After little to nothing happened in previous sprint stages, it was a little different today. Right from the start in Agen there was action in the peloton. A group of more than twenty riders chose to attack, but because the speed of the peloton was maintained, the escape attempt came to nothing. 

Due to the wind, some teams, with Team Visma | Lease a Bike in the lead, decided to pull away. This tore the peloton into pieces, with the Team Visma | Lease a Bike troops proving to be well on their toes. 

Despite several breakaway attempts, another sprint came, this time from a reduced peloton. Van Aert was excellently positioned in the wheel of teammate Christophe Laporte, who dropped his teammate a few hundred meters before the finish line. Van Aert anticipated Philipsen's sprint, came very close, but eventually had to settle for second place. 

"This was a great day," Van Aert declared afterwards. "It was plenty of racing all day. At the end I was perfectly in Christophe's wheel. He dropped me off excellently. Maybe I was even a little too far in front, because Jasper could start his sprint from my wheel. It's a shame that I missed out on another stage win, but there was simply someone better today."

The peloton heads into the Pyrenees tomorrow. Vingegaard is surely looking forward to that. "We are approaching terrain that suits me well. Today was a good day for us. We all got to the finish safely and didn't lose any time. The important thing now is to recover and be at the start tomorrow as good as possible. The next two stages are going to be tough. We'll see what we can do as a team in the mountains."