Van Aert powers to stage win as Yates retains lead

Wout Va n Ae r t won a n explosive stage seven of the Tour de France to Lavaur as Adam Yates hung on to the yellow jersey amid powerful crosswinds.

Jumbo- Visma’s Van Aert collected his second stage win of the Tour as the winds ripped through the peloton in the final hour of racing, with Tadej Pogacar, Mikel Landa, Richie Por t e 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 S agan’s B ora- Hansgrohe team put the hammer down as soon as they left Millau, dropping the sprinters to enable t he f ormer world champion to seize the points leader’s green jersey back from Irishman Sam Bennett.

And there was no let- up as the reduced peloton was split in three late on, though 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 Aer t ’s a s s i g nment was t o l o o k a f t e r t e a mmates 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 was able to overhaul Edvald Boasson Hagen and follow up his stage- five victory.

“I’m really proud of it,” Van Aert said. “It was straight from the gun 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.

“I t wa s a l way s h e c t i c because ever yone f eared the crosswinds. At the end we saw it was worth it to put a lot of energy into the positioning. I was with Primoz the whole day in the front so it was a good day for the team.

“A lot of the GC favourites lost time and I could finish it off as well.”

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 of the front group after suffering an ill- timed puncture.

Sagan, who began the day trailing Bennett by 12 points in the fight for green, now leads the category by nine.