Performance of the day: Mattéo Vercher crashed in the neutral zone before taking a shocking second place in a Tour de France stage

Michal Kwiatkowski, Victor Campenaerts and... Mattéo Vercher for the stage win? No, not even the 23-year-old Frenchman had dreamed of having a shot at the Tour de France stage victory. However the situation played ideally for TotalEnergies, who met luck at halfway as they entered the breakaway with no less than four men. In addition to Vercher's surprising second place, team leader Steff Cras moved up in the GC after gaining 13 minutes. Had Vercher won, it would've been a perfect day for the French ProTeam.

A few hours before playing for the win, during the neutral start, Vercher fell: "The fall in the neutral start, I stupidly hit a barrier but hey, nothing too serious, just a torn short," he assured Cyclism'Actu.

The Frenchman then looked back on his day: "Our goal was to put riders at the front because it's probably the last one for breakaways. We fought and there were 4 of us in front out of 30, the most represented team. Then, we tried to play collectively, I don't think it was my turn to go in front but in the end we played like that. I exploded on a climb halfway through the stage and I wanted to hang on to do the job, I really didn't think it was going to be for me."

The Frenchman then returned to the decisive moment when he along with Michal Kwiatkowski and Victor Campenaerts rode away from the large breakaway: "Actually, when I took over at the bottom of the hill because we were trapped and I thought I would get back up. Afterwards, I sat in the wheels trying to hold on until the top of the climb and for me, my race would have been over. Then I saw Victor Campenaerts attack so I took his wheel and then curtain. I was very surprised to be in front, and once the leading group settled, we agreed not to attack each other."

"Afterwards at the flamme rouge we played the games and what happened happened. At the flamme rouge, I attacked because they left me a gap but I didn't necessarily want to. I took the opportunity and that's it. I thought Kwiatkowski was faster and we got caught out in the slipstream," declared Vercher on his last kilometer. "A competitor wants to win so coming in 2nd of course sucks. Afterwards if you look at the whole day, it's a great result. In 2-3 hours, tomorrow, I'll be happy but now coming in 2nd sucks. That's how it is, that's the race," Vercher concluded.