Chris Froome has taken over the lead of the 103rd Tour De France when he broke away to take the win on stage eight and become the fifth British winner of a stage in this year's race.
Stage eight was a cruel one in the nice day in the Pyrenees with the Tourmalet to climb and the first over getting the Souvenir Jacques Gaddet.
At the start of this 184km stage from Pau to Bagnères-de-Luchon, with Greg Van Avermaet still leading the race, Geraint Thomas and Jan Bakelandts crashed in the neutral zone but were able to continue on stage which saw a couple of early attacks snuffed out.
With twenty six kilometres gone, Dimension Data's Berni Eisel and Serge Pauwels attacked but were brought back and twenty kilometres later, a new break of ten riders tried to get away.
Then thirteen riders in Wout Poels (Sky), Jesus Herrada (Movistar), Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana), Mikaël Chérel (AG2R-La Mondiale), Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo), Stef Clement (IAM), Dylan van Baarle (Cannondale-Drapac), Tom Dumoulin (Giant), Paul Voss (Bora), Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha), Romain Sicard (Direct Energie), Dani Navarro (Cofidis) and Michael Matthews (Orica-BikeExchange), who won the sprint at Esquièze-Sère, tried to get away with only Majka and Pinot able to stay clear on the 19km climb up the col du Tourmalet with Tony Martin trying to bridge across.
The German joined them with six kilometres of the climb to go, getting two minutes ahead of a group which contained Chris Froome.
Thibaut Pinot was first over the 2,115m Tourmalet past massive crowds and took the 25 points on offer before Team Sky worked to bring the gap down on the descent to 1.30 with just over 52kms to go.
Adam Yates was now the virtual leader on the road with Greg Van Avermaet some seven kilometres down.
Onto the Col de Val Louron-Azet and Pinot, Majka and Martin were caught, only for Majka to pop out and take the points as Katusha's Michael Morkov became the first rider to abandon the race.
Wilco Kelderman crashed on a hairpin bend but was ok to carry on and the 196 other riders in taking on the Category One Col de Peyresourde.
Riders started to be dropped and then Team Sky's Chris Froome attacked and took the climb before tucking himself in on the descent in a bid to get more aerodynamic and put more time into the chasing group of Valverde, Quintana, Aru, Porte, Van Garderen, Bardet, Kreuziger, Dan Martin, Yates, Mollema, Meintjes, Zakarin.and the likes of Contador who were now a minute behind.
Froome was starting to ride himself into yellow and was chucking himself round corners in a bid to stay out front and it worked as the twice winner of the race, took the victory in a time of 4:57:33 with Ireland's Dan Martin of Etixx - Quick-Step second, some thirteen seconds later, followed by Joaquim Rodriguez of Team Katusha, Romain Bardet of AG2R La Mondiale and Roman Kreuziger of Tinkoff.
British rider Adam Yates was seventh to keep himself as the best young rider and said: "I’m ok. I had pretty bad luck yesterday, a few stitches, cuts and bruises but I got lucky. Today was tough but I got through ok. I didn’t really know what was going on, I was just hanging on for grim death. It was a tough day from the start so I’m happy to just get through. We’ll see how it goes but hopefully I can keep the white jersey. It’s hard to stay if I’ll hold onto it for the duration, I came here for stages not GC, but we’ll see what happens next couple of weeks."