SAGAN STRIPS BENNETT OF GREEN JERSEY
THE Tour de France burst into life when a fast start and crosswinds blew the peloton apart in the seventh stage, leaving dark horse Tadej Pogacar with a lot of catching up to do ahead of the Pyrenees today. Yesterday’s 168-km ride from Millau was dominated by Belgian Wout van Aert, who won his second Tour stage this year, after a brutal start by Peter Sagan’s Bora-Hansgrohe team and crosswinds split the pack.
A sudden acceleration by champion Egan Bernal’s Ineos Grenadiers team split the leading pack again with Slovenian underdog Pogacar finding himself trapped behind and losing 1:21 on the line. ‘In the finale, we’ve seen an opportunity and we took advantage to split the bunch.
The Tour de France is also won in stages like this one,’ said Bernal. Adam Yates, along with Primoz Roglic, Bernal and Pinot, was on the right side of the break and retained the yellow jersey. Yates now leads Roglic by three seconds and France’s Guillaume Martin by nine. The peloton was thrown into a tumbler when Bora-Hansgrohe’s attack on the first climb left most of the sprinters behind. That boosted Sagan’s quest for an eighth green jersey for the points classification. Green jersey holder Sam Bennett was left far behind and could not contest the intermediate sprint, where Sagan collected 17 points. Triple world champion Sagan was again beaten in the final sprint won by Van Aert, but the Slovak picked up an extra four points to leapfrog Bennett into the top of the points classification.