Tour de France stage 5 LIVE result: Tadej Pogacar takes time from rivals as Simon Clarke wins stage

25km to go: Roglic is back on his bike and fighting to regain contact with that chasing GC pack containing Thomas and Pogacar.

Up front, Gougeard has fallen away leaving only five in the breakaway – though they are losing their grip, only one minute clear of the chasers.

Now Roglic crashes! Oh dear, oh dear. A loose hay bale lining the side of the road was hanging in the path of the riders and Roglic is the unlucky victim, along with sprinter Caleb Ewan, who both hit the deck hard. Disaster for Roglic, and for Jumbo-Visma today.

So, the state of play with around 30km to go:

The six-man breakaway remains out in front with five cobbled sectors left. They are: Edvald Boasson Hagen (TotalEnergies), Magnus Cort and Neilson Powless (EF Education-Easypost), Taco van der Hoorn (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux), Simon Clarke (Israel-Premier Tech) and Alexis Gougeard (B&B Hotels-KTM).

About two minutes behind them is the main chasing group, let’s call them the GC group, with lots of the main men including Tadej Pogacar, Geraint Thomas and Primoz Roglic.

Another couple of minutes back is another chasing pack – and behind them the yellow jersey of Wout van Aert is waiting up to help Jumbo-Visma co-leader Jonas Vingegaard after a mechanical. Van Aert is effectively giving up the yellow jersey for the team, and right now Powless is favourite to be in yellow tonight.

Jonas Vingegaard has punctured! The Jumbo-Visma co-leader is given a spare bike but it doesn’t fit him, it’s too big! Teammate Steven Kruijswijk comes back to offer up his bike, but just as they swap the team car finally arrives on the scene and Vingegaard is given his fitted spare. He’s back on his way, and he’s able to latch on to a straggling group, but that could be a dent to his place in the overall standings come the end of the day.

Mathieu van der Poel – the big favourite at the start of the day and a two-time Flanders winner – is nowhere near the front, he’s completely fallen away. He has talked this week about not feeling qutie as sharp as he did during the Giro, and perhaps he has just taken on a few too many miles this year. At this rate it would be surprising if he continues to Paris.

40km to go: Tadej Pogacar is pretty much all on his own here without his teammates, especially so after UAE Emirates’ George Bennett suffers a mechnical now. Pogacar is fine, of course, using other teams as shields. He’s currently latched on to the rear wheel of Geraint Thomas, who is following Ineos’s cobble master Dylan van Baarle.

Florian Senechal-Staelens was one of the favourites at the beginning of the day, a man who knows his way around the cobbles of the classics, but he has suffered a mechanical and has fallen back.

45km to go: Out of that tricky second section come the peloton and into the third stretch of cobbles, helpfully named ‘sector 9’. The breakaway remain around 2 min 40 sec clear of the peloton, and EF Education are currently on course to claim the yellow jersey with breakaway Nielson Powless as things stand.

A few things going on all of a sudden. Chris Froome and Peter Sagan have both fallen off the back of the main group; Sagan crashed earlier so may be suffering, though I’m unaware of any incident involving Froome. Meanwhile the Australian Ben O’Connor has stopped due to a mechnical – sounds like a puncture – and his teammate Stan De Wulf has handed over his bike to the Ag2R team leader.

Asgreen is a talented rider over the cobbles, having won the Tour of Flanders in 2021, and he might fancy his chances of the stage win today if he can hunt down the breakaway. The beauty of riding for QuickStep on a day like this is that there is no effort to win the yellow jersey or designs on the general classification – one-day specialists are free to pick the days they want to attack for victory.