Pauwels flies the flag for SA's TDF in 5th stage

Le Lioran - Belgium’s Serge Pauwels was the best of African Team Dimension Data (TDD) in Wednesday’s fifth stage of the Tour de France.

The stage was a 216-kilometre ride between Limoges and Le Lioran with riders having to deal with just over 2000m of ascent

Pauwels’ Belgian teammate Greg van Avermaet (BMC Racing) won the stage of the Tour de France and also moved into the overall race lead. Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal) finished in second and Rafal Majka (Tinkoff) rounded out the stage podium.

Riders had to deal with just over 2000m of ascent and while 2000m climbing is not a huge amount by Tour de France standards, the majority of the climbing was squashed into the final 50km of the stage.

According to SASCOC, Team Dimension Data knew the importance of being in the break and so Eritrea’s Daniel Teklehaimanot and Pauwels were both very attentive at the stage start. Pauwels eventually made the move of the day with eight other riders.

The peloton let the group go to a six-minute advantage, before some in-fighting began among the leaders. Van Avermaet, De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal) and Andrey Grivko (Astana) attacked and Pauwels tried to cross over to the trio alone. Pauwels got to within 12 seconds but couldn’t close the gap.

Pauwels was hoping to claim a top 10 stage result, but a crash on the penultimate descent saw him being caught with 3km to go and he eventually finished in 26th position.

All the other African Team riders completed the 216km stage with no real issues.

Pauwel’s thoughts: "Today I made the main break of the day. It was a difficult day, the heat made it really quite tough and I was suffering from it for a large part of the day and didn’t really feel all that good. I tried my best today but in the end, the GC guys caught me."

Best of the South African riders were Rio Olympics bound Louis Meintjes (Lampre – Merida) finished 23 and fellow Olympian Daryl Impey at 71 on Thursday. The only other South African in the Tour, Reinhardt Janse van Rensburg whon finished 144th on the day.

Thursday’s sixth stage is a 187km ride from Arpajon-sur-Cère to Montauban, with a fair deal of hills and could suit a lengthy breakaway bid.