were 45" ahead of Totschnig (Azevedo was 1'40" behind). Basso led out the last kilometre but in the final 100 m Armstrong passed him for his first stage win of the 2004 Tour and his 19th career Tour victory. Ullrich came in 2'42" later, Voeckler was 13th at 4'42" and kept the yellow jersey by 22". Stage 14 18 July 2004 — Carcassonne to Nîmes, After the Pyrenees comes a 192.5 km stage without a single categorised climb. The flat stages after mountains often