Remco Evenepoel attacks on the climb to Peille during the final stage. Matteo Jorgenson follows when everyone else, including the race leader Brandon McNulty, cannot. This was the moment the race was won but it occurred thanks to the accumulation of efforts throughout the week. Remember the opening stage to Les Mureaux? All week the intermediate sprints were placed at tactical points and the opener at Montainville was atop a sharp climb.
It would have been brave to extrapolate from this sprint to a final result in Nice but with hindsight it foretold almost everything. What else? Mother Nature showed up for the team time trial, but fashionably late. The course was cleverly designed with two climbs to sap heavy rouleurs before a high speed run back to Auxerre. If this was a trap it was obvious from just a saccade at the stage profile. Yet several teams fell headlong into it, notably Bora-hansgrohe, 11th on the stage with just three riders left for the return.
Perhaps team mates, riders and managers alike, are still keen to impress him rather than to bark at him to slow down? UAE won the stage in part thanks to a strong team but also going earlier than some of the rivals and they were literally home and dry. Others got caught in a storm that was so sudden and brief that each team seemed to get a different version: hail for one, wind for another, no tail wind for others and rain for several.
This put Brandon McNulty in the lead but a collective victory for a strong team. Buitrago got the stage, Plapp the yellow.
Stage 5 went to Sisteron and ended in a bunch sprint, a first. Every time had seen a breakaway contest the win but this sprint was no surprise, the relatively gentle course helped, plenty of climbing but no detours via sharp back roads and it was win number two for Kooij, again ahead of Mads Pedersen. Again Kooij was the decisive winner but again Pedersen was missing his Luxembourg lead-out Alex Kirsch. But it was Jorgenson who countered and he was joined by McNulty and Skjelmose.
