SIMON CLARKE OF Israel Premier Tech won stage five of the Tour de France on Wednesday in a photo finish after a 157km run from Lille to Arenberg featuring 20km of cobbled mining roads.
Belgium’s Wout van Aert of Jumbo retained his overall leader’s yellow jersey despite a nasty fall, but his teammate Primoz Roglic lost around two minutes to defending champion and fellow Slovenian Tadej Pogacar.
35-year-old Australian Clarke used a bike throw on the line in a razor thin victory over Taco van der Hoorn after Native American Neilson Powless launched a sprint in a bid for the yellow jersey but fell just short.
Van Aert fell early and hurt a shoulder and was almost run over by his own team car, but rallied to cling on to his overall lead by 13sec from Powless of EF.
Defending champion Pogacar did the best of the pretenders to the 2022 title when he finished seventh, 51 seconds off the lead, putting a little time into all his rivals after threatening to pulverise them before fading in the final kilometres.
Ineos trio Adam yates, Tom Pidcock and Geraint Thomas all hung in and trail Pogacar by 28, 29 and 30 seconds respectively.
The treacherous stage raced over cobbles that sent clouds of dust billowing making it tough to breath and easy to slip.
Eleven cobbled sections totalling almost 20km of bone shaking mining roads caused much of the chaos but not all of it.
Roglic, runner-up in 2020, was brought down when Caleb Ewan was brought down by a stray hay bale, the Jumbo man then hitting him and struggling thereafter.
