In the break were Oleksandr Kvachuk, Mohammed Said Elammoury, Jackson Rodríguez, Diego Tamayo and Matt Brammeier.

Kvachuk dropped Brammeier, Tamayo, and Rodriguez but by the end of the seventh lap the gap had fallen to about 5 minutes.

The group contained 31 riders, including the previous year's champion Cadel Evans, his teammates Stuart O'Grady and Simon Gerrans, Edvald Boasson Hagen of Norway, Belgian Philippe Gilbert, Dane Matti Breschel and 5 Italians including Vincenzo Nibali and Filippo Pozzato.

On the final ascent of the Montpelier climb, Gilbert made an attack and Evans immediately tried to jump into his slipstream.

However, Gilbert got away from Evans, who was absorbed by a chase group containing Paul Martens of Germany, Alexander Kolobnev of Russia, Koos Moerenhout of The Netherlands, and Fränk Schleck of Luxembourg.

Russian Vladimir Gusev and Slovenian Janez Brajkovič attacked just before the 1 kilometer to go banner and were joined by Dutchman Niki Terpstra.

This happened to Kazakhstan, and as a result, one additional spot was awarded to Luxembourg, Slovenia and France (10th to 12 respectively in the rankings), although this concession had not been in the original documentation describing the allocation of places.