Hello and welcome to live coverage of Stage 8 of the Tour de France - and after 18 consecutive bunch sprints and around 15 wins for Marcel Kittel, it's finally the first of two back-to-back days in the mountains. To be precise, the Jura mountains - the second of five of France's mountainous regions that the Tour will visit this year.

Three riders with a little gap: Chavanel, Brambilla and Bettiol is the Cannondale rider - but the gap is very small. There's a Dimension Data rider in pursuit.

Marcato has been reeld in and now we have two Cannondale-Drapac riders on the front, posed. One of them goes clear - with Brambilla of Quick-Step and Chavanel of Direct Energie...

The UAE rider is Marco Marcato and he's being pursued by a handful of riders, including German national champion Marcus Burghardt (Bora-Hansgrohe) and local lad Alexis Vuillermoz of Ag2R-La Mondiale, who lived 30km from the finish.

One of the UAE Team Emirates riders has ridden clear to open up a small gap over the pack. He has three riding in pursuit now. A very fast and furious start to this stage - and this is why the race organisers are showing all the stages live on TV from the start. It's really fascinating to see how the breaks form.

Tsgabu Grmay of Bahrain-Merdia is the next rider trying to pull clear of the pack - his move sparks a response by a cluster of riders, but it comes back together.

It's 31 degrees Celsius at the start in Dole and a few degrees cooler at the finish - so another hot day in France, with the sun shining high in a blue sky.

It's Oliver Naesen, the Belgian national champion at Ag2R-La Mondiale, who is driving the pace, with Lotto Soudal's Lars Bak right behind him. Old habits die hard, eh Lars?

They're off! The 187.5km stage 8 from Dole to Station des Rousses gets under way - and from the outset, the Ag2R-La Mondiale team of Romain Bardet start to pull.

The calm before the storm... the riders are bunched up behind the car of race director Christophe Prudhomme, who is readying his flag to get this stage started.

Here's a closer look at today's undulating parcours: just the three categorised climbs, but roads that consistently go up and down after what will be, no doubt, a frantic opening 20km on the flat ahead of the hills.

Edvald Boasson Hagen sprinted to within three ten-thousandths of a second of giving his embattled Dimension Data team a timely boost on Friday following the withdrawal of their talismanic sprinter Mark Cavendish earlier in the week.

Yesterday, Germany’s Marcel Kittel sprinted to his third victory of the 2017 Tour de France after beating Norway’s Edvald Boasson Hagen by a tyre’s breadth in Stage 7 at Nuits-Saint-Georges, as Chris Froome retained the yellow jersey. In a nail-biting conclusion to the 213.5km stage through the Burgundy wine region, Quick-Step Floors sprinter Kittel underlined his green credentials as the fastest man in the peloton by narrowly beating Dimension Data’s Boasson Hagen – thanks to a late lunge at the eleventh hour.