France’s New Valentine First Up Mont Ventoux on Stage 16

Valentin Paret-Peintre won the Stage 16 summit finish at Mont Ventoux from the breakaway, beating Ben Healy in an uphill sprint.

Santiago Buitrago came in third.

Pogacar resisted Vingegaard’s attacks, and they crossed the line fifth and sixth respectively, with a time gap of 2s.

The Breakaway

There was a large breakaway earlier in the day.

By the bottom of Mont Ventoux, a leading group of four had distanced the others – Thymen Arensman, Julian Alaphilippe, Simon Velasco and Enric Mas.

Velasco dropped back, and Enric Mas attacked the other two and got a lead of over a minute.

Coming from behind, Ben Healy, Santiago Buitrago and Valentin Paret-Peintre caught Arensman and Alaphilippe.

Healy and Paret-Peintre then hunted down Enric Mas, catching him with 4km left. They proceeded to attack each other, but neither could lose his rival.

In the final kilometre Buitrago and Ilan van Wilder came back to the front of the race. Van Wilder did a lead-out for his Soudal teammate VPP – and Valentin took advantage of it, pipping Healy to the line.

The GC Battle

In the GC, Jonas Vingegaard attacked with around 8km to go; Pogacar went with the Dane. Tiesj Benoot, dropping back from the break, did a turn for his Visma team leader before Vingegaard attacked again.

Next to drop back and help Vingegaard was Victor Campenaerts; once the Belgian was done, Vingegaard launched again but still could not shake Pogacar.

Pogacar attacked Vingegaard with 1.3km, but Vingegaard was able to respond.

Oscar Onley lost 36s to Florian Lipowitz.

MVDP

Mathieu van der Poel dropped out of the race on the rest day yesterday, suffering from pneumonia.

Video Highlights

These are video highlights of Stage 16.