Tour de France Stage Six betting preview, tip & TV details

ITV4/Eurosport, 12.25pm Thursday

Perennial green jersey winner Peter Sagan consolidated his position in the battle for the points jersey with victory in Wednesday's Tour de France stage into Colmar. It was the Slovak's first stage victory of this year's Tour but his 12th in total.

The stage panned out as expected with a four-man breakaway limited to just a couple of minutes and finally reeled in by the sprinters' team on the final climb. Sagan positioned himself perfectly in the closing stages and comfortably held off Wout Van Aert and Mario Trentin. He leads the points classification by 47 points from Michael Matthews.

Julian Alaphilippe had no difficulty in holding on to his overall lead, though Van Aert's six-second time bonus for finishing second on the stage means his advantage is down to 14 seconds.

This is the first real test for the GC contenders as the race moves into the high mountains. An ultra tough stage from Mulhouse to La Planche Des Belles Filles features seven categorised climbs including a summit finish.

It provides an opportunity for anyone with aspirations about winning the polka-dot jersey to set out their stall and it will be interesting to see what Alaphilippe decides to do.

Last year, he attacked early on this type of stage as he dominated the King of the Mountains competition but it is hard to see teams letting him do the same this year given he is in yellow.

The type of riders who may well see this as an ideal opportunity are Ben King of Dimension Data and Thomas De Ghent of Lotto Soudal, who have already conveniently lost plenty of time. However, it is rare for the opening mountain-top finish to go to a non-GC rider, so expect the big guns to fight out the finish.

This is the fourth time a stage has finished on the slopes of La Planche Des Belles Filles and the previous three winners were all contenders for the yellow jersey - Chris Froome in 2012, Vincenzo Nibali in 2014 and Fabio Aru two years ago.

Since then, however, an extra kilometre of ascent has been added from where the route previously ended. The new finish follows a forest road averaging an incline of almost 10 per cent, with one section twice as steep. As a consequence, the gaps between the favourites could be far more significant than those we've seen in the past.

The steepness of the finish is rare in the Tour De France and evokes memories of the summit finish at Peyragudes in 2017 when Chris Froome struggled.

That stage went to Romain Bardet and the Frenchman looks the man to back. The AG2R leader lost more ground in the team time trial than most of the leading contenders, so rivals may be more than happy to let him take back a few seconds, whereas someone like Egan Bernal wouldn't be given that luxury.

Bardet has won a stage on three of the last four Tours, so he knows how to get the job done.

Recommendation
R Bardet
1pt each-way 18-1 Betway

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