UAE keeps Tour de France success on a roll - Tim Wellens takes glorious breakaway in Carcassonne

The veteran still has it! Tim Wellens is having the absolute best year of his career, and this Sunday stage 15 at the Tour de France he has completed the Grand Tour trilogy with a solo win in Carcassonne, a popular one wearing the Belgian national champion's jersey.

Everyone knew at the start of the day that this would be a breakaway stage and so right from kilometer 0 the speed was very high. The speed for the winner was 47.5Km/h, despite there being two ascents to consider on the day. Before their start there were very strong groups on the attack, but a breakaway was only truly formed halfway through the day.

Matej Mohoric, Quinn Simmons, Michael Storer, Matej Mohoric, Victor Campenaerts, Tim Wellens, Neilson Powless and Alexey Lutsenko formed the first group on the road, and around two dozen riders were in chasing groups spread throughout the road including 10th place Carlos Rodríguez, Jordan Jegat, Ben O'Connor and Guillaume Martin who would go on to win minutes on the UAE-led peloton.

The Pas du Sant climb, 3 kilometers at 9%, split the groups and only the strongest remained in front, but with 44 kilometers in a slight rise that continued throughout several kilometers, Tim Wellens launched a devastating move with 44 kilometers to go and went up the road with enough speed to create a big gap quickly. There was at first a lot of difficulty in the chase, and eventually too many riders to organize a proper chase.

Victor Campenaerts, Carlos Rodríguez, Aleksandr Vlasov, Quinn Simmons, Michael Storer, Warren Barguil and Alexey Lutsenko were the chasers, but Wellens escaped with a masterful win, another big one to add to his palmarès - his first in the Tour, which has him complete the trilogy.

Campenaerts attacked in the final kilometers from the chasing group (which had been caught by a separate group) to finish second whilst Julian Alaphilippe rode to third on the day, celebrating over the finish line as he was unaware in the midst of the chaos of what had happened.