Tour de France leader Geraint Thomas is expecting attacks from the off in tomorrow's stage 17 after the Team Sky rider enjoyed another day in the yellow jersey.
Thomas crossed the line on Tuesday’s stage 16 with the peloton and retained his one minute and 39 second advantage over team-mate and fellow Brit Chris Froome.
Tuesday saw Le Tour reach the Pyrenees for the first time but Team Sky were able to control the peloton and retain their advantage at the top of the GC classification.
Britain’s Adam Yates finished third after a crash whilst leading on the final descent as Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe took the stage victory.
All eyes now turn to the 65km stage 17 which includes a first-ever grid start before two category one climbs and a summit finish with Thomas ready for the challenge.
He said: “It’s going to be a crazy day, we can expect attacks from the very start but whoever does go early it’s going to be a gutsy ride because that final climb is arguably the toughest of the tour.
“To go early is going to be a big day out, it’s short but you’ll be riding threshold pretty much for two hours so it’ll be interesting.
“It wasn’t easy, it may have looked that way, but it was a good day. (Jakob) Fuglsang and (Ilnur) Zakarin had a go midway through but Wout (Poels) brought them back really well.
“Obviously (Mikel) Landa went which was tough but we had the legs to respond and the descent was good – we were expecting a lot worse to be honest, so it was a good day.”
An eventful day saw the race paused after just 29km after a protest with a large group breaking away from the peloton at the restart.
Amongst them was Yates who attacked on the final climb with 13km to go and was first over the summit as Alaphilippe attempted to close the gap.
The Frenchman, who extended his advantage in the King of the Mountains classification, overtook Yates after the Briton’s crash but he was able to recover and finish the stage in third.
“I've taken more risks on more technical descents before and never had any problems, but you never know what is coming around these corners,” said Yates.
“I've no bad injuries, just bad morale - it's pretty devastating to come that close to winning a stage of the Tour and not win.”
Sportsbeat 2018