Greig Leach

With a long, basically downhill stage, this one was marked as one for the sprinters. The wide, straight, open roads should help the peloton judge the capture of the break away to perfection. It should therefore be another day that will go to script with the only possible deviations coming if the legendary Mistral winds of southern France. Strong cross winds can have the same effect on the peloton has any category one mountain, splitting the riders apart and causing huge time gaps. So it was that the peloton let this two man break of Martin Elmiger (IAM Cycling) and Jack Bauer (Garmin Sharp) build up an eight minute lead, the peloton confident that they could be caught at will.