Stage 7

The road

At the start

Impey, the first African in yellow

The bunch split inside the last kilometre in Montpellier and Daryl Impey took the jersey off his own teammate by five seconds, becoming the first African rider to lead the Tour de France. Boasson Hagen is second at three seconds, Froome and Porte at eight. Today is two hundred and two kilometres to Albi over two climbs in the middle of it — one of them long enough to hurt the sprinters.

How it was won

1. 1106 km to go

   Cannondale blow the sprinters out

   On the Croix de Mounis, Cannondale go to the front and ride the fast men off the back of the race: Cavendish, Greipel, Kittel and Goss all gone. Their teams try, then give up. They will finish more than fourteen minutes down.

2. 294 km to go

   Kadri's polka dots

   Voigt has spent the day letting Blel Kadri take the summit points, and Rolland's counter on the second climb is smothered by Kadri's own teammate Bardet. The two leaders are caught with ninety-four to go, but the arithmetic holds: Kadri leads the mountains classification by a single point.

3. 33 km to go

   The yellow jersey under threat

   Bakelants goes again with Gautier and Oroz and takes a minute — enough to make him the virtual race leader, thirty-three seconds behind Impey on the road. Orica-GreenEdge feed riders into Cannondale's chase until the three are caught inside the last three kilometres.

4. 4At the line

   Sagan, finally

   Three second places already, and no celebration when it finally comes: Peter Sagan beats Degenkolb and Bennati into Albi and simply looks relieved. His lead in green goes out to ninety-four points.

The result