Tour de France Stage 6: Alexey Lutsenko wins from break, Adam Yates keeps yellow (+ video highlights and reaction)

Astana's Alexey Lutsenko has won Stage 6 of the Tour de France at Mont Aiguoal this afternoon, the Kazakh national champion attacking his breakaway companions on the day's final climb to take a solo win.

On a day when the overall contenders were content to let the escapees go, Adam Yates of Mitchelton-Scott, 10th today, came over the line in the GC group a little under three minutes later and keeps the yellow jersey.

The break formed quickly following the start of the 191km stage from Le Teil, with Lutsenko joined by Sunweb’s Nicolas Roche, Olympic champion Greg van Avermaet of CCC, EF Pro Cycling’s Neilson Powless – celebrating his 24th birthday – NTT’s Edvald Boasson Hagen, Daniel Oss of Bora-Hangrohe, Deceuninck-Quick Step’s Rémi Cavagna and the Cofidis rider, Jesus Herrada.

The break enjoyed a maximum advantage over the peloton of six and a half minutes, but that had been cut to a little under three minutes by the time they approached the day’s principal challenge, the Col de la Lusette, crested 15km from the finish.

Birthday boy Powless – he turned 24 today – attacked, with Roche, Van Avermaet and Lutsenko getting across to him, while behind Ineos Grenadiers were controlling the pace at the front of the main group but in no rush to hunt down the escapees.

Two riders did attack from the GC group, however – Fabio Aru of UAE Team Emirates, who faded and finished just behind the main group, and Jesus Herrada of Cofidis, who would finish second.

Lutsenko, who had attacked around 4km from the summit, was 23 seconds clear of the Spaniard at the top and the 27 year old would not be caught as he rode away from Herrada, crossing the line 55 seconds before him, with Van Avermaet outsprinting Powless to take third, 1 minute 20 seconds further back.

Reaction

Stage winner Alexey Lutsenko

Coming to the Tour de France I had a goal to fight for a stage win. The Tour de France was one of the biggest goals of this season. I was dreaming about this victory for a long time and now my dream came true!

Indeed, I was aiming this stage and in previous days after doing my job for Miguel Angel I was dropping from the group, on purpose losing some time in the general classification, hoping that the GC favorites won’t follow me in a decisive moment. Today, before the stage we discussed our tactics for this day, and with sports directors and our general manager Alexandr Vinokurov we decided that I would try to go in a break since it could have a chance to go until the finish.

I felt quite good all day and my legs worked pretty well. It took some time for our group to break away from the peloton, but finally, we succeed. It was a long and hot day, but I was guided really nice through the stage by Alexandr Vinokurov, who was in the car behind me. On the last climb I tried to stay calm and to keep on my own rhythm. And on the hardest part I made my attack.

I am so happy with this win, it is a big achievement for me and for our team! Also, it is a great feeling to win in the jersey of the national champion of Kazakhstan!

Overall leader Simon Yates

It was nice [the first day in yellow], I think we controlled quite well, it was a strong breakaway and there were a lot of guys that really wanted to go in there today. It was pretty much flat all the way into the climbs, so it was quite hard to control, but I think we did a good job and in the end I still had Mikel and Esteban in the final, so all in all, a good day.

I think just the way the break already had the gap and all the bonuses were already taken, there wasn’t really much to gain from anybody attacking. Also, the final climb wasn’t super steep, so it takes a lot of effort to get a few seconds, so everyone just kept their energy and saved it for a later day.

Like I said yesterday, it was a strange situation, but I think we rode well today and hopefully we did the jersey proud. I still want to win a stage, that’s what we came here to do, but it’s pretty hard to throw away time when you’re in the lead, so I think for now we’ll just play it day-by-day and see what happens.

Tomorrow’s a sprint stage and then we’ve got two really hard stages. These two stages I actually know quite a lot of the climbs, so it’s going to be really tough, but like I said before, we’ve got a super strong team here, not just for the flats but for the climbing stages, so I’m looking forward to it.