Stage 7

The road

At the start

The race turned upside down

Javalambre rewrote everything: Sepp Kuss won alone out of a thirty-five-man breakaway and Lenny Martinez took the red jersey, with Kuss second at eight seconds and Marc Soler third at 51. Evenepoel, Vingegaard and Roglič all shipped minutes and not one of them is in the top eight now. Today is a long, mostly downhill 186 kilometres from Utiel to Oliva, and it should end in a sprint.

How it was won

1. 111 km to go

   First pile-up

   A crash inside 11km to go catches Sepp Kuss, but the American backpedals clear and stays upright.

2. 25 km to go

   Carnage at 5km

   A high-speed pile-up takes down as many as fifteen riders; Thymen Arensman is left on the tarmac awaiting medics and Groves loses his lead-out.

3. 3At the line

   Oliva

   From the depleted, chaotic bunch Geoffrey Soupe surprises the whole field — and himself — with a late acceleration in the final 400 metres.

The result