Tadej Pogacar gains important time on Jonas Vingegaard and takes Tour de France yellow jersey - Remco Evenepoel wins stage 5 time-trial

Remco Evenepoel has won stage 5 of the Tour de France, a strong victory in the race's sole time-trial where the Olympic and World Champion confirmed his status of man to beat. However the big news of the day was Tadej Pogacar's time gain on Jonas Vingegaard, which has created a very meaningful difference between the two.

The 33-kilometer long time-trial was always going to be an important day for the overall classification contenders, and it was a day that they have been preparing for a long time. Mathieu van der Poel started the day in the yellow jersey with the same time as Tadej Pogacar; whilst Jonas Vingegaard was 8 seconds back.

Early in the stage, Iván Romeo put in the strongest time and the benchmark for those looking to fight for the stage win, being the first rider to go into the 52Km/h average speed on the day. He was dethroned by Edoardo Affini who looked to take the stage win, removing 29 seconds off the Spaniard's time. Bruno Armirail set a very strong time only 2 seconds off Affini, before the GC riders would begin to arrive.

Florian Lipowitz finished a third provisional time, looking to recover a lot of positions very quickly, and it seemed apparent that the wind conditions had changed and a few riders were having much slower times than expected. This boosted Affini's chances of winning the stage, specially after Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogacar were slower than the Italian over the first two intermediate points - whilst Jonas Vingegaard looked to be losing quite some time to the duo.

But Remco Evenepoel had another gear in the second half of the course and decimated the competition, turning the time splits into his advantage and crossing the line 33 seconds faster than the Italian. Jonas Vingegaard crossed the finish line a whole 1:21 minutes slower than Evenepoel, whilst Pogacar was 16 seconds slower and took over the yellow jersey. Mathieu van der Poel was not able to sustain the pace of the main men and has had to let go of the race lead.