Greig Leach

Today was looking to be a very odd stage. A huge break of about 24 riders got off the front, the odd thing was that the Maillot Jaune and a number of the contenders were up the road. The peloton seemed unable or unwilling to chase it down. Less unexpected was that Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-Quick Step) would be in the front seeking more points at the intermediate sprint ahead of the climbs of the day. At this point he seemed to surrender the break along with Reuben Guerreiro (EF Education-Nippo), Toms Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) and Dorina Godon (Ag2r-Citroen). As I went back to watching the attaction, it turned out that they had not meant to drop away. The quartet worked together to chase back onto the tail of the leading group.