As Paris-Nice began to heat up ahead of an Alpine double header to decide the overall winner, Rudy Molard delivered another home winner for the fans and huge surprise coup for FDJ with a late breakaway from the leading group on stage 6. He beat the contenders to take the overall race to the line, with Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal) finished second in the chase ahead of Julian Alaphilippe (Quick-Step Floors) whilst the yellow jersey Luis Leon Sanchez managed to finish fourth and keep his yellow jersey.
It’s a jersey that he has an increased chance of keeping given the unfortunate crash that Wout Poels suffered after missing a tight left-hand bend on the descent of the Côte de la Colle sur Loup, suffering a broken left collarbone, trauma to his chest and cuts to his knee, for all that he was conscious when talking when attended to on the roadside.
There was a fearsome scrap to get into the break, with the terrain favouring any attacks, and it took a while for the first six - Lars Bak (Lotto Soudal), Amael Moinard (Fortuneo-Samsic), Paul Martens (LottoNL-Jumbo), Cyril Lemoine (Cofidis), Thomas Scully (EF-Drapac) and Fabien Grellier (Direct Energie) - to get clear of the group. There were seven riders quickly on their table however, with Alexander Kristoff (UAE Team Emirates), yesterday’s runner-up Nils Politt (Katusha-Alpecin) breakaway artist Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal), Carlos Barbero (Movistar), Dylan Teuns (BMC), Stage 1 winner Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) and Bert Van Lerberghe (Cofidis) all pushing on to try and join the escape.
This was not without complication – Teuns was 14th and only a minute down on Sanchez, which was leading Astana to keep the break well within their sights. They strung the peloton along with them; The field had covered 46 kilometres in the first hour of racing.
The escape never had more than 1:45 and when Teuns was made to sit up, he had fought valiantly. The gap went out to about three minutes whilst the peloton rested for a little while. Up ahead, the break began to fight for points in the mountains classification, with Thomas de Gendt managing to pip Fabian Grellier to the honours on the Col de Luens. De Gendt once again beat Grellier to the top of the Col Bas but the steeper gradient shredded much of the breakaway, with Kristoff, Pollitt, Martens, and Lemoine being dropped, although they did manage to make it back on the descent.
That said, come were clearly tying up and the Côte de Cipières, 2.8km long at 5.6%, saw the break come down to just De Gendt, Grellier, Moinard and Scully. Demare and Van Lergerghe were caught by the peloton whilst Bak managed to cling on with others to make a chasing group. De Gendt beat Grellier once again to the top for more mountain points and he also won the battle to finish first at the Côte de Gourdon.
On the descent, another push from Mitchelton-Scott brought the peloton back fully and Team Sky and Bahrain-Merida both pushed hard on to the approach to the extremely steep closing climb and the bunch began to thin out with Dries Devenyns shedding riders for Julian Alaphipppe, who was left in front although he didn’t attack immediately thanks to the extremely steep gradient. Tony Gallopin was not having the best of weeks and he was dropped early on the climb, with his team mate Vuillermoz going and being quickly followed by Chavez. Poels then made an impressively seated acceleration to head to the front and he was joined by the inform Tim Wellens, who then eased off without company to head forward.
The group was dragged back by Ion Izaguirre and they headed over the top together, with Yates and picks up three handy bonus seconds at the last intermediate point before the last climb as Henao took the next two and Wellens the final one.
Wellens and Yates managed to get a gap of 15 seconds over the main leaders but they were fighting each other too and the dropping of Sergio Henao meant there was extra energy into the chase. With De L Crux trying to bring last year’s winner back, Molard counter attacked Yates and Wellens, only to be closed down by Gorka Izaguirre with Luis Leon Sanchez hot on their heels.
Groak then went on the attack again, to be closed down by Julian Alaphilippe, but Molard’s second counter-attack was not watched closely enough and he only needed that one chance to win.
