![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/0024aa3b-614.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nDutch rider Olav Kooij claimed his first Tour de France stage victory on his race debut, sprinting to victory on stage five after a late crash fractured the \u2060peloton in the closing kilometres.<\/p>\n
The Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider powered to victory at the end of the 158.3-km route from Lannemezan to Pau, finishing ahead of Germany’s Max Kanter of XDS Astana, with Belgium’s Tim Merlier of Soudal-Quick Step taking third place.<\/p>\n
“After a couple of hard days here already I had to wait to get this first chance and to immediately win is unbelievable. It means quite a lot,” Kooij said afterwards.<\/p>\n
“It was quite an easy day until the final, so you know it will be hectic and the first sprint \u200cin the Tour everyone is still \u2060really eager. I just managed to find my way, a bit on my own in the end that I managed to find the right wheel. I just wanted to sprint today and when I saw the line I went as hard as I could.”<\/p>\n
Norway’s Torstein Traeen of Uno-X Mobility retained the yellow jersey despite being caught behind the late incident, while Dane \u200cMads Pedersen, who began the day in the green jersey after winning stage four, finished seventh.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ireland’s Ben Healy – pictured above – finished just over two minutes down on the stage winner, the EF Education-EasyPost rider dropping three places to 103rd overall in general classification, over 46 minutes down on Traeen.<\/p>\n
Traeen crossed the line in a group 14 seconds behind Kooij alongside \u2060defending champion Tadej Pogacar and other leading general classification contenders, including Jonas Vingegaard, Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel \u200cand French teenager Paul Seixas.<\/p>\n
The Norwegian continues to lead the overall standings by 28 \u2060seconds over American \u200cSean Quinn, with Czech rider Mathias Vacek third, three minutes 50 seconds off the pace.<\/p>\n
A largely uneventful stage appeared destined for a routine bunch sprint, with Frenchman Baptiste Veistroffer of Lotto Intermarche the only rider to spend significant time off the front after \u2060launching a solo breakaway.<\/p>\n
But the complexion of the race changed dramatically with 5.3 km remaining when a crash split \u2060the peloton and disrupted several teams’ lead-out trains ahead of the finish.<\/p>\n
Kooij capitalised on the chaos, emerging from the reduced lead group to secure the biggest victory of his career, while many of the race’s overall favourites were left in pursuit.<\/p>\n
The split ultimately created a 14-second gap between the front group and the chasing pack but had little impact on the battle for the yellow jersey, as the main general classification contenders \u200call finished together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dutch rider Olav Kooij claimed his first Tour de France stage victory on his race debut, sprinting to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-540208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}