Pogacar wins stage seven to retake Tour lead as GB’s Onley comes third

Reigning champion Tadej Pogacar regained the race lead as he won stage seven of the Tour de France.

Mathieu van der Poel reclaimed the yellow jersey from Pogacar by one second after a gruelling day for the Dutch rider on Thursday.

Stage seven had the same finish as in 2021, when Van der Poel claimed his first stage win on the iconic Mur-de-Bretagne climb.

But he was unable to challenge Pogacar on Friday as the three-time winner edged out Jonas Vingegaard in a sprint for the line, with British rider Oscar Onley completing the podium.

The 22-year-old Scot is making his Tour debut for Picnic PostNL and climbed up to seventh on the general classification standings, with Van der Poel slipping to fifth.

“Me and Mathieu both know this finish very well,” said Pogacar.

“We both wanted to win on this iconic climb but I think maybe yesterday he left too much on the road so we couldn’t have a rematch.”

Geraint Thomas rolled back the years as the 2018 race winner spent most of the day in a five-man breakaway but the Welshman was caught by the peloton on the first of three categorised climbs in the final 18km.

The 39-year-old is riding in the Tour for the 14th and final time before retiring and helped establish a gap about 55km into the 197km route from Saint-Malo to Mur-de-Bretagne.

That lead never reached more than one minute 40 seconds, so a repeat of Ben Healy’s breakaway win on stage six looked unlikely even before the hilly finale.

Ewen Costiou was the last breakaway rider to be caught, just after the second climb, and as the general classification contenders prepared for the final ascent, a nine-man crash brought down Pogacar’s UAE Emirates-XRG team-mate Joao Almeida.

The Slovenian’s other team-mates led him up to the finish while Almeida, who was seventh in the overall standings, came in 10 minutes after Pogacar and Jack Haig was forced to abandon.