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Tour de France: Roglic closes gap at top as Irish trio put in sterling efforts

Tour de France: Roglic closes gap at top as Irish trio put in sterling efforts

Sam Bennett goes into today's (Wednesday) fifth stage of the Tour de France level with points race leader Peter Sagan.

Today the peloton make the 183-kilometre trip from Gap to Privas.

Primoz Roglic reaffirmed his status as the Tour de France favourite as he won yesterday's stage four to close the gap on Julian Alaphilippe in the yellow jersey.

Alaphilippe was fifth and Britain's Adam Yates 10th to ensure there was no change at the very top of the standings - in which Alaphilippe leads Yates by four seconds - but Roglic moved up to third, seven seconds back, with the bonuses from his victory.

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After coming so close to victory on Monday, being pipped on the line, Carrick-on-Suir's  Sam Bennet was some way back from the winning riders on Tuesday, 21 mins 56 back from Roglic, in 169th.

Nicolas Roche enjoyed a better outing, coming in 22nd for Team Sunweb, just 28 seconds back. Daniel Martin was 53rd for Israel Start-Up Nation, three minutes and nine second back.

"I feel every day a little better," Roglic said.

I'm still not totally the same but I felt the second stage showed I could still ride a bike so I need to enjoy that, stay focused and do the same like we did until now for these three weeks.

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The 160.5km stage from Sisteron to Orcieres-Merlette saw the Tour dip a toe into the Alps unusually early and cap it with a summit finish, though the final climb was not one to compare with those to come in the third week of this race.

Alaphilippe's Deceuninck-QuickStep team sought to control the pace as soon as the road began to ramp up, with Roglic's Jumbo-Visma squad then helping to keep the pace strong to stifle the chances of attacks.

As the gradient eased near the summit, Cofidis' Guillaume Martin attacked to spark counter-moves, and it was Roglic who had the legs to get away as defending champion Egan Bernal and others simply tried to hang on.

 

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