Having won the first stage, Thomas Degand started the final stage of the Tour du Gevaudan as the overall leader but he was unable to stay with the best and dropped to second. However, the Wanty rider was not too disappointed with the outcome, admitting that Amets Txurruka had been the strongest rider.

Last Saturday Thomas Degand took the biggest win of his career when he won the first stage of the Tour du Gevaudan by winning a three-rider sprint. Two days ago he tried to secture the overall victory in the final stage of the two-day event.

Unfortunately, Degand was unable to keep up with key rival Amets Txurruka on the steep Laurent Jalabert climb in Mende and he dropped to second in the overall standings. Despite the lost opportunity, the future IAM rider was not too disappointed with the outcome.

"We are not disappointed, we were very happy last night," his Wanty sports director Sebastien Demarbaix said. "Of course, we would have signed with both hands for a win and it's frustrating to miss out by so little. If a French team had missed the break, we could maybe have come back. We were the only ones chasing up to 6-7 kilometers from the finish. When the gap reached 53 seconds, other squads began to take turns. 

"Anyway, Caja Rural was stronger than us on the climbs. We must focus on the positives. For example, Francis De Greef stopped on the final climb to wait for Thomas. The guys had an exemplary mentality, I'm very happy. In the end, we still had Kevin Seeldraeyers, Michel Kreder, Marco Minnaard and Francis De Greef with Thomas.

Even though he won yesterday, Thomas Degand is not physically at the top right now. He is not 100%, more like 80%. He does not have the legs of the Mediterranean Tour (6th) and the Tour of Andalusia (7th) or those of the Tour of Switzerland (17th) and the Tour of Austria (10th). In the Tour de l'Ain, he did not feel well at all. The weather conditions were bad and he prefers the heat. Then he no longer had too mountainous races on the program."