A 3 men km-0 breakaway again. With the Mountain jersey wearer Urianstad again, and FDJ's Paleni again. G. Martin looked like he was going to go for the breakaway during the neverending neutral start, but he didn't. The Moutain points were undisputed today, and so were the Sprints (Veistroffer from Lotto-Intermarché).

The breakaway gap dropped at some point but grew again. 25 km from the line, the gap was 1 minute when Fontaine (FDJ) performed a weird attack from the peloton in the feed zone. He was caught up only 2 km farther, the peloton hadn't liked it. The gap grew a bit more as the peloton relaxed after this catching up.

Urianstad, who had been slightly dropped, gave a last relay and waved the other 2 goodbye about 20 km (?) from the line.

Then Paleni dropped Veistroffer, perhaps 13 km from the line. However Veistroffer didn't give up, and caught up after 5 km of pursuit! He even gave a few relays after that.

Paleni dropped Veistroffer again in the last little climb. But he immediately lost a lot of time to the peloton.

I think Paleni never handles the final parts of breakaways well. It happened twice today, it happened 2 days ago, and I remember it happening last year too. He doesn't know how to keep other riders with him. He drops them and then he goes slower than the pace they were doing together.