procycling

Unibet, having the GC jersey on Kubish, was ensuring a basic pace.

20 km from the line, was the first passage over this line. A small sunken road climbing from a village up to the country. Retailleau🇫🇷 and Davy🇫🇷 ( Nice, ex-FDJ) dropped the Polti rider🇮🇹 on the top, that they reached 45-50 seconds ahead of the peloton.

Alpecin had joined the head of the peloton and Unibet had pulled back.

Then it was more teams like FDJ leading it with Alpecin.

On the second passage, the breakaway had lost around 20 seconds.

The peloton formed several trains in parallel in places where the road was larger. Again FDJ was there.

Unibet was hiding behind and started coming forward again about 5-6 km from the line.

The breakaway was caught about 2 km from the line, after giving everything they had. 👍 again for breakaway men.

The bunch arrived at a crazy speed inside the village. No crash was however reported. Then there was a succession of acceleration/attacks in the final climb. Décathlon started the climb. Mifsud (🇫🇷🇲🇹) was seen leading, he finished 11^th^.

Then a Roubaix guy placed an attack. Either there was a switch between 2 Roubaix riders, or it was an extremely long attack that brought Heremans🇧🇪 to victory. Nobody manage to take him over, neither Kubish (🇸🇰 Unibet) who finished 3^rd^ nor Lapeira (🇫🇷 Décathlon) who managed to come back for 2^nd^ place, ultimately passing Kubish and Moschetti (🇮🇹 Q36.5). Early in the climb, Kubish had been slowed down a bit by a hit, when there was too many riders sprinting on the same line.

I spoke about a possible switch because Louis Hardouin (🇫🇷 Roubaix) finished there again in 5^th^ place, so perhaps it was him who launched the Roubaix attack? What a debut in the professional world anyway for this guy!

Costiou (🇫🇷 FDJ) was nowhere to be seen, while Lapeira finally managed to grab a few seconds of time bonus.

EDIT

Kubish (🇸🇰 Unibet) was put back in 2^nd^ place (therefore Lapeira in 3^rd^ place). It looked so, but as the speeds were different and Lapeira was sneaking through a mouse hole on the right of the road, the original classification made sense as well. So, this is the 3^rd^ time in 4 stages that he finishes 2^nd^ 😀

Victor Papon (🇫🇷 Nice) will go home with the Mountain jersey: none of his followers was in today's breakaway.

A few riders were behind a small split on the line: Teuns, Azparren, Decomble, among others, lost a few seconds.

Before the final TT tomorrow, Kubish is 16 seconds before Lapeira, Costiou is 4 seconds farther; Larsen and Decomble at 23 and 27 seconds from Kubish. I am just quoting those names, there are other riders in between.