photo credits @ Le Tour
Defending champion Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) is back in the yellow jersey after the Slovenian fought off Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) to win stage seven of the Tour de France today.
Pogacar claimed his second stage of this year’s Tour at the end of a 197km route from Saint-Malo to Mur-de-Bretagne, outsprinting Vingegaard at the summit finish, with Oscar Onley taking third place.
Meanwhile, Mathieu van der Poel began the day with a one-second lead over Pogacar, but the Dutchman finished 22nd on the stage and slipped to fifth overall, with Belgian Remco Evenepoel now in second place and 54 seconds behind Pogacar.
Race Highlights
Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) was the first rider to animate things, launching an early attack alongside Mauro Schmid (Jayco-AlUla) before the duo was reined in after 20km.
From there, a flurry of attacks ensued, with Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost) and Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) as the protagonists.
However, it took 55km of racing before Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost), Geraint Thomas (Ineos-Grenadiers), Marco Haller (Tudor), Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B) and Ivan Garcia Cortina (Movistar) finally managed to escape the peloton, but their advantage never rose above 1:40.
Costiou later decided to attack his fellow breakaway companions along first ascent of Mûr-de-Bretagne, but the French rider was eventually caught with 12km to go.
With Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) at the helm, the peloton upped the pace on the second ascent of Mûr-de-Bretagne, with fellow teammate Tim Wellens later setting the pace for Pogacar.
It wasn’t long before Van der Poel was dropped, while Pogacar, Vingegaard and Evenepoel forged ahead.
