Jeremy Whittle reports on stage nine:

Ok, that’s it from me. Jeremy Whittle’s report from Ussel will be with you soon. Until next time.

Tom Pidcock has been speaking to TNT about the issues he had in the final 30km:

“My shifter stopped working and I couldn’t change gear and I realised I could only change at the top, but then in the sprint I was focusing so much on the sprint, I was on the drops and then that bottom wasn’t working so I started sprinting and couldn’t change gear, then I had to go on my hoods. My bike was perfect the whole race and then when the win is there, it doesn’t work. I didn’t fix it with the kick, that didn’t do anything.

“Matheiu is a difficult one to beat in those situations, so it would have been difficult anyway. I’m happy for a good day racing and it’s a nice way to go into the rest day.

“I was feeling pretty good. I came across last to the breakaway, felt pretty good all day. It would have been nice if someone as fast as Mathieu was not there but ah well.”

Van der Poel has been speaking to TNT: “It was a super hard day, the start of the Tour was not super great for our team, but I think like always we stayed calm. We have a really nice group here and kept believing that it will turn around, maybe not today but second or third week, but it’s really nice to go to the first rest day with a first win.

“[The heat] was for sure better than the first few days. I was struggling and finding it difficult to recover, even from the easier [stages]. The past few days I’ve felt a bit better and today I finally had some legs to go for it.

“I was not so sure [about the sprint], I spent a lot of energy trying to keep the break alive with all the pressure from the bunch. The roads are horrible, head winds and we fought for it and I’m happy to finish it off.”

That was Van der Poel’s third stage win at the Tour de France, very impressive performance from the Dutchman. It will be interesting to hear what Pidcock says about the mechanical issue.

Behind the leaders, it was Filippo Ganna who nabbed fifth behind Baudin.

500m to go They’re all following Van der Poel. Can he go from the front?

1km to go No moves yet as the gap gets to 25 secs.

2km to go When does these four start looking around? Baudin can’t beat Pidcock or Van der Poel in a sprint, who knows what Johannessen has left in the tank.

4km to go The gap is down to 40 seconds but the leaders get back in formation and pull away again.

6km to go Lidl-Trek are working away on the front but surely this is gone for them now? They’ve squandered this stage through indecision.

8km to go The leaders have 45secs on the peloton. It will be one from these four and Pidcock looking comfortable.

11km to go The leaders are on an uncategorised climb before the run into Ussel, they’re taking regular turns on the front to keep this gap out at 70km/h.

16km to go Lidl-Trek are working on the front of the peloton to try and get Pedersen into this finish, but they’re running out of road. The acceleration from Van der Poel knocked the team carrying the green jersey off their stride. The four leaders have 56 seconds.

19km to go After a well-timed advertising break on TNT we missed what happened with Pidcock live but the replays show him kicking his rear derailleur. That appears to have worked and he’s back in with Van der Poel, Johannessen and Baudin.

22km to go Pidcock has a mechanical issue and is losing touch. Disaster for the Briton, just when he’d got in the perfect position for a battle with Van der Poel to go for a stage win.

23km to go Simmons and Gee, the two Lidl-Trek riders in the break, are struggling. This is changing the arithmetic for Pedersen in the chase group.

24km to go Van der Poel has gone, Johannessen has gone with him and Pidcock is in pursuit.

26km to go This is falling apart for the breakaway. Pidcock and Van der Poel are getting frustrated as the others aren’t working. Now they hit the climb…

29km to go Van der Poel has little burst off the front of the lead group, I think he was just seeing who might come with him and it was Pidcock who responded. Those kind of games cost time and the gap back to the peloton is now less than a minute.

Day of the Jackal fans keep coming. “I’m just back from a St Malo - Nice (and beyond) solo ride,” Writes Alex. “And in Nice passed the hotel the Jackal popped in to telephone his contact in Paris, to learn the police knew about the mission. Also, fans of the film will be pleased to hear the old France-Italy border crossing building where his bag is searched, along with a dozen similarly blonde tall men, is still there!

32km to go The slope on Mont Bessou hits 7.3% for nearly a kilometre and the leaders are working their way up towards it now. Once they’re over that climb then I expect the temporary truce to end and the likes of Pidcock will light the fuse.

35km to go Netcompany-Ineos are working on the front of the peloton, apparantly trying to boost Egan Bernal’s GC place. Bernal is 11th on GC and Pidcock, who is up road, is 38 seconds behind him in 15th.

41km to go The gap is now nearly 80 secs. It looks like UAE are stepping off the effort. That’s good news for the eight riders up front, who are working well together. It’s about 15km until they reach the final categorised climb and after that there is a little kick up on the run into the finish.

49km to go The gap has stabilised at around a minute as we roll towards the final categorised climb on Mont Bessou in about 25km.

56km to go Pidcock takes the mountains points. If he wants to win the break has to work together to pull away again.

57km to go UAE are really pushing with the peloton on the Côte de la Croix du Pey, a category three climb that hits 6%, they’re keeping their options open because it’s very unlikely they put much time into the other GC contenders. Is this about punishment?

59km to go UAE are shrinking the gap to the breakaway, it’s now less than a minute, but why? Is Pogacar planning an assault? It’s aggressive but his team’s pace is also bringing Pedersen back into it.

