Wout van Aert won a second successive stage of the Criterium du Dauphine on Thursday with victory on day five as Adam Yates remained in the leader’s yellow jersey.
Van Aert, wearing the green shirt as he sits on top of points leaderboard, repeated his success in Wednesday’s individual time trial after 201km of racing that finished in the town of Voiron at the foot of the Alps.
Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) was inches behind 24-year-old followed by Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) in third.
Yates, who finished second overall at last year’s Dauphine, retains his slender four second advantage over Bahrain-Merida’s Dylan Teuns in second in the general leaderboard.
Chris Froome was ruled out of the race as well as this year’s Tour de France after a high-speed crash on Wednesday and had surgery on fractures to his thigh bone, pelvis, ribs and elbow in a French hospital.
The late breakaway trio of Alessandro De Marchi (CCC), Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis) and Yoann Bagot (Vital Concept – B&B Hotels) were caught by the chasing pack with less than a kilometre to go.
The front of the race, which the three had dominated from the 170km-mark, had originally held a lead of 2min 10sec over the peloton with 80km to go but it was windled down slowly to barely half a minute with 10km remaining.
Friday’s sixth and longest stage heads 229km from Saint-Vulbas into the Alps finishing in Saint-Michel-Du-Maurienne and includes a steep climb 7.5km from the finish line.
Critérium du Dauphiné 2019 – stage 5 results (Boën-sur-Lignon – Voiron):
| 1 | Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) | 5:00:34 |
| 2 | Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) | ,, |
| 3 | Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) | ,, |
| 4 | Lorrenzo Manzin (Vital Concept-B&B Hotel) | ,, |
| 5 | Clement Venturini (AG2R La Mondiale) | ,, |
| 6 | Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data) | ,, |
| 7 | Zdenek Stybar (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) | ,, |
| 8 | Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain-Merida) | ,, |
| 9 | Philippe Gilbert (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) | ,, |
| 10 | Mads Schmidt Würtz (Katusha-Alpecin) | ,, |
Critérium du Dauphiné 2019 – general classification after stage 5:
| 1 | Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) | 17:28:00 |
| 2 | Dylan Teuns (Bahrain-Merida) | +04” |
| 3 | Tejay Van Garderen (EF Education First) | +06” |
| 4 | Jakob Fuglsang (Astana) | +07” |
| 5 | Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) | +20” |
| 6 | Steven Kruijswijk (Jumbo-Visma) | +24” |
| 7 | Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) | +25” |
| 8 | Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe) | +26” |
| 9 | Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) | +30” |
| 10 | Nairo Quintana (Movistar) | +40” |
