The ride to Libourne offered a last chance for the escapees, unless the sprinter teams thought otherwise. When 6 riders were able to pull away just before a massive crash and Deceuninck-Quick Step kept aloof in the chase, it became clear that the interest in a bunch sprint would be limited.
That realization also descended on the teams who had hoped to save their Tour in this stage. After the intermediate sprint, where Cavendish more or less secured his green, we got another rain attack. 20 riders counterattacked. When it seemed to come to nothing, Van Avermaet, among others, let himself down.
But the 14 riders that remained got to the front and in the peloton they threw the block on it. Almost all teams had a pawn on the chessboard, so there was little point in fighting against.
As we are used to in this Tour, the final was already started from very far away. At 45 kilometers from Libourne we had the first attacks at the front. It would never stop again. Van Moer was the first Belgian to drop out, Theuns and Stuyven had each other and Bernard as the strongest trio. Yet it was a few who had the best papers.
While the others always blew back after their attempt, Mohoric managed to get away with a headwind on a nagging stretch. 20 seconds became 40 and finally 1 minute. The Slovenian was in the piste. At the finish, he once again clearly showed what he thought of all those doping stories surrounding his team. “Youthful rashness”, thought Michel Wuyts.
Theuns sets up a counterattack and gets a pack of 19 men along with Van Avermaet, Van Moer and Stuyven
Kwiatkowski and Skujins speed up after a fall and that’s not at all to the liking of angry Pogacar
