  A scanning tunnelling microscope is used to pull a polythiophene wire from a
Au(111) surface while measuring the current traversing the junction. Abrupt
current increases measured during the lifting procedure are associated to the
detachment of molecular sub-units, in apparent contradiction with the expected
exponential decrease of the conductance with wire length. \textit{Ab initio}
simulations reproduce the experimental data and demonstrate that this
unexpected behavior is due to release of mechanical stress in the wire, paving
the way to mechanically gated single-molecule electronic devices.
