2021 Tour de France Stage 6 Results & Recap
Stage 6 of the 2021 Tour de France is in the books. The final results and standings are below, followed by our recap of how the race unfolded.
Race Recap
Cav wins two in a row
An unbelievable Mark Cavendish won his second Tour de France stage at this year's edition, making it his 32nd total victory at the Grand Boucle. The Manx Missle won ahead of Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin Fenix) and Nacer Bouhanni (Team Arkea Samsic) after a flat and fast 160km stage.
"That was nice. It’s been 10 years since I last won here, and it’s pretty special to do it again. I won today in pretty similar fashion to what I did years ago, and it was indeed very helpful to know the home straight. We spoke at the team meeting about how there were so many fast speed trains, concluding it was going to be hard to lead out the sprint. Alpecin-Fenix was indeed the strongest sprint train today. On the final kilometre, Michael [Morkov] let me open the right side of the road so I could get on their wheel. The green jersey is not a clear objective. It has changed so much since I won it, with the intermediate sprints awarding so many points, which might play in my favour. Eddy Merckx’s stage wins record? Don’t even say the name! [laughs] I’m not thinking of anything. I just want to win stages on this Tour de France. If I’m good enough to win 50 stages more, nice. If this is my last one, so be it."
Mathieu Van Der Poel is still in yellow by eight seconds ahead of Tadej Pogacar.
"The stage was ok," van der Poel said. "It was a very hard start because of the powerful break that tried to forge, but since we caught it back the pace was ok until the finish line. It was a good day for us at Alpecin-Fenix. I did what I could on the lead out. It was unfortunate that my teammates lost my wheel on the last right-turn. I had to wait for them, but luckily we managed to build the train back and launch the sprint in good fashion. And then… well, Cav is the fastest guy out there at the moment. It is incredible. He was not bound to ride - yet he comes and wins two stages. I guess he is back in business! Let’s see what happens tomorrow. Some guys will race thinking of the overall classification, so it won’t be easy to keep the yellow jersey."
Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) is in the white jersey, and second on GC, just waiting in the wings for what's to come.
"Today was a pretty fast, hard stage. The pace was very high at the beginning and I wasn’t really comfortable on the bike, even we following wheels. This was a good day for me. It makes a difference to have a full team devoted to my GC options. Flat stages are way easier than they were before. After the great victory I got yesterday, I am focusing on enjoying the rest of the Tour de France. I’m happy to be wearing the white jersey."
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