The last stage. The last chance for Meyer to get yellow, and simultaneously the last suspense for Stannard whether his dominant TT win will give him the overall as well.
You would think that in the light of the recent results, there would be a massive interest in getting into the break in multiple attacks, but the first serious one gets the nod by the peloton already, and those six riders will hope to repeat yesterday's outcome.
Lindau Ashgarzadeh Bauhaus J. Edmondson Veilleux Soto Pereira
Lindau and Veilleux in there is a nice prospect for a tense KoM fight and means that Earle has only a very slim chance of retaining his jersey one final day with two KoM's along the way. Lindau and Edmondson were in the winning break yesterday and prove impressively that they weren't content with the result, while Bauhaus and obviously Veilleux were already seen out front in this race as well.
The peloton is led by a mixed group of riders, but Fletcher does safe energies for later to finally time a chase right again.
The first KoM sprint gives us a huge surprise:
The Evonik manager did question Bauhaus' behaviour in his break recently and demanded to go for intermediates, and it seems like that had a great effect as Bauhaus outsprints the way better puncheurs Veilleux and Soto Pereira.
Lindau suprisingly does not get any points as fourth and has to hope for Veilleux doing exactly that the next time while taking full points himself, while the Canadian only needs one more point to tie with Earle.
KoM 1: Bauhaus Veilleux Soto Pereira
It is a short stage today, so the chase has to be started rather quickly as well. There are 68 kilometres left to ride and the gap is at 3'40" when the speed is slowly increased by TomTom and Alpina.
In contrary to yesterday, this does mean that we have a temporary leader change as Bauhaus is only 2'29" behind Stannard.
And he even does cut that a bit down as well at the intermediate sprint which he wins ahead of Ashgarzadeh and Lindau.
Int 1: Bauhaus Ashgarzadeh Lindau
Now for one of the more anticipated moments today, Veilleux doesn't want to make the mistake of getting caught out and accelerates a kilometre from the mountaintop.
And indeed he gets the full points and will win the KoM competition unless an abandon. Earle will certainly be disappointed, but he has a stage win at least and honestly, he's to blame first and foremost to not try his luck in another breakaway.
KoM 2: Veilleux Bauhaus Lindau
About two minutes later, the bunch takes the descent down from that KoM point with ASDA now helping Alpina in getting this back together.
Still Fletcher shows no intention of taking control, but the wind did speed up quite a lot recently and so there's some speculation they could try to force echelons later.
But it doesn't even require their help to strech the group a lot on the flat afterwards, it looks like we might lose riders again today!
We see some familiar names in a dropped group, one has to ask whether they beg for it to happen with what obviously has to be bad positioning skills.
Teruel Manarelli Awang Westling Fonseca
won't see the tête de la course again today.
Back to the break which - sadly rather unsurpisingly - managed to extend their gap despite of the echelons behind and goes into the last 10k with about 1'10".
There is no visible attack, but Veilleux, Soto Pereira and Edmondson simply ride away from the rest here.
There is a gap of 50 seconds to the peloton, so there has to be an organised sprint preparation to give Meyer the chance for the GC and all remaining sprinters finally a chance for a stage win.
But what we see when switching cameras is a rather strange relay train of Elijzen, Stannard, Meyer and Schär while there's hardly anyone behind them not struggling to keep up!
Exhaustion probably plays a role as well when Lindgren (9th in the GC) goes down in only a slight bend.
He takes his GC neighbour Bell (10th) with him as well as Henao who suffers from the second crash this race.
Of course their GC chances are gone now, and Bell doesn't even continue riding.
We now reach sprinting distance for the front three where Soto Pereira leads Edmondson and Veilleux.
The Canadian will take the KoM jersey, can he get a stage win with it as well? It looks promising as neither the dropped BotD members nor the peloton look like gaining enough time on them here.
We do get a small sprint prep in the bunch where Lebris leads out Vingerling while Meyer is well-positioned in the middle together with Polidova while Forero is the only other sprinter visible on the lower left.
But - God only knows why - Lebris doesn't want to face this task and stops riding after closing the gap down to 35 seconds. Noone else has any plan how to keep the speed up or doesn't want to spend that energy in the case of the sprinters present, so there probably won't be a sprint for the win from these riders again.
Soto Pereira meanwhile starts the sprint with Edmondson leaving a slight gap for now? Is he done and the weakest sprinter of the group could head for an upset?
It doesn't seem that way though as Edmondson doesn't even have to sprint to keep the wheel under the kite, and just as they go through there, both him and Veilleux finally start their bids for glory.
There is a small glimpse of what could've been as there are two trains in the peloton now.
Murray
Vingerling
Groenewegen
Lemoine
Renshaw
Arango
Forero
Matthews
But the final win will be decided between Edmondson and Veilleux as both overtake Soto Pereira from either side.
On the line, Edmondson keeps the stronger sprinter off and wins the stage. Veilleux has to settle for second ahead of Soto Pereira.
Bauhaus leads the small dropped group in, still ahead of the sprinters though.
They come in some seconds behind with Groenewegen winning that battle against Vingerling and Meyer who has to blame his team mates for only leaving New Zealand with a stage win, the green jersey and 2nd in the GC.
The happiest person today will be Ian Stannard though.
Going to CT proves to be the right move for him in the first race already, he had to hope for breaks taking bonus seconds from Meyer and exactly that happened very frequently.
