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Emanuel Buchmann: "It's a good step"
Photo: Tim de Waele / Getty Images
No presents:
everything fell apart at the Col de la Lusette.
From the original eight-man breakaway group, two drivers remained at the top: Alexey Lutsenko and birthday boy Neilson Powless.
But Lutsenko did not give the American a present - on the contrary.
He continued to press Watt into the pedals, escaped his competitor and after about 190 kilometers of escape drove alone over the finish line of Mont Aigoual.
There the Kazakh celebrated his first stage win in a Tour de France.
How's Emanuel Buchmann doing?
The German co-favorite had started the tour in bad shape and lost a few seconds on the first mountain stage to the top favorites around Primoz Roglic and Egan Bernal.
But slowly the Bora-hansgrohe classification driver is doing better.
"I'm much more satisfied. I felt relatively good," said Buchmann at the finish of the seventh stage.
This time he arrived at the mountain with the best drivers in the overall classification.
"Every day that I don't lose any time and I'm in the race is a good day. It should get even better," said Buchmann.
He is currently 22 seconds behind overall leader Adam Yates.
The helper:
Buchmann is also confident that his helper Maximilian Schachmann was able to drive by his side this time.
"It was missing the last mountain finish that someone was there. It's a good step," said Buchmann.
Schachmann started the tour with a broken collarbone, but has bitten through in the past few days.
"It was a positive day for me. Initially, my collarbone caused more problems than I had hoped," said Schachmann: "Today showed that things are looking up."
And that he can help Buchmann on the weekend in the Pyrenees.
The evaluation:
Yates will keep the yellow jersey for the time being and will probably wear it to the Pyrenees at the weekend.
There were no changes in the other ratings either.
Read the report on the sixth stage here.
Alaphilippe
eats hard
:
The group of top favorites reached the goal about three minutes behind Lutsenko.
All eyes were on Primoz Roglic, Egan Bernal and Julian Alaphilippe, who had lost the yellow jersey on Wednesday due to a time penalty.
And indeed: the French attacked in the last few meters and arrived on the mountain a second before the pursuers.
He is now 15 seconds behind the man in yellow, Adam Yates.
If Alaphilippe continues like this on the remaining 15 stages, he will take overall victory in Paris.
The
speeder
:
For stage winner Lutsenko, the climbs to the finish on Mont Aigoual were perfect.
"We talked about it in the team bus this morning and we agreed that it was a stage that suits me well," said Lutsenko at the finish.
So good that he was the fastest driver on the Col de la Lusette.
He raced up the 11.7-kilometer ascent with an incline of 7.3 percent at an average speed of 20.8 kilometers per hour.
Try that at home!
The outliers:
The stage started spectacularly in Le Teil - at least when you compare it to the day before.
Because there was no escape group at all.
On Thursday, however, eight riders started cycling with more or less good chances of winning the stage.
The group around Lutsenko came off by more than six minutes on the 191 kilometers of the stage, then the peloton started to catch up with a little more commitment.
However, the three mountain ratings over the last 50 kilometers showed that the fugitives actually had more than just a theoretical chance of winning the stage.
For the first time, a long escape ended successfully on this tour.
Greg van Who?
The best-placed driver in the escape group in the overall classification was Greg van Avermaet, who was about three minutes behind the yellow jersey.
The Olympic champion wanted to win his third Tour stage win, but in the end he wasn't strong enough on the mountain.
So it stays that way: He received the greatest attention on this tour because Matt White, sporting director of rival Mitchelton-Scott, couldn't pronounce Greg van Avermaet's name.
Sprinter day:
Friday looks like a mass
sprint
.
The 168 km long seventh stage from Millau to Lavaur is undulating, but at the end it invites you to the final sprint of the peloton.
An opportunity that the sprinter teams in front of the Pyrenees will probably not miss this weekend.
Icon: The mirror