Egan Bernal dug deep to finish 15th on stage 10 following a day of heavy climbing at the Tour de France.
With a packed Bastille Day crowd lining the route, Netcompany INEOS once again looked to be aggressive and place riders up the road.
Thymen Arensman and Kevin Vauquelin forced their way into an earlier break featuring 31 riders. Yet with a high pace from the peloton behind, the move was hauled back, group by group as the stage wore on.
Bernal dug deep to remain amongst a reduced GC group on the penultimate climb of the Col de Pertus, before setting his own tempo following the attack of race leader Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates - XRG).
Pogacar accelerated and went clear with 16km to go, crossing the line 32 seconds ahead of Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull - Bora - Hansgrohe) to extend his lead.
Bernal came home 15th into Le Lioran and now sits in 11th place overall on the general classification.
In earlier breakaway attempts, Josh Tarling, Michal Kwiatkowski, Tobias Foss and Filippo Ganna were all part of moves during a rapid opening phase.
Reaction
Egan Bernal - "It was a super hard stage. At the beginning everyone wanted to go in the break and the guys who were trying to go obviously had super legs, as it was super hard to attack. The race was super fast and UAE was controlling and didn't let the break take more than one and a half minutes. On this type of parcours you need to always be on the pedals, even in the descents, so you don't recover.
"I was feeling good until Pogi attacked. I was there and managing my effort, then when he went I just tried to do this acceleration - but I wasn't able to. I was kind of in the limbo between the first group and the others."