Zabel poised to pounce on O'Grady in sprinters' finish

An intriguing battle for the green points jersey helped keep interest alive in the Tour's fourth transition stage in five days, with Erik Zabel's victory in the bunch sprint cutting down on the Australian Stuart O'Grady's lead in the competition to just two points overall.

144 meandering kilometres, through freshly-cut hayfields and down long lime tree flanked avenues, brought the race from Orleans to the new city of Evreux in the Paris suburbs, but the peloton paid little heed to the richly bucolic scenery surrounding it as the battle for the last jersey in contention in the 2001 Tour hotted up.

Since 1996, Erik Zabel has been the most consistent visitor to the Tour's final podium in the Champs Elysées, taking the points jersey a record five times. He has already shown his strength in two stages in this year's Tour, spending a day in green early on, but his third was probably his toughest.

The presence of intermediate sprints with points on offer meant the Credit Agricole team worker Jens Voigt mounted a little attack, 20km before the first at Puiseaux, in order to prevent Zabel – generally recognised as being faster – pulling back on O'Grady's advantage too soon.

But while Voigt succeeded in passing the line in first place, not even the presence of O'Grady's mother on the sprint line could prevent her son from being overhauled by Zabel just moments after Voigt had stormed through, cutting the Australian's overall lead to nine.

The next point of suspense came in the following intermediate sprint 60km later shortly after Telekom had pulled back a five-man move, and on this occasion once again Zabel shaved another two points off O'Grady's lead. Bad omens for O'Grady, already suffering from two bee stings from Friday's time-trial, and looking increasingly isolated from his team as the peloton roared over the exposed plains outside Evreux. A puncture meant he had to change his bike as well.

After sticking to Zabel's wheel like a limpet through the final complicated kilometres, and shaving dangerously close round corners to throw any riders following him, O'Grady committed one error – but it was enough – losing Zabel's wheel on a left-hand bend and coming into the finishing straight in eighth place.

Zabel's poisson pilote, Alexandre Vinokourov, as the French like to call the man who guides a sprinter in the final moments of a sprint, dropped back with 200m to go, and the German – who turned back frequently as if he could not believe his luck that O'Grady had actually gone – finally got the message, put his head down and drove. Behind, O'Grady squeezed through one impossibly narrow gap and, despite a high-speed clash of elbows with the world champion Romans Vainsteins, succeeded in taking second, but Zabel was already over the line a bike length ahead.

O'Grady's place meant he had just enough of an advantage to stay in green for one more day, although as Zabel said after the stage, "it is incredible, after 3,200km we are still so close together, and on Sunday, when there is always a sprint, we will have a showdown."

"Maybe you'll just give me the jersey as an early birthday present," O'Grady jokingly responded, but Zabel seems unlikely to collaborate in his hardest-ever battle for the green jersey in the Tour's final 10-lap procession round the Champs Elysées today.

Lance Armstrong, who finished safely in the bunch in 30th place, is now comfortably home and dry, although as he warned in his final press conference, "Sunday is still an official competition, something could happen."

He confirmed, however, that "this has been my strongest Tour, and it's even been a lot of fun at times, but if I get through tomorrow all I will think about is chasing my fourth Tour, not about five or six."