procycling

There certainly was no wait-and-see today!

Bad weather in the beginning of the race, as well as on the last few miles.

Early (in the first half of the race anyway) breakaway, which included several men rather well placed in GC. From it, Arensman (🇳🇱 Ineos) got away alone, perhaps after 80 km (mid-race). His gap on the peloton (just 10-20 riders) reached 4 minutes. The breakaway was split in several parts: at the front Gee (🇨🇦 IPT) and another rider, and the other part would be caught by the peloton.

Seixas (🇫🇷 Decathlon) worked a bit in the leaders group, for Gall🇦🇹 then disappeared. In the 2^nd^ category climb, more than 30 km away from the line, Storer (🇦🇺 Tudor) attacked from that group/peloton. Gall tried to counter, but didn't manage to catch Storer, he kept on going with a rider from the breakaway, but these two were ultimately caught up by the group from which Gall had gotten away.

Storer kept on reducing his delay on Arensman, for the latter was only 1'18'' behind him in general classification. Gee would also come closer to Arensman. The steeper the slope, the more Storer would gain over Gee, and Gee over Arensman.

In the last climb, Gall escaped again from his group; but was again caught up by a duo where Ciccone (🇮🇹 Lidl-Trek) was following Caruso (🇮🇹 Bahrein). Storer came very close to catch up Gee but after the summit, there were various false flats which allowed Gee to remain ahead. Likewise, Storer had managed to lower the gap with Arensman enough to keep his jersey in the climb, but lost it again in those false flat sections.

Arensman is now 1^st^ in GC but Storer is just a few seconds away. Gee comes 3^rd^ but 2 minutes away from them – since he finished approximately with Storer and was over 2 minutes away from him yesterday already.

Then, another minute behind, we find the trio Ciccone-Gall–Caruso who finished better than the other leaders.

Then between 4 and 5 minutes, are the 2 Picnics Bardet🇫🇷 and Poole🇬🇧 (which finished slightly better than Bardet today) and the rest of the leaders.

Seixas dropped to 10 minutes...

That was really good racing today. 😃 Leaders were forced to show what they could do, for they lacked teammates in the mid-part of the race, and there wasn't much suitable profile for teamwork in the final parts if there had still be available teammates.