The mountains of the Pyrenees turned the middle inside out, and the final descent, of course, secured the yellow jersey for Christopher Froome of Sky. Froome — instead of pausing at the top of Col de Peyresourde, final mountain climb of the day — kicked in the after-burners and flew down mountainside into the town Bagnères-de-Luchon.

The brilliance of Froome’s surprise move was the highlight of the day. The low point was the abandon of the race by Michael Morkov of Katusha, who crashed hard during Stage 1 but courageously continued in the race through Stage 7 and even made it over the Col du Tourmalet.

Pierre-Luc Périchon

Morkov’s abandon left 197 riders to come home and the first GC Point d’Appui of the 2016 Tour de France. Pierre-Luc Périchon of Fortuneo-Vital Concept finished at the middle of the peloton to claim the fulcrum position. Périchon finished the 2015 Tour de France on the cusps of the fulcrum and has bobbed in the middle third of this year’s peloton, finishing in the general classification as high as 64th after Stage 3 and as low as 116th after Stage 4. He took a fall while making an attack during the Paris-Nice race earlier this year and cracked his clavicle, but he appears to have recovered fully from it.

The riders on the cusp after Stage 7 were Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg of Dimension Data in 99th place and Simon Gerrans of Orica-BikeExchange in 100th place.

Sam Bennett of Bora-Argon 18, who went down in the Stage 1 crash with Morkov, takes over the Lanterne Rouge.