Van Aert wins 7th stage

The most thrilling day of racing so far at the Tour de France produced multiple winners yesterday, kick-starting the race that had been something of a slowburner and setting the stage for more hard riding this weekend in the high mountains of the Pyrenees.

Wout Van Aert took the Stage 7 victory. It was the resurgent Belgian rider's second win at this year's race.

Defending champion Egan Bernal and other top contenders for the overall title dealt a blow to principal rivals by leaving them behind in crosswinds on the speedy approach to the finish.

Three-time world champion Peter Sagan got back the green jersey awarded to riders who collect the most points in sprints, after his team caused havoc on the road by riding furiously from the start.

And British rider Adam Yates negotiated the stage's multiple traps to keep the overall race leader's yellow jersey.

After two relatively quiet stages, the 168-kilometer (104mile) route into southwest France from Millau to Lavaur had also seemed ho-hum on paper. But it delivered an electroshock ahead of a weekend of climbing in the Pyrenees, with start-tofinish surprises.

Sagan's Bora-Hansgrohe teammates rode like furies from the get-go, setting a pace so punishing that Bora rider Emanuel Buchmann set a new top speed so far at this Tour: a whopping 96 kilometers (60 miles) per hour. Many of Sagan's sprinting rivals couldn't keep up.

Among them were Alexander Kristoff, the winner of Stage 1, and Caleb Ewan, who won Stage 3. Also dropped was Sam Bennett, who started the stage wearing the green jersey that Sagan covets.