Ramunas Navardauskas has been showing himself as a sprinter in this year's Tour de France, but the Lithuanian time trial champion used his strength for riding solo to finally deliver the stage win for which Garmin-Sharp has tried so hard.

"It was a big dream to win a Tour de France stage," Navardauskas explained. "It's everyone's dream. I am really thankful to my teammates. Jack Bauer and Sebastian Langeveld helped me on the climb, And TJ [Tom-Jelte Slagter] was just amazing."

John Degenkolb (Giant-Shimano) led home the fractured peloton seven seconds later, with dual stage winner Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) in third.

Navardauskas attacked from the field on the sole categorized climb, the category 4 cote de Monbazillac, with 13km to go on the rain-soaked stage, catching his teammate Slagter, who was the last survivor of the day's breakaway, and then leaving him behind on the descent. It was a pre-formulated strategy by Garmin-Sharp to salvage its Tour de France which was plagued by bad luck - first by the abandon of GC leader Andrew Talansky, then the heartbreaking near-miss of Jack Bauer on stage 15.