In stage ten Eric Vanderaerden beat Marc Dierickx in the sprint to take the stage win as the two of them escaped the peloton and beat it to the line by more than two minutes. More importantly in the overall standings the once seventeen minute gap held by Ferreira, Le Guilloux and Barteau was being considerably cut into and the race hadn't even reached the first set of high mountains in the Pyrenees, which began in stage eleven. In stage eleven Robert Millar won the first day in the mountains on a solo attack, with the Colombian climber Lucho Herrera coming in 2nd 0:41 behind him. Going into this stage Fignon held a gap of 1:13 over Hinault and by the end of the day it widened up to 2:05 as Fignon crossed the line in 7th place with Angel Arroyo. The next two stages were both flat stages which were won by Pascal Poisson and Pierre-Henri Mentheour and then the race moved into south central France for two intermediate/hilly stages which were won by Fons de Wolf and Frederic Vichot. The stage win by De Wolf was rather astonishing in that it was a solo breakaway in which he beat the favorites to the line by nearly 18:00, actually jumped ahead of Hinault in the overall standings and came within 1:32 of Fignon. The energy exerted in this stage proved to be very costly however, as de Wolf lost considerable time the following day and faded back in with the Domestiques for the remainder of the Tour.