Chris Froome fired his way back into contention at the Criterium du Dauphine by winning the queen stage in stunning style.

Froome benefitted from some fantastic work by his team-mates on the approach to the final climb of the day and then took matters into his own hands as he powered up Mont Blanc. Only Tejay van Garderen could follow initially when Froome attacked with 3.6km to go, but the BMC Racing rider had no reply when the 30 year old kicked again in the last 1.5km.

Froome then emptied the tank as he forged his way to the summit, and wrapped up his victory with a 17–second margin. Van Garderen, to his credit, held on for second place on the stage and moved back to the top of the overall standings where he holds an 18-second advantage over Froome with one day remaining.

After the stage, Froome was understandably delighted by his performance and heaped praise on the team-mates that had made his triumph possible.

He said: “I couldn’t be happier. The guys rode out of their skin and buried themselves to make it as hard as possible. On the back of yesterday’s stage – which had a lot of the main contenders in the break – it made sense to do that. That’s one of the beauties of stage racing, you can’t give everything one day and then expect to back it up the next.

“As I said, I can’t thank my team-mates enough, and it was special to have my wife at the finish. That gave me an added incentive to go hard and see her.”

Froome also admitted he still has plenty work to do if he is to wrestle the yellow and blue jersey from van Garderen, but is pleased with his condition heading into Sunday’s finale.

He added: “Tejay has ridden a really good race and BMC did a really good time trial on Tuesday which put almost 30 seconds into us. I still have a bit to make up on him. It’s not an easy stage tomorrow and the race isn’t over until it’s over. We’ll keep fighting all the way ‘til the end.

“Today was a really good show of where I’m at [heading into the Tour de France]. I’ve still got some work to do, and I’m not at my best yet, but being able to ride a stage like that shows I’m not far off and I’m really happy.

"It's a nice reward for all the training I've done. The beauty of stage races is the progression through the days. But it won't be an easy race again tomorrow!"

The hardest stage of the race featured six categorised climbs and a 14-man breakaway had swelled to 26 by the time they hit the third peak of the day. That was when Team Sky took control of the peloton, and the pace they set meant less than 50 riders remained in the bunch as they crested the Col de la Croix Fry.

Ian Boswell and Philip Deignan kept the tempo high on the approach to the Cote des Amerands, and when Peter Kennaugh let rip on that steep ascent, overnight leader Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) was one of several big names to be distanced before the summit.

Wout Poels then took a huge turn to bring most of the early pacesetters back before Froome rounded things off in devastating style.