The Italian sprinter Jonathan Milan surged away from the pack to win the second stage of the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 in Issoire and take the overall lead from Tadej Pogacar.<\/p>\n
Milan (Lidl-Trek) had to battle to keep up on a hilly 204.6km run through central France from Pr\u00e9milhat. When the pack hit the home straight, he rocketed away from his rivals to collect a 10-second victory bonus and the yellow jersey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was really tough,\u201d said Milan. \u201cI was dropped at one point and I was really on the limit, but I have to say thanks to my teammates because they brought me back and guided me until the last metres.\u201d<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s Fred Wright (Bahrain-Victorious) was second and the Dutch rider Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) third. Pogacar and his main rivals for overall victory, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, rolled home safely in the main pack just behind Milan.<\/p>\n
UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider Pogacar, who collected a 10-second bonus on Sunday, has the same overall time as Milan, but braked hard in the final metres to surrender places and hand the Italian the tie-break edge and the daily media responsibilities that go with the yellow jersey.<\/p>\n
Tadej Pogacar will not be wearing yellow for the third stage of the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 but remains in an excellent overall position. Photograph: Stefano Cavasino\/IPA Sport\/ipa-agency.net\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
The eight-day race, with four hilly stages, a time trial and three final days in the Alps, has attracted an A-list roster of 154 riders from 22 teams. It offers Tour de France contenders a chance to hone their form and gain a psychological edge before the main event starts on 5 July.<\/p>\n
Pogacar, who won his third Tour de France last year ending Vingegaard\u2019s two-year reign, had struck the first blow the previous day, edging the Dane to take the opening stage and the overall lead.<\/p>\n
On Monday, support riders for Pogacar and Vingegaard\u2019s Visma-Lease a Bike spent much of the stage jostling, sometimes angrily, for position at the front of the pack.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The stage was briefly animated when the local favourite Romain Bardet (Picnic PostNL), riding the final race of his 14-year professional career, launched an attack on the last small climb just before a corner where his fanclub was waiting with a huge banner. The 34-year-old was caught with 10km to go as Milan\u2019s team took control.<\/p>\n The Frenchman will have another chance on Tuesday when stage three starts from his home town of Brioude for a hilly 207.2km run to Charantonnay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Italian sprinter Jonathan Milan surged away from the pack to win the second stage of the Crit\u00e9rium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-171186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114655380861737620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}