The defending champion conquers the steep Mur-de-Bretagne climb and holds a 54-second lead as the overwhelming favorite to win a fourth Tour title.

Pogačar is the overwhelming favorite to win a fourth Tour title and has been the best rider since the start of the Tour last weekend.

The defending champion claimed his second stage of this year’s race and overhauled Mathieu van der Poel in the overall standings

After a long solo breakaway on Thursday, Irish rider Ben Healy won a hilly sixth stage of the Tour de France and Mathieu van der Poel took the yellow jersey from defending champion Tadej Pogačar by one second.

Evenepoel, the reigning time trial Olympic and world champion, was expected to win the stage in the absence of time trial specialists — Filippo Ganna and Stefan Bissegger, who both crashed and exited the race on the first day of the Tour last week.

Instead, it was his Classics rival Pogacar who distanced him, with team UAE Emirates-XRG setting an infernal pace up the final slope to whittle the field down to a select group of climbers, including Remco Evenepoel, local boy Kevin Vauquelin, and Briton Oscar Onley, who ultimately finished third.

A three-week Grand Tour will always contain natural ebbs and flows, and, for much of Monday’s stage between Valenciennes and Dunkirk, it looked as if the peloton had declared an unofficial rest day, with the riders happy to cruise back towards the coast after a weekend of wind, rain and intensity.