Greig Leach

As the title would imply, the early break today was seven riders strong. One of the surprise members was Elia Viviani (Deceuninck-Quick Step), the former leader of the race and the current points leader, he was hoping to hold onto that jersey and perhaps to retake the lead. At this point he was the virtual leader. Along with the Italian were Manuele Boaro (Astana), Nico Denz (Ag2r La Mondiale), Nic Dlamini (Dimension Data), Leo Vincent (Groupama-FDJ), James Whelan (EF Education First), and Nicholas White (UniSA-Australia). With such a big group with so many different teams represented, it was hard to figure who was going to chase down this break. But the virtual leader did put a little pressure on Team CCC to give chase.