By Vincent Daheron FRANCE (Reuters) -Defending champion Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) is back in the yellow jersey after the Slovenian fought off Dane Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike) to win stage seven of the Tour de France on Friday.

A three-week Grand Tour will always contain natural ebbs and flows, and, for much of Monday’s stage between Valenciennes and Dunkirk, it looked as if the peloton had declared an unofficial rest day, with the riders happy to cruise back towards the coast after a weekend of wind, rain and intensity.

The race of truth is the first big opportunity for the general classification riders to lay down a marker so this should be intriguiing viewing. At 33km it is also the longest opening-week individual time trial since 2012 and that should pronounce any time gaps between the favourites.

If riders were hoping for a relaxing stage 2 to recuperate then they may be disappointed: today’s stage is the longest of the entire Tour, 209km from the small village of Lauwin-Planque to Boulogne-sur-Mer on the northern coast of France.