'Lucky soul' Simon Yates in the breakaway for Visma | Lease a Bike: "I don’t think it was a day for me"

Yates was in the breakaway group of the day, which was according to plan, said the sports director. “We wanted a tough stage and to be in the breakaway group to fight for the stage win. In the end, Simon was there. He had a good chance, but Ben Healy was riding at a different level.”

“We did indeed want to be there, and I was the lucky soul who got to be there,” Yates himself said afterward on ITV. “I don't really think it was a day for me, but I feel my legs getting better, and that's a good sign for the rest of the race. Ben Healy was impressive, and that's not the first time. We hesitated for a moment, and that was it.”

Behind them, Visma | Lease a Bike put pressure on the other contenders to keep Tadej Pogacar in yellow, but he ultimately fell one second short of Mathieu van der Poel. “At the end, we accelerated again, so it was pretty fast,” said Vingegaard.

How tough was it exactly? “A solid 5, I'd say. No, just kidding; it was not an easy day. Not the toughest of them all, but it was very fast, especially at the beginning. Once the breakaway group was gone, the pace was a bit more relaxed.”

Vingegaard said he was feeling a lot better than on Wednesday when he lost a lot of time in the time trial. “The time trial was a tough day, and I was definitely disappointed, as I should be. Now I'm feeling a lot better, and I'm happy about that. Now we're focusing on the next stage.”

“It wasn't because of the explosive stages we've already had, because then I would have struggled more. We need to analyze what went wrong,” said the Dane, who is already feeling the effects of six days of Tour racing.

“It's been a tough week. When I saw the course, I thought it would be a quiet week. But that's clearly not the case so that we can expect another tough Tour,” said Vingegaard, who still hopes to battle Pogacar for the overall victory. "I've improved since the Dauphiné; I'm sure of that. Whether it's enough, we'll see."