Greig Leach

The seven guys who had been with Tim Wellens had tried hard to chase down the former Belgium time trialist. At twelve kilometers to go they had lost a minute and thirty-nine seconds to the lone leader. It just seemed to me that the fire had gone out of the chase as Michael Storer (Tudor Pro Cycling), Alexey Lutsenko (Israel-Premier Tech), Victor Campenaerts (Visma-Lease a Bike), Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek), Alexsandr Vlasov (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Warren Barguil (Picnic-PostNL), and Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos-Grenadiers) free-wheeled down one of the many rollers into the finish town of Carcassone. Perhaps they had switched their thinking to how can I get second on the stage. Carlos Rodriguez was the only one with GC aspirations. If he could keep the group's advantage over the peloton he would move up from tenth to nineth ahead of tomorrow's rest day. Side note, with just two kilometers to race, Campenaerts jumped free and claimed second over the combined chase groups led home by none other than Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor Pro Cycling) who had started his day on the ground holding his injured shoulder.