Cavendish pulls out of Tour de France

Froome, the 2013 and 2015 champion at the Tour, now leads Bauke Mollema by 2:27 overall.

Wednesday’s 17th stage of the Tour sees the riders go 184km from Berne to Finhaut Emosson. “I gave everything. It’s really, really big for me”, said Zakarin, who is back at the top after a horror crash in this year’s Giro d’Italia.

The decisive move was made by Porte, who jumped away from the favorites’ group about 2km from the line, with Froome the only rider able to follow him thanks to a short but brutal acceleration.

Tasmanian Porte, who until a year ago was a team-mate of Froome at Sky, was the big victor as he moved up to sixth and continues to creep up on a podium position. Adam Yates is third, 2:53 off the pace.

Quintana, who initially tried to follow Porte’s attack and then Froome’s chase before dropping off, is still fourth but now 3:27 behind.

“It was very hard today because of the heat”, Froome said.

“After an extremely enjoyable and successful couple of weeks at the Tour de France with Team Dimension Data, it is with great sadness that I took the decision today to leave the race”, Cavendish said in a statement.

A 14-man breakaway, featuring world champion Peter Sagan and his Tinkoff team mate Rafal Majka, the polka dot jersey wearer, took shape after a insane first hour of racing during which the peloton covered 51.8km. Once the pack reached the mountains, Sagan got dropped at the bottom of Col de la Forclaz.

Majka and Pantano, who fought for the stage victory last week in the Jura mountains after a long breakaway, once again jumped out of the pack on the descent and started the final climb with a small lead of 30 seconds. Zakarin joined them before launching his decisive move.

Dennis, 26, who won the opening stage time trial at the Tour past year and wore the race leader’s yellow jersey for a day, was sitting 126th overall at more than two and a half hours behind leader Chris Froome.