At the same time, they had to use the descent to close the gap on the five-man breakaway, which had pulled ahead by nearly four and a half minutes.
As a team favored to win the general classification, they couldn't possibly let a breakaway get away on a summit finish stage like this, thereby causing Roglič to miss his chance at a stage victory.
With Denz controlling the pace, the peloton's downhill speed far exceeded that of the breakaway riders. By the bottom of the slope at the 115 km mark, the gap between the main group and the breakaway had shrunk to only about three minutes.
On the long descent, they had clawed back a full minute and a half.
At this moment, besides the pace-setting Denz, there was only one Decathlon rider at the front of the peloton.
This guy wasn't there to take a turn in the rotation; he'd been specifically placed at the front by his team to relay real-time data from the peloton to his teammate in the breakaway, Amiel.
