When defending champion and three-time winner Tadej Pogacar hit the tarmac in the final 4km of today’s stage of the Tour de France, he was just outside the buffer zone earmarked by the race organisers as the place where time gaps would not be taken into consideration after a crash or mechanical problem on a flat finish.

Simon Yates won the first mountain stage of the 2025 Tour de France and Ben Healy shook up the standings by taking the overall lead from Tadej Pogačar

Norway’s Jonas Abrahamsen won an incident-packed stage 11 at the Tour de France on Wednesday, outsprinting Mauro Schmid in Toulouse. Behind them, race favorite Tadej Pogačar crashed in the final minutes, but did not lose any time to his general classification rivals after they sportingly waited until he rejoined them.