Tour de France - French hopes go up in smoke amid volcanoes of the Auvergne

With the trajectory of Romain Bardet and Guillaume Martin now heading the same way as Thibaut Pinot and Julian Alaphilippe after a troubled day in the Massif Central, it looks like France's long wait for a Tour de France winner is going to extend into a thirty-sixth year.

The French duo lost contact with the race favourites on the penultimate climb of the Col de Neronne before grinding to a halt on the double-digit gradients of the Puy Mary on Friday's Stage 13 to plummet down the standings.

Going into the 191.5km stage through the volcanic countryside of Bardet's native Auvergne, both riders were in the top five with third-place Martin (Codifis) 28 seconds behind the yellow jersey Primoz Roglic and fourth-place Bardet (Ag2R-La Mondiale) a further two seconds back.

But after the impressible Roglic and Tadej Pogacar lit up the finale to a stage won by the Colombian Dani Martinez, there is now no French representative in a new-look top 10 which sees the two Slovenians stars top the standings ahead of four Colombians in Egan Bernal, Rigoberto Uran, Nairo Quintana and Miguel Angel Lopez.

For Bardet, who is now exactly three minutes down on GC, it was a particularly cruel day over roads he knows like the back of his hand. Speaking ahead of the stage, the 29-year-old from nearby Brioude had said: "I'm really happy that the Tour is here. Every cyclist wants to do a home stage. If you know what's coming up on the stage, it'll be to your advantage. It'll be a really competitive final"

Sadly for Bardet, he was given no warning of what was coming up on a sweeping bend 90km from the finish when he hit the deck with half a dozen riders, including Quintana and the Dutchman Bauke Mollema, who was forced to abandon.

Replays of the crash showed a dazed and possibly concussed Bardet struggle to keep his balance after trying to get to his feel after the fall - raising the question mark of whether or not the Frenchman should have been allowed to continue at all.

"It couldn't have gone any worse today," Bardet later admitted, according to Cyclismactu. "A rider lost control in front of me. I avoided him but I fell at 65kph. I banged my head and I struggled to snap out of it. I had a graze on my right leg and I lost all my sensations after falling."

After enjoying the best start to a Tour since he last finished on the podium in 2017, Bardet claimed he was "cursed" by a "big stroke of bad luck". He said he would now "start looking for stage wins".

The old "looking for stage wins" is a tactic that is not exactly paying off for compatriot Pinot after he cracked in the first day of the Pyrenees last Saturday, finally succumbing to the big fall he sustained in the opening stage in Nice.

Pinot has tried to attack on numerous occasions since dropping out of the GC picture, and was active early on Friday in the flurry of moves that went before the first of seven climbs. But the Groupama-FDJ rider was unable to stay in the break on Friday and came home 10 minutes behind Roglic and his rivals. He seems to have lost all stamina and strength on the hills.

Alaphilippe, too, has been firing blanks since he conceded the yellow jersey in bizarre circumstances in Stage 5. A rotten weekend in the Pyrenees saw the 28-year-old drop down the standings – and although he has been in the break for the past two stages, Alaphilippe has not come close to adding to his Stage 2 win in Nice.

As for Martin, the so-called pedalling philosopher rode a flawless opening week of the Tour only to suffer a nasty fall in Tuesday's chaotic Stage 10 to the Ile de Re. The 27-year-old came through with flying colours and looked to be France's best hope of a high finish in Paris until he was tailed off near the summit of the Neronne with Jumbo-Visma piling on the hurt.

"I went over the top 10 seconds down and that changed my race," Martin told France Télévisions. "It meant I was alone in the flat part, the transition before the last climb. I lost quite a bit of time and, above all, quite a bit of energy there, and that cost me on the last climb, where I lost a lot of time. It was bad day, but the Tour obviously isn't over."

Martin is now 3'14" down in twelfth place, with Bardet one place and 14 seconds ahead. He remains hopeful of a turnaround in the Alps.

It has not been a catastrophic Tour so far for the hosts; along with Alaphilippe, Nans Peters won Stage 8 while his Ag2R-La Mondiale teammate Benoit Cosnefroy still leads the polka dot jersey standings.

But with both Bardet and Martin slipping out of the GC picture after Pinot and Alaphilippe suffered the same fate, the French are facing the prospect of having no rider in the final top 10 for the first time since 2013.