Gallery
With Conviction TdF26-111
Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) was on fire today. He jumped from the very small breakaway on the final climb of the day, the Plateau de Solaison. He chased down Mauro Schmid (Jayco-Alula) the former Swiss champion as they raced near the border with Switzerland. I thought he would sit on Schmid's wheel for a bit on the HC (outside category) climb, but no, he went straight on by. He was racing with the conviction that the peloton would worry too much about each other to bother chasing him. With nine more kilometers to climb to the summit and the end of the stage he still had a minute and forty-five seconds on the group containing the yellow jersey. That would be plenty of time if it was a flat stage, but this is a climb with an average of a 9% gradient.