The final day of racing before the first rest day at the Tour de France saw the peloton take on the much-anticipated gravel stage, with a 199-kilometres-long stage starting and finishing in Troyes on the menu. Featuring 33 kilometres of gravel and dirt roads it was set to be a spectacular day out, where almost anything could happen.
Immediately from the flag drop there were multiple attacks and the team were well represented in the early moves, covering things well. The fierce battle continued for the next 30 kilometres when eventually a large group escaped and the road was blocked off in the peloton. Romain Bardet squeezed through a gap and set off in pursuit, where he was joined by a few others. Despite their best efforts they couldn’t make the junction and were eventually brought back by the peloton, where the race had already split into several groups on the narrow entries onto the gravel sectors with well over 100 kilometres to go. The team fought as hard as they could from then throughout the rest of the day but didn’t make it into a position to fight for a stage result, through a combination of the hard racing and some bad luck with mechanicals, with Warren Barguil and Frank van den Broek leading the team home by finishing in the yellow jersey group.
Speaking at the finish Frank said: “It was a tough day on the bike. The gravel was very loose and you were sliding a lot, especially through the turns and bends. Sometimes behind the peloton or the cars, it was one big cloud of dust, so then you could only hope you were going in the right direction. I actually yo-yoed for a lot of the stage, dropping from the yellow jersey group then coming back. Personally, I wasn’t on my best day so was pretty much suffering throughout the stage. Our plan as a team was to join the early break but that didn’t work out, and then we had some bad luck for John and Romain with mechanicals, and from there we were always playing catch-up. We had nothing to lose today in terms of a GC battle so we really wanted to go for it and it would have been a great opportunity for us, but that’s cycling sometimes, so we’ll regroup and continue in the second week.”
