Healy goes too much for stage win, but climbs a spot in the GC: "I should have pushed harder"

Healy was the rider who reeled in Enric Mas after the Spaniard attacked from the foot of Mont Ventoux. Healy was the rider who attacked repeatedly, trying to shake off Paret-Peintre and the rather passive Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious). And Healy was the one who kept the pace high when the quartet regrouped just below the summit. Perhaps, all of that cost him that final extra percent he came up short on the top.

"I’m pretty disappointed. Fighting for the win on Mont Ventoux is something special," he said as the day’s most combative rider in the flash interview. Healy appeared to have some tension with his breakaway companions once Mas had attacked. "Up to Mont Ventoux, we rode strongly, and the pace was high. But after that, it was hard to find any cooperation in the group. So I told the others: let’s catch Mas first and then start playing."

And so it went. Healy and Paret-Peintre managed to reel Mas back in, and from there the tactical games began. Healy and Paret-Peintre went together for a bit, stalled, Mas came back, they went again, this time Mas and Buitrago returned. When Healy also started gambling in that group, Ilan Van Wilder, teammate of Paret-Peintre, saved the day by coming back and setting the pace all the way to the final corner. "I tried to attack, but with the wind, that was difficult," Healy said.

The stage 6 winner and former yellow jersey wearer knew he wasn’t the favorite in the sprint. "I should have ridden a bit harder in the first kilometers of the Ventoux, then maybe the victory wouldn’t have been decided only at the finish line. The last hundred meters were so tough, Valentin still had more left in the tank." As a consolation prize, Healy’s day in the break moved him up to ninth place in the general classification. "I can keep playing with two cards."