DISCUSSION Tour de France Stage 6 | Best stage of the Tour so far? How long will Van der Poel last in yellow?

Stage 6 of this Tour de France delivered an exciting battle for the breakaway. After yesterday’s individual time-trial, today’s course was an explosive hilly stage, ideal for puncheurs. The stage was 200 km long, with a total of 6 categorised climbs.

The breakaway was fought very hard from the beginning of the day. Finally, a group of 8 strong riders managed to build a gap over the peloton, including men like Mathieu van der Poel, Ben Healy, Quinn Simons, Michael Storer or Giro d’Italia winner Simon Yates.

The first attacks from this group started with around 45 km to go, when Ben Healy launched an explosive attack in an attempt to win solo. Quinn Simmons and Michael Storer distanced themselves from the rest later, but they were unable to catch the EF rider, who managed to open a gap of almost 3 minutes over them. Great victory for the Irishman; this was his first win in the Tour de France at just 24 years of age.

Mathieu Van der Poel finished in 8th position, clearly fatigued after the intense breakaway effort. He reclaimed the yellow jersey from Pogacar by just 1 second.

In the GC group, no significant differences were created. Pogacar won the peloton’s sprint, with Vingegaard coming in 2nd position.

Once the stage finished, we asked some of our writers to share their thoughts and main takeaways about what happened today.

Crazy stage. Ben Healy is a rider of the old days, one of those who attack no matter how much is left or how the race is going. A big win for him, the biggest victory of his career more than deserved with a real exhibition.

As for the general classification, it was clear that Tadej Pogacar wanted to give up the yellow jersey, but he almost kept it. First because Mathieu van der Poel crashed on the last mountain pass and let himself go seeing that the stage victory was impossible, and second because the peloton accelerated at the finish.

And finally, the great performance of Movistar Team. They tried first with Pablo Castrillo, then with Gregor Mühlberger and finally they were able to catch the breakaway with Will Barta, who gave everything he had.

To anyone that knows me, you'll know I was raving about today's breakaway battle. Having full broadcast of a stage is something special to the TDF and seeing an hour-long fight between many of the world's best classics riders, teammates of the big GC guys, etc... is just incredibly enjoyable and can lead to many scenarios.

So yes, I was satisfied with today. The breakaway formation not only saw plenty fireworks but Visma also attacking quite a lot, again putting UAE under pressure and trying to create chaos. They attacked with Matteo Jorgenson, with a direct response from Tadej Pogacar, which was quite an interesting and telling moment that UAE know they can't let go Jorgenson at this point in the race, and also that Visma are willing to use him in the way I believe is correct.

Breakaway wise Ben Healy's victory was somewhat due to 'group 2 syndrome' but honestly seeing just how strong he was in that final hour of racing makes me believe he would've won in any scenario, because by himself he gained substantial amount of time on literally everyone in the group. A classic Healy on the hilly terrain with a solo move, his absolute best performance and a very deserved win. A special thing about the Tour really is that you can't win unless you're one of the world's best at what you do. Ben is not a sprinter, climber, time-trialist; but he's one of the best at this kind of aggressive and unpredictable racing.

GC wise, besides the early action, we still had a very tight 1-second margin to decide the overall which is interesting, and I think yellow changes hands once again tomorrow back to Pogacar. I didn't expect anything too special but we still got an ultra-steep sprint, interesting between the GC outsiders to attack each other and create some small gaps.

What a tremendous battle for escape today. There were dozens of attacks and counter-attacks that had me stuck to the telly to see who the men were who would get away. Ben Healy, Harold Tejada, Quinn Simmons... they tried more than once and that daring earned them the good fortune of hitting at the key moment. Admittedly, they had a classicomaniac like Mathieu van der Poel with them, but they divided the work between them and succeeded.

As things approached the final mountains of the day, I had my eye on three men and it was one of them who attacked the race, never to be caught again. Ben Healy took off, gained a margin and in no time had a one-minute lead over the chasing group.

Simmons and Storer counter-attacked to try and bridge the gap, but it was too late. Healy pressed on at a strong pace, never pausing for breath or giving his rivals a chance to hatch a plan to catch him. Behind, van der Poel was exploding.

Visma and UAE were at the head of the peloton. Firstly UAE because they seemed to want the stage, because if that wasn't the case, what were they pulling for and wasting energy on? Visma because it wanted to keep Pogacar in yellow and prevent Mathieu van der Poel from taking the yellow again.

Final note: on the sixth day of the race, we didn't finally see a sea of crashes.

It's true that we often criticise race organisers for designing stages that may be somewhat dangerous. However, we should also acknowledge when they successfully create a well-designed route. Today’s stage was a perfect opportunity to see a beautiful breakaway fight. But not only that, the terrain was also good to see the GC contenders fight, even though that was not exactly the case today.

Before the start of the stage, I believed the chances of winning were evenly split between the breakaway and the peloton, about 50/50. I didn’t see a clear favourite, but once the break was established, it was evident the rider raising the arms at the finish line belonged to that group.

Van der Poel, Ben Healy, Eddie Dunbar, Quinn Simons… all the riders in that break are pure class, and most importantly, they are specialists on that kind of terrain. The only issue I saw was the presence of Mathieu Van der Poel. When he is in a breakaway, he is usually let to do the dirty work, and he doesn’t easily find cooperation among the rest of the riders.

Ben Healy knew that arriving with him at the finish line was not a wise choice, so he chose to launch a brave attack from far away. The attack was perfectly timed, and group 2 syndrome kicked in. Very much needed win for EF Education – Easy Post after Richard Carapaz’s absence in the Tour.

It is not the first time he has won a stage like that. This year, he also won stage 5 of Itzulia from the breakaway. He attacked when he was 56km from the finish line, and he won solo, in a stage that had a similar profile to this one.

Regarding GC contenders, I was expecting more action during the last kilometres. It is also true that the TV coverage focused exclusively on the breakaway riders during the final 10 minutes of the stage, which I think was a poor decision. Ben Healy already had a large lead, and perhaps the only interesting thing to see was the sprint for the second position between Quinn Simons and Michael Storer.

We were only able to see Skjelmose for a moment, when he apparently had a mechanical issue with his bike (he ended up losing 40 seconds), but we couldn’t see who was pulling in the peloton, or if there were any attacks.

Finally, we saw some other riders lose some seconds (Enric Mas, Primoz Roglic, and Joao Almeida lost 5 seconds), and Carlos Rodríguez lost 17 seconds at the end. This is definitely not his Tour, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him change plans and look for breakaway wins instead of fighting for the GC.

Ineos Grenadiers has already lost Filippo Ganna, and they can’t afford to go unnoticed in this Tour de France. If I am honest, Carlos’ performance this year surprises me negatively. He was 5th in the Tour two years ago, when he was only 22, and it seems that his progression has taken a step backwards this year.

Mathieu van der Poel will try to defend his yellow jersey tomorrow. Honestly, I think it will be a difficult task, as only 1 second separates him from Pogacar. But if he manages to do so, he shouldn’t have any problem defending it until next Monday.