Van Aert wins Stage 5 of the Tour de France at Privas

PRIVAS: Wout van Aert made it two-from-two for his purring Jumbo-Visma team with victory in Stage 5 of the Tour de France at Privas as Julian Alaphilippe lost the yellow jersey in controversial circumstances to Adam Yates after incurring a time penalty for an illegal feed.

No sooner had the in-form Belgian van Aert finished celebrating his team's second win in as many days as the race jury announced that a 20-second penalty had been imposed on Frenchman Alaphilippe for taking on an illegal water bottle from his Deceuninck-QuickStep team car with 17km remaining, contrary to the regulations.

With Alaphilippe dropping to sixteenth place in the standings, Britain's Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) takes control of the Tour for the first time in his career. Trailing the Frenchman by four seconds in the overnight standings, Yates now leads the race by three seconds on van Aert's Jumbo-Visma teammate Primoz Roglic of Slovenia, the Stage 4 winner.

Van Aert, the in-form Belgian, powered past Dutchman Cees Bol of Team Sunweb to win by half a wheel one day after helping to guide Roglic to victory in Tuesday's first summit finish.

"It was a hectic finish," van Aert said. "It was maybe the most easy stage I've done in a cycling race because there was no breakaway and the pace was not high. I was happy to be given the chance to go for it. And if you have one shot and you can finish it off then it's even more sweet. I have my stage win now so from now on I will support my team even more than before." IANS

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