The Tour de France peloton headed to the high mountains on Saturday afternoon, with a stage that featured the famous Col du Tourmalet. It was a rapid start to proceedings on the flatter terrain where Team dsm-firmenich PostNL looked to infiltrate the breaks, with Frank van den Broek and Oscar Onley particularly active. When the elastic eventually snapped after roughly 50 kilometres of action the team were all within the peloton. However, it soon became clear that Pogacar’s team wanted to control things and already on the Tourmalet they set a good pace to keep the break within check and reduce the gap. Onto the penultimate climb of the day the tempo ramped up once more and Team dsm-firmeminch PostNL’s climbing squad put on the anchors with a stage win looking likely to go to the GC riders, looking to preserve as much energy as possible on such a challenging stage and ahead of what’s to come.
After the finish Team dsm-firmenich PostNL coach Matt Winston added: “We didn’t know how today was going to play out so we tried to get in the big breaks and see how things would go. There was a lot of good commitment from the guys early in the stage to make those moves. We missed the big one but already by that point it became clear that UAE wanted to control the stage. Our climbing group stayed in peloton going onto penultimate ascent, where they then dropped, as we look to save some energy and legs for the next opportunities.”
