Nine riders in the lead
198 riders started stage 5 of the 103rd Tour de France. Since 2005, it didn't happen that no abandon was recorded in the first four stages. After several unsuccessful skirmishes and the passing of the côte de Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, Raymond Poulidor's hometown where Jasper Stuyven scored one more point in the King of the Mountains classification he already led, nine riders managed to go clear at km 21: Andriy Grivko (Astana), Rafal Majka (Tinkoff), Cyril Gautier (AG2R-La Mondiale), Greg van Avermaet (BMC), Serge Pauwels (Dimension Data), Bartosz Huzarski (Bora-Argon 18), Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal), Romain Sicard (Direct Energie) and Florian Vachon (Fortuneo-Vital Concept). The front group split at km 85 after a few arguments between the riders. Three of them rode away: Grivko, Van Avermaet and De Gendt.
Sagan and Nibali dropped at Pas de Peyrol
At half way, the leading trio had an advantage of 1.15 over their six former breakaway companions and 9.50 over the peloton led by Team Sky. The difference grew to 15.10 with 73km to go. From 60km to go (14.50) to 50km to go (13.50), the pack only recovered one minute. With 35km remaining, Movistar took the command while the deficit was 11 minutes. Grivko couldn't hold the pace of Van Avermaet and De Gendt while climbing to Pas de Peyrol with 33km to go. Several big names got dropped from the peloton after Peter Sagan said goodbye to the yellow jersey: Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida), Fränk Schleck (Trek-Segafredo), Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha), Eduardo Sepulveda (Fortuneo-Vital Concept)…
Van Avermaet soloes to victory
Van Avermaet attacked De Gendt to go solo in the ascent to the col du Perthus (cat. 3) with 17km to go. It was a 1-2 for Belgium, the first since stage 2 of the 2007 Tour de France when Gert Steegmans won in Gent ahead of Tom Boonen, as De Gendt managed to stay ahead of the group of the favourites, 2.35 behind his compatriot. This was only the second time the Tour de France had a stage finish at Le Lioran so Van Avermaet made it a 100% for Belgium in the ski resort of the Cantal province where Romain Bardet hails from. The Frenchman accelerated in the last climb. His action was too strong for Alberto Contador who lost 26 seconds while the remaining GC contenders crossed the line with the same time. Van Avermaet has 5.11 lead over Julian Alaphilippe in the overall ranking.
