Wout Poels solos to summit stage 15 victory at the Tour de France

Wout Poels has taken a brilliant Tour de France stage win on stage 15, powering ahead of his breakaway companions on another thrilling day of action.

Stage 15 of the Tour de France is set to see another battle between the almost perfectly balanced Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, whilst Carlos Rodríguez and Jai Hindley continue a ferocious fight for the third spot on the podium.

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The fight to get into the breakaway was a fierce one today. Numerous groups thought they had made the successful move but with 30km's gone the break was still yet to fully snap the elastic.

With 50km's gone, the fight was still ongoing, every composition of the break being chased down hungrily by the peloton.

Then, for the second straight day, the race was rocked by a massive crash after a fan who was not paying attention took out Sepp Kuss, causing the peloton to fall down like dominoes.

Almost by accident due to that crash, the breakaway finally looked like gaining a gap. Once the race settled down, a mammoth group of 36 riders were up ahead of the main group and chasing the leading duo of Julian Alaphilippe and Alexey Lutsenko.

Best placed of the riders up the road was Guillaume Martin, who started the day 16:50 down. As the gap began to extend upwards of eight minutes, the Frenchman was moving up in the GC.

At the top of the first categorised climb of the day, Alaphilippe and Lutsenko remained around 30 seconds ahead of their chasers. Once that group did crest the top it was Giulio Ciccone who edged out Neilson Powless in the battle for King of the Mountains points. Nevertheless, Powless retook the lead in the classification from Jonas Vingegaard.

With 85km to go, the two leaders were finally swallowed up by the group of chasers, meaning 38 riders now were together at the front of the race.

Marco Haller decided to attack from the leading group ahead of the Col de la Croix Fry and was soon joined and then passed up front by Rui Costa.

Disappointingly for Powless in his quest for KOM points, the American was part of the first group of riders dropped from the break.

Although the pace back in the peloton wasn't extremely high, worryingly for French fans, David Gaudu was struggling to hold the wheel.

When Marc Soler attacked at the front of the race, it turned into something of a proxy, Jumbo-Visma/UAE Team Emirates war with Wout van Aert leading the chase.

As the race made it's way towards the final climb of the day, a number of riders were taken out of stage win contention from the breakaway with Krists Neilands being taken out by a race motorbike.

With 25km to go, a leading trio of van Aert, Soler and Wout Poels held an advantage of just over a minute from a group of 15 chasers.

As they began to climb the penultimate climb, Poels launched his move, taking the lead solo at the front of the race.

Back in the GC group, UAE Team Emirates took to the front of the bunch for the first time, upping the pace at the bottom of the climb.

With Poels beginning the final climb of the day, he held a 31 second lead over Soler and van Aert with the remainder of the break over two minutes down and the GC riders over 7 minutes back.

In the GC group, Simon Yates, Jai Hindley and Tom Pidcock were all being put into difficulty as Rafal Majka fired away at the front. Someone who had seemingly had a second wind was David Gaudu, the Frenchman was battling hard to stay in the thinning group.

When Adam Yates took over from Majka, only Vingegaard and Pogacar were able to keep the wheel.

Soon even those two were struggling and Yates began to ride clear with Rodriguez regaining contact with the rest of the podium.

Entering the final kilometre, Pogacar launched his move. Vingegaard was fighting with every peddle stroke to hold the wheel and the pair crossed the line side by side.

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