Remco Evenepoel won the stage five time trial at the Tour de France as Tadej Pogacar seized yellow and saw his rival Jonas Vingegaard lose more than a minute on the roads around Caen.
Evenepoel, the world and Olympic time trial champion, had talked up his chances of victory on this stage and delivered, if not by the margin needed to make good on his suggestion he could take yellow himself.
The Belgian completed the largely flat 33km course in 36 minutes and 42 seconds, at an average speed of 54kmh, to win by 16 seconds from Pogacar.
With Mathieu van der Poel, who started the day on the same overall time as Pogacar, 18th on the day, Pogacar pulled on the yellow jersey with Evenepoel his closest challenger, 42 seconds down in the overall standings.
The Slovenian, chasing a fourth Tour title, leads the general classification as well as the king of the mountains race and the points classification.
“It's a very good day and I'm happy," he said. “The most important one is yellow but the most important thing is to have it on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, now is not that important.”
The big surprise was Vingegaard, who never looked comfortable and clocked only the 13th best time, 38 minutes and three seconds, to drop to fourth overall, a minute and 13 seconds off Pogacar and behind third-placed Kevin Vauquelin.
The Dane had been racing aggressively in the opening stages, the only man who could live with Pogacar's first big attack late on Tuesday, but this raised major questions over the two-time Tour winner's ability to challenge over the next two and a half weeks.
Instead the focus may shift to Evenepoel, third overall last year, who claimed a second career Tour stage win after his victory on the stage seven time trial to Gevrey-Chambertin last summer.
The Belgian has long had this day - one of only two time trials in this year's Tour with the second a mountainous test in the Pyrenees - circled on his calendar and grabbed his opportunity.
Although he was behind some of the early runners on the first two intermediate splits, that was perhaps explained by an increase in the wind speeds, and when the headwind became a tailwind Evenepoel's advantage quickly built.
“I think I paced it perfectly, everything was on point so I'm super happy,” Evenepoel said.
“Today is a first step to put in a good (general classification) result in Paris but it's not where the Tour ends of course, everybody knows what is to come next week and the week after, so there is still a long way to go but it's already very nice to have a stage win.”
Visma-Lease A Bike's head of racing Grischa Niermann was the one to take the questions on Vingegaard's bad day, but offered few solid answers.
“Absolutely we didn't expect a loss of that much but it happened and we have to go from here,” he said. “We will fight again tomorrow. We knew that Remco was the favourite and he won, rightfully so, but Jonas and Matteo [Jorgenson], we hoped for a better time.
“Van der Poel dropped to sixth, but the Dutchman will have his eyes on the next two days, not least Friday's stage to the Mur-de-Bretagne, where he won on the Tour's last visit in 2021.
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