Frenchman Arnaud Demare won stage 18 of the Tour de France as Geraint Thomas retained the yellow jersey.
Dan Martin also finished safely in the bunch to retain his ninth place overall with just three stages remaining – Friday’s mountainous day, Saturday’s time trial and Sunday’s procession through Paris.
Groupama-FDJ's Demare outsprinted Christophe Laporte of Cofidis and Alexander Kristoff of UAE Team Emirates to claim his second career Tour win and the first this year at the end of a 171km stage from Trie-sur-Baise to Pau.
The first sprint stage since Friday was contested by a vastly depleted field of fast men following the exits of Mark Cavendish, Marcel Kittel, Andre Greipel, Fernando Gaviria, Dylan Groenewegen and Michael Matthew at various points in the Tour so far.
World champion Peter Sagan, who crashed heavily on Wednesday's stage, was active in the finale but eventually finished eighth.
Team Sky's Thomas crossed the line with the front group to ensure he holds on to his advantage of one minute and 59 seconds over Tom Dumoulin of Team Sunweb going into Friday's mountain test in the Pyrenees.
Demare's stage win came on the day that Greipel apologised to him on Twitter after suggesting in an earlier post that Demare had used illegitimate means in order to avoid missing the time cut when struggling on the Col du Portet on Wednesday.
My apology go out to @ArnaudDemare and @GroupamaFDJ as I have had not the right to make that tweet based on GPS time, which can be wrong, plus I got the incorrect times he lost on the last hill. I’m sorry. Lesson learned: don’t tweet about sth you are not part off.
— Andre Greipel (@AndreGreipel) July 26, 2018
After the drama of the previous two days in the mountains, this was a largely uneventful stage.
Wednesday's stage winner Nairo Quintana of Movistar was caught in a crash along with Mitchelton-Scott's Adam Yates with 105km to go but they were soon back on their bikes.
With 16km left, the last remnants of a five-man breakaway which had never been afforded much of a lead was finally reeled in as the lead-out trains went to work on the approach to Pau.
Although there had been suggestions Sagan was struggling to continue in the race - needing only to reach Paris to secure his sixth green jersey - his Bora-Hansgrohe team were on the front inside the final three kilometres.
However, he did not have the power to keep up with Demare and others.
