Evenepoel ("Saved our legs as much as possible") beaten in sprint by surprising name: "That's great"

Evenepoel was excellently positioned on the final climb, but ultimately couldn’t find the right moment to attack. "It went quite well. I was at the front from the bottom of the climb, but maybe I was just lacking that final punch," he said in the flash interview. "I hesitated to go, but that guy from Astana came and set a really high pace. It was hard to do anything at that point, so I just focused on finishing in the same time as the guys ahead of me."

A seventh-place finish on the day is certainly not bad, especially with the queen stage on Saturday and the following time trial in mind. Despite trailing race leader Alex Baudin by more than 50 seconds, Evenepoel is still seen as one of the top favorites. "I think we got the maximum out of it today, we saved our legs as much as possible. I think it was quite a good finale for us."

In the sprint, the Olympic champion was ultimately beaten by Lenny Martinez. The tiny climber turns out to have a vicious finishing kick. "In the end, I came in second, even though I thought the finish would be a bit tougher," said the Frenchman from Bahrain Victorious. "It turned out to be a bit further on the flat than I had expected. I thought that would make the sprint more complicated. But I saw that Jay Vine was simply stronger, and I had to adapt in the sprint behind him."

At the moment day-winner Vine accelerated, Martinez couldn’t follow. "I was on the second row at that moment, a bit hidden in the bunch. I saw that he already had a gap, and I was kind of counting on the other teams, maybe Quick-Step. In the finale, Astana tried something, but Vine had enough power to finish it off. Second isn't bad." The young top climber is really looking forward to the mountain stage to Thyon 2000. "Tomorrow is the big day. We'll see how it goes on a climb in the north. I'm happy to see that I'm getting better at punchy finishes like this one, that's great."