205.8km, the only stage over 200km in this Tour, and it took over 35 frantic kilometres of attack-and-chase before anything stuck. Riders from XDS Astana and EF Education-EasyPost kept forcing moves early, and eventually the elastic snapped: a 37-rider group finally got clear, built around teammates of nearly every GC contender bar Decathlon’s Paul Seixas — which is why nobody behind panicked immediately.

Pinarello-Q36.5 did most of the donkey work at the front, with Tom Pidcock and Jordan Jegat both eyeing a GC leg-up.

There was one other glitch tho – Alpecin-Premier Tech’s Jasper Philipsen was in the move too, chasing green jersey points off leader Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) — so Pedersen himself had to bridge across with a ~20-rider group just to defend his lead. That merger swelled the break to a genuinely weird 57 riders.

By the Col des Croix (km 157.4, cat. 3), the lead group had thinned back down but still held 8:10 on the peloton. Bahrain Victorious and UAE Team Emirates-XRG started riding tempo behind — not to bring it back, but purely to cap how much time Pidcock (then 10th on GC) could take out of Isaac del Toro’s podium spot. UAE had no urgency of their own since Pogačar had McNulty and Wellens up the road already.

On the Ballon d’Alsace itself (summit at km 175.9, 29.9km to go), an attack from Tudor’s Rick Pluimers gave the sprinters their excuse to sit up — Girmay, Philipsen and Pedersen all dropped out the back together, job done for green. Netcompany-Ineos’s Kévin Vauquelin countered, but it mostly shelled riders off the back rather than sharpening the front.

The finishing move came inside the last 15km: Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla) attacked, only Harold Tejada (XDS Astana) went with him, and the group behind hesitated just long enough — nobody wanted to tow Pidcock back into contention for free — for a 10-second gap to become an unbridgeable one. Vauquelin and Jegat tried one last dig inside 5km; it didn’t matter.

Schmid out-timed Tejada in the sprint. Pidcock took 3rd at +2″, climbing from 10th to 4th overall. The peloton, marshalled home by Bahrain Victorious, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe and Lidl-Trek, rolled in 7:32 down — a day off for the yellow jersey, and a very expensive one for whoever’s chasing del Toro’s old GC spot.

PIdders had this to say: “I think I’m getting stronger and stronger in this race,” Pidcock said. “At the Vuelta, I was getting dropped in the first week, and then I ended up on the podium. But I think I’m going to lose a lot of time in the time trial, that’s for sure…”

Actually, it might be todsy that he has to worry about, with its 3800 meters of elevation.

“For sure, he’s a contender but I hope he spent a bit of energy today,” Pogačar told France Télévisions. “We will see tomorrow how he responds after a big day today. Tomorrow there will be a lot of tired legs, not just for the riders who were in the break but also from the peloton.”

All images courtesy of ASO