Campenaerts wins stage 18 as Pogacar maintains lead

Belgium's Victor Campenaerts emerged from a breakaway trio to clinch victory on stage 18 of the 2024 Tour de France.

Campenaerts, Michal Kwiatkowski and Matteo Vercher remained clear heading into the closing stages of the 179.5km route from Gap to Barcelonnette.

The Lotto–Dstny rider, 32, hit the front with 100 metres to go and looked like he had something to spare as he rolled in for his first-ever Tour stage win.

The yellow jersey group came more than 13 minutes later, with the general classification rivals bunched together, so Tadej Pogacar maintained his overall race lead of three minutes 11 seconds.

Defending champion Jonas Vingegaard is second, with Remco Evenepoel five minutes nine seconds off Pogacar in third.

The race concludes with two more mountain stages and then an individual time trial on Sunday, so Thursday's stage was seen as the last chance for the riders and teams not in GC contention to grab a breakaway win.

For most of the day there was a breakaway group of more than 30 riders, including Ineos Grenadiers riders Kwiatkowski and Geraint Thomas, the 2018 champion.

The stage featured five category three climbs and the lead group began to split going up the penultimate climb, with Thomas attacking on the descent.

Kwiatkowski claimed Ineos' first stage win of last year's Tour and the Pole was looking to repeat the feat as he was the first to summit the day's final categorised climb.

On the descent, with about 35km to go, he was joined by Campenaerts and Vercher to form a leading trio, and they worked together to stay clear of the chasing pack.

Tour debutant Vercher then attacked with one kilometre to go, but they soon came back together and Campenaerts timed his attack perfectly, sweeping into the lead and staying clear to celebrate victory.

"I’ve been dreaming about this for a very long time," said an emotional Campenaerts, who recently became a father.

"I had a very difficult time [with Lotto-Dstny], but I became a father and it was like, only blue skies. The support I have from my girlfriend is incredible. She is the hero in this story.

"I will be leaving the team but I'm so happy that we can finish off with maybe the highlight of my career."