Full-on Vingegaard-Pogacar battle ends in stalemate at Mont Ventoux as Valentin Paret-Peintre takes France's first win

Valentin Paret-Peintre is the new king of Mont Ventoux, winning stage 16 from the breakaway at the Tour de France. The iconic climb saw France's first victory in this race, whilst Jonas Vingegaard attacked Tadej Pogacar several times and the two arrived together at the summit of the mythical ascent.

Another flat and furiously flat start to the stage saw the peloton move at lightning speed towards Mont Ventoux. At the base of the Géant de Provence the leading riders had an average speed of 50Km/h, something that would prove costly for many. But before reaching it a lot has happened, not necessarily anything dramatic, but an hour-long breakaway formation battle.

35 riders formed the day's breakaway including some of the strongest climbers in the race, and two teammates of both Tadej Pogacar (Marc Soler and Pavel Sivakov) and Jonas Vingegaard (Tiesj Benoot and Victor Campenaerts). With a headwind in the final kilometers of Ventoux this could prove to be tactically important.

From this large group, Julian Alaphilippe and Matteo Trentin of Tudor formed a front group together with Enric Mas, Simone Velasco, Thymen Arensman, Jonas Abrahamsen and Fred Wright. The seven-rider group built a gap of around 1:30 minutes up to the base of Ventoux to their rivals and around 6 minutes to the peloton.

Alaphilippe attacked several timmes at the start of the final climb but Enric Mas then went solo, distancing the Frenchman and Arensman, and seemingly heading for the stage win. But the tough slopes of Ventoux proved to be too difficult and from behind, a GC-motivated Ben Healy paced across the gap and managed to close it finally with 3.6 kilometers to go alongside Valentin Paret-Peintre. A flurry of attacks dropped the rest of the riders, but as they couldn't drop each other, others would come back. Santiago Buitrago in the finale made it to the front, and the trio were led out by Ilan van Wilder who bridged across in the final kilometer.

It would come down to a sprint in the end where Ben Healy was the first to launch it, but had to settle for second on the road, as Valentin Paret-Peintre followed the wheel and then managed to overtake the Irishman to the line to take the biggest win of his career - whilst Buitrago was third.

In the peloton Visma set out to attack the final climb, with Sepp Kuss setting the pace for a large majority of the ascent to Chalet Reinard until Vingegaard attacked with 7 kilometers to go. An explosive attack but Tadej Pogacar responded. The Dane accelerated both times after Benoot and Campenaerts had been used, and the two moved together up the ascent. In the final 2 kilometers Pogacar did attack but Vingegaard promptly responded. Pogacar gained a second at the finish line, but the two eventually had a stalemate.