{"id":31940,"date":"2026-07-08T18:17:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tour-de-france-2026-olav-kooij-wins-sprint-finish-on-stage-five\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T18:17:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T18:17:47","slug":"tour-de-france-2026-olav-kooij-wins-sprint-finish-on-stage-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tour-de-france-2026-olav-kooij-wins-sprint-finish-on-stage-five\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France 2026: Olav Kooij wins sprint finish on stage five"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Dutch rider Olav Kooij won a bunch sprint finish after a crash in a chaotic conclusion to stage five of the Tour de France. <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 24-year-old, who is competing at the event for the first time, held off Germany&#8217;s Max Kanter, with Belgium&#8217;s Tim Merlier crossing the line in third.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Norway&#8217;s Torstein Traeen retained the overall race leader&#8217;s yellow jersey despite being caught up in a pile up just over five kilometres from end of the 158.3km run from Lannemezan to Pau. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Norwegian ended up 14 seconds behind Kooij, along with reigning champion Tadej Pogacar and the other main general classification contenders &#8211; two-time winner Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">France&#8217;s teenage star Paul Seixas and British duo Tom Pidcock and Adam Yates were also in the same group. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Traeen leads the standings by 28 seconds from American Sean Quinn. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bidding for a fifth Tour title. Pogacar sits in fourth place, seven minutes and 53 seconds down on the same time, along with fifth-placed Vingegaard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, the day was all about one of the Dane&#8217;s former team-mates, Kooij, who was a late addition to Decathlon CMA CGM&#8217;s squad after his start to his season was hindered by illness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;After a couple of hard days here already we&#8217;ve had to wait for this day to get this first chance to sprint in the Tour &#8211; and to immediately win is unbelievable,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think it means a lot just in general after a pretty tough spring to get back to this level, to keep believing in yourself and just a few people who believe in you as well is all you need.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;To be here with the support of the team today is all I could ask for. It was an easy day until the final. I just managed to find my way, find the right wheel and I just wanted to have the chance to win. I will enjoy this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/cycling\/articles\/cdxd71kx3wyo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dutch rider Olav Kooij won a bunch sprint finish after a crash in a chaotic conclusion to stage five of the Tour de France. The 24-year-old, who is competing at the event for the first time, held off Germany&#8217;s Max Kanter, with Belgium&#8217;s Tim Merlier crossing the line in third. Norway&#8217;s Torstein Traeen retained the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31942,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31940\/revisions\/31942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}