Greig Leach

These six were all after the one who got away on the final descent of the day. Well, one isn't chasing. Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) had a lone teammate up the road so he was either on the back getting a free ride, or like now, on the front trying to slow the chase. Martin was in the group with Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies), Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar), Tiesj Benoot (Jumbo-Visma), the French hero Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ), and Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X). With fourteen kilometers to race, it was beginning to look like they will be racing for second place today. On the other hand both Martin and Pinot were working hard to increase their time gains on those ahead of them on the general classification. Fortunately for them, while many were ahead of them, all of them were behind. At the end of the day, both move up five places each. That put Thibaut Pinot into the top ten, just 32 seconds behind his own team leader, David Gaudu. They are now the two top placed Frenchmen in the Tour.