BEN O’CONNOR won stage nine of the Tour de France from a breakaway to vault up the general classification today as Tadej Pogacar retained the yellow jersey.

The day started with the announcement that Primoz Roglic had abandoned the Tour as the Slovenian, one of the pre-race favourites, counted the cost of crashes in the opening three stages.

A heavily bandaged Roglic finished in a group 35 minutes down on Saturday’s stage into Le Grand-Bornand, having already lost time on Friday. He will now try to recover ahead of the Olympics later this month.

“We took the decision altogether with the team — it doesn’t make sense to continue the way it was going at the end,” the Jumbo-Visma rider said.

Mathieu van der Poel, who enjoyed six days in yellow before handing the jersey over to Pogacar on Saturday’s stage, was another non-starter — likewise leaving to prepare for the Olympics.

In miserable conditions, O’Connor raced away from fellow escapee Sergio Higuita with 17km of the final climb up to Tignes still to go at the end of the 145km stage from Cluses, eventually winning the day by more than five minutes from Mattia Cattaneo.

Making his Tour debut, the Australian briefly threatened to take yellow from Pogacar given the breakaway’s advantage. The Ineos Grenadiers, including a revitalised Geraint Thomas, took up the chase to try to keep the pressure on. 

But Richard Carapaz had no response when Pogacar put in an attack two kilometres from the top of the climb as he raced away and once again underlined his clear status as the dominant rider in this race.

It meant that he took sixth place on the stage, 32 seconds ahead of Carapaz, and now leads overall by two minutes and one second from O’Connor, with Rigoberto Uran the next closest challenger at five minutes and 18 seconds down.

After tomorrow’s rest, riders will enjoy a relatively flat route from Albertville to Valence tomorrow.