Correspondence! “I have no idea who will win this,” writes Gavin Dunn, “but a propos of not much, Ussel (county town of Correze, apparently) features in The Day of the Jackal (the book). The Jackal stops there in his resprayed Alfa Romeo to eat toast and eggs in a late night cafe, on the way to his lover’s chateaux where he planned to lie low. The cafe was in the Place de la Gare. You don’t get that on TNT.”

Lovely stuff. As ever, send me your thoughts via the link at the top of the page.

69km to go Mads Pedersen appears to have latched back on to the peloton, with two Lidl-Trek colleagues up the road he might not be as out of it as I previously assumed.

74km to go Alex Baudin (EF-Education-EasyPost), Pablo Castrillo (Movistar) and Lennert van Eetvelt (Lotto Intermarche) are the riders I’m yet to namecheck in the breakaway. Van der Poel has just done a big turn on the front to grow the gap to 1min 25secs. They’ll need more than that.

81km to go Johannessen and Simmons are set to be joined by Pidcock, Gee, Van der Poel, plus a few others. The winner comes out of this group now, I think.

82km to go Mads Pedersen is out of the back of the peloton.

83km to go Just as I ask myself, what is going on with Pidcock and co? The camera cuts to him leading a trio going after Simmons and Johannessen.

88km to go Simmons and Johannessen have made a move to leave behind that larger breakaway group and pulled out 20 seconds. I’m not sure that’s great racing from the break, why work so hard to establish a platform and then let two up the effort to go off? It says to me they had more to give.

90km to go Pidcock has made it and the number in the break is now up to 16 riders. They should be able to get away now, if UAE let them, of course.

91km to go Pidcock is trying to go across now. The peloton is letting him have at it.

94km to go Dare I write that 13 riders have 20 seconds? UAE are pulling on the front of the main bunch but there is some talent in this mini-break, inlcuding Quinn Simmons, Derek Gee and Mathieu van der Poel.

98km to go Pity a live blogger, just as you look up and see a break attempt going off, identify the riders and then the peloton is back together again. This is intense stuff for the riders. They have been racing almost flat out for 60km to go.

101km to go Pidcock chases down a group being led away by Filippo Ganna. The front of the race is down to 100 riders now. A bit of natural selection as we head toward the category two Suc au May.

107km to go Matteo Jorgensond and Kevin Vauquelin dart off as we’ve paced under the mountains points banner. They’re not allowed to go.

109km to go Tom Pidcock has arrived at the front and is trying to break this up with an intense uphill effort. There are cracks but still nothing definitive. Are the GC teams controlling this a bit too much? No one is blinking.

110km to go The riders hit the category three Côte de Naves and the escapists are being reeled back in.

113km to go Haller may not be in it for the long haul but if he can give Alaphilippe enough of a gap then he can fall back into the peleton with his work done. The break quintet has 25 seconds.

115km to go Xabier Azparren (Pinarello), Dorion Godon (Netcompany-Ineos and Michel Hessmann (Movistar) have joined the Tudor pair now. They have 12 seconds, enough?

119km to go The peloton is heading downhill and the riders are pretty strung out. Alaphilippe is pushing on this descent and has Tudor teammate Marco Haller with him.

125km to go Poor Jonathan Harris-Bass is having a bad day on TNT comms duty. This change in stage route has thrown off his usual insights into the French scenery and he has nothing to offer for the second chateaux in a row. A producer really needs to help him out here.

130km to go Kirsh, Anders Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), Felix Engelhardt (Jayco-Alula), Nelson Oliveira (Movistar) were in there too but that’s not stuck.

132km to go We’ve had more than 20km of racing but still no settled breakaway group but now we have Julian Alaphilippe in a group of five that might have a chance.

138km to go Merlier is in a group of strugglers out the back of the race now and they’re already a minute down. No breakaway has formed yet, but we’re seeing repeated efforts to make one stick.

143km to go This intermediate sprint is on a bit of an uphill and you can see the effort levels increasing as we wind up. Lidl-Trek still pounding away on the front as they seek to give Mads Pedersen a platform to hoover up the 25 points on offer here.

147km to go There’s a very early intermediate sprint for the points chasers. We’ll be hitting that in little more than 6km. It seems we won’t be getting a proper breakaway until after that.

148km to go Lidl-Trek are doing the work on the front of the main bunch to bring this back.

150km to go We’ve had a few breakaway chancers speed off the front. Quinten Hermans (Pinarello-Q36.5), Alex Kirsch (Cofidis) and Stefano Oldani (Caja Rural) have about 25 seconds. Ewen Costiou (Groupama-FDJ United) and Georg Steinhauser (EF Education-EasyPost) are in pursuit.

We have correspondence! Tim Buckley breaks the reader predictions duck: “Tom Pidcock and Ben Healey from the break. No threat on GC and handy at Ardennes style climbs.” Do we dare to dream of an England World Cup win and a British stage winner on the Tour in the same weekend? Keep ‘em coming.

Who do you think is taking today’s stage? My inbox is open to predictions via the link at the top of the page.

More on the decision to shorten the ninth stage from Jeremy Whittle in Bergerac:

Undoubtedly the graphics team at ASO were a little gutted to have to fire up the file named ‘stage_9_route_V4_final’ and have to chop out 30km but here we are. This is what the riders will be working with today: