Tour de France: Adam Yates retains yellow jersey on stage seven

On what was supposed to be a relatively benign day before a weekend in the Pyrenees, Jumbo-Visma’s Van Aert collected his second stage win of the Tour as the winds ripped through the peloton to cost the likes of Tadej Pogacar, Mikel Landa, Richie Porte and Richard Carapaz 81 seconds.

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 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 throughout and got himself into the front group as the race ripped apart as they left Castres.

“Everyone was expecting to have an easier day before two big mountain stages, but Bora obviously had other ideas and we rode pretty much full gas from start to finish,” the Mitchelton-Scott rider said.

“It was a hard day for everybody, and now it’s straight into the mountains so let’s see what happens.”

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 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.

“It was always hectic because everyone feared 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.”