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Benoît Cosnefroy (Ag2R Mondiale) took the final and fourth stage as Bernal safely made it home for overall victory.
It was an emotional day for the Colombian and Team Ineos as they paid homage to their sport director Nicolas Portal who died in March this year. La Route d'Occitanie organisers arranged a special tribute to the Italian who lived in the region the race visited on the final stage.
But Team Ineos got on with the other job they came to do, totally dominating the queen stage the preceding day with a packed team that included race runner-up Pavel Sivakov and Chris Froome.
Still finding form after coming back from serious injury, the four-time Tour de France happily served Egan Bernal as domestique.
Australian Richie Porte said there was little point attacking with the Team Ineos train on that much of a tear.
“To be honest I expected a bit more from myself, but Ineos really lit it up, they were incredible, Porte told .
“When you’ve got Chris Froome, a four-time Tour de France champion, pulling like he did to line it out, the rest of us were always going to be struggling. Then Tao Geoghegan-Hart did an awesome job after Chris, and the final two just finished it off."
“I went a little bit into the red and then dropped back, but there was no way anyone could have attacked them yesterday. It would have been pointless. Anyone who attacked would have been reeled in almost right away.”
The Tasmanian still holds out hope Ineos will not totally dominate upcoming races, including the Tour de France.
“It’s going to be hard for the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got no chance. You could see yesterday that Thibaut Pinot stuck in there, and so did that young Astana guy [Aleksandr Vlasov], he’s some talent.
"When we saw Superman López collecting bottles from the team car the day before we wondered what was going on, and clearly that young guy Vlasov was their pick for this race. He’s going to make a real name for himself.”
As for rumours Porte might become an Ineos roomey again?
“I don’t want to go into the transfer side of things out of respect for Trek. They’ve been great to me over the last two years and I really appreciate that."
