Richie Porte (Team Sky) is a very important helper for his teammate, yellow jersey Chris Froome. And many of the attacks by Alberto Contador and Roman Kreuziger (Team Saxo-Tinkoff) seemed to have the goal of getting rid of Porte.

Eventually the Saxo-Tinkoff duo succeeded, and Contador put pressure on Froome during the descent. But a steering error by the Spaniard meant that he and Froome lost contact to the group they were in and were back with Porte. The Tasmanian buried himself to move his captain back up to the main favourites’ group, and at the finish Froome and Contador were back with Quintana, Mollema & co.

Richie Porte revealed after the stage that Team Sky had expected attacks on the Col de Manse: “It made sense for them to attack there,” he said to EuroSport. “It was hard early in the stage, and we expected that they would try something on the climb and on the descent. I mean, they have to try. Hats off to them, I think they were good today, and the Tour is not over yet if they can ride so aggressively.”

“I’m ready for the Alps. It’s always a little bit tricky on the day after the rest day, but to be honest, it wasn’t anything we didn’t expect. It’s nice to be able to cover these moves for Chris, just to make it a little bit easier on him.”

Porte also said that he wouldn’t go all out in tomorrow’s 32 km ITT, but save himself in order to help Froome in the next days: “It’s almost a day off for me tomorrow. It’s not an easy time trial, but for me it’s the main goal is to be there for Chris in the last three days in the mountains.”