Groenewegen completes the half dozen - Pogacar still in yellow

One day after Mark Cavendish's record-breaking victory, the old star once again left the stage to his younger rivals. While the 39-year-old Brit was a long way off his 36th stage win at the Tour of France in 19th place, Dylan Groenewegen made it half a dozen for himself with his sixth win since 2017.

The beak in front

The Dutch champion had attracted attention in recent days mainly because of his fashionable beak glasses ("They protect against the sun and the nose piece is for aerodynamics"). At the expected sprint finish in Dijon, Groenewegen primarily impressed with his performance.

The 31-year-old from the Jayco AlUla team was the only one to choose the leftmost lane and thus the best line. In the final meters, Groenewegen pushed past the Belgian Jasper Philipsen, who was later relegated because, in the opinion of the jury, he had hindered his compatriot Wout van Aert. The Eritrean Biniam Girmay "inherited" 2nd place. The sprint winner of the 3rd stage in Turin continues to wear the green points jersey.

Visma tries it out with windy echelons

In the 163.5 km long stage, which was held in rain, sun and changing wind conditions, there was once again no breakaway group. Instead, the Visma-Lease a Bike team led by last year's winner Jonas Vingegaard tried to break up the peloton with windy echelons - but only with brief success.

In the end, Tadej Pogacar had no trouble successfully defending the maillot jaune in the second flat stage in a row. Ahead of Friday's 25.3 km time trial from Nuits-Saint-Georges to Gevrey-Chambertin, the Slovenian continues to lead the overall classification by 45 seconds ahead of Belgian time trial world champion Remco Evenepoel. Third is Vingegaard, the overall winner of the last two years (50 seconds back).

Ambitious Swiss duo

While Evenepoel is expected to show all his class on Friday in the first of two individual time trials of this 111th Tour de France in the rainbow jersey, two Swiss riders, Stefan Küng and Stefan Bissegger, are also aiming for a top result. For the two riders from Thurgau, the stage in the battle against the clock will also serve to determine their position in view of the Olympic Games in Paris. The fact that the course is almost completely flat, apart from a short 1.6 km climb, suits the Swiss duo.