With Barré in the leader’s jersey, Team Visma | Lease a Bike remained attentive in the peloton throughout the day. The team kept Barré out of trouble during the almost 200-kilometre stage towards Offenbach an der Queich, while the sprint teams set the pace.

The early breakaway was caught by the peloton in time, setting up a sprint for the victory in the final kilometre. Danny van Poppel proved to be the fastest. Barré crossed the finish line safely alongside his teammates. Attention now turns to the final weekend, with two challenging stages still to come.

“The most important thing today was to get safely to the finish, and we achieved that,” says sports director Gaëtan Pons. “Ideally, we would have liked the breakaway riders to take the bonus seconds, but unfortunately UAE Team Emirates XRG decided to go for it in support of Del Toro. Fortunately, it doesn’t make much difference, as Louis is still the leader.”

Tomorrow, the queen stage of the five-day race awaits, and the Luxembourg sports director is looking ahead to it with confidence. “Louis is in very good shape, and with Bart (Lemmen), we still have another card to play in the general classification. Tomorrow, we want to race aggressively again, just as we did in the first stage, and compete for the victory.”