Lotto Soudal’s Tomasz Marczynski is on fire. The Polish debutant jumped away from his remaining breakaway companions on the final climb, and soloed in to add stage 12 to the stage 6 victory he claimed last week. Has anyone checked the profile for stage 18? Tomasz is on a ‘six’ roll! Behind him, what looked odds on to be a comfortable day for the GC riders as the break played for the win, suddenly lit up as Alberto Contador (Trek-Segafredo) – who else?- also attacked on the final climb. Sky looked like they had things under control until Chris Froome crashed twice on the descent causing him to lose contact with the GC favourites who couldn’t quite decide if they should wait or chase a rampant Contador. At the end of the day Froome lost time on a hat-full of rivals. He holds onto his red Jersey but his advantage over Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) dips below a minute. Contador claws back 42secs and now lies one minute off the podium.
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