Van Aert wins stage but Yates holds lead

WOUT VAN AERT won an explosive stage seven of the Tour de France to Lavaur as Adam Yates hung on to the yellow jersey amid powerful crosswinds. The Jumbo-Visma rider collected his second stage win as winds ripped through the peloton in the final hour of racing, with Tadej Pogacar, Mikel Landa, Richie Porte and Richard Carapaz among the overall contenders to lose 80 seconds in the splits. The 168km stage was raced at a ferocious pace as Peter Sagan’s Bora-Hansgrohe team put the hammer down as soon as they left Millau, dropping the sprinters to enable the former world champion to seize the points leader’s green jersey back from Sam Bennett. There was no let-up as the reduced peloton was split in three late on, though British rider Yates remained attentive near the front of the peloton throughout and got himself into the front group as the race ripped apart as they left Castres. Van Aert’s assignment was to look after team-mates Primoz Roglic and Tom Dumoulin, with Roglic only three seconds off Yates in second place. But when he found himself near the front in the final metres, he overhauled Edvald Boasson Hagen to follow up his stage-five victory. ‘I’m really proud,’ said the Belgian. ‘Straight from the gun, it was really hard. It was a very impressive stage from Bora-Hansgrohe, they were flat out from the first kilometre and made sure a lot of the sprinters were dropped. It was always hectic because everyone feared the crosswinds.’ The Ineos Grenadiers did much of the work to split the group in the winds, with defending Tour champion Egan Bernal well placed, but Carapaz dropped out with a puncture. Sagan once again took control of the points classification he’s won in seven of the past eight Tours, with Bora’s work to split the group allowing him to pick up 17 points in the intermediate sprint. Bennett finished a tough day empty handed, part of a group who finished more than ten minutes later. Sagan, who began the day trailing Bennett by 12 points in the fight for green, now leads the category by nine.