American Neilson Powless nearly rides into Tour de France lead

American Neilson Powless nearly cycled into the Tour de France lead in the fifth stage.

Australian Simon Clarke, who turns 36 later in the Tour, won the stage, which included 11 sections of cobblestones totaling about 12 miles.

Powless, part of a four man breakaway with Clarke, went for the stage victory with a little more than a kilometer left. But he was caught by the other three men and ended up fourth, four seconds behind Clarke.

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Still, Powless improved from 25th place in the overall standings to second behind Belgian Wout van Aert, who crashed twice during the stage. Powless is 13 seconds behind van Aert, a gap he would have made up if he won the stage in Clarke’s time given the 10-second bonus given to stage winners.

“If we [the breakaway] kept it steady all the way to the line, I definitely would have had yellow, if we all finished together,” Powless said before he learned where he was in the standings. “But 2K to go, the other three guys, they all started playing games. They didn’t want to work anymore.”

Greg LeMond is the lone American to officially lead a Tour de France. The three-time Tour winner last did so in 1991.

Four other Americans wore the yellow jersey after LeMond, but all had their results retroactively stripped for doping (Lance Armstrong, David Zabriskie, George Hincapie and Floyd Landis).

In 2018, Tejay van Garderen missed the chance to wear the yellow jersey due to a tiebreaker.

Powless is not considered a contender to finish on the podium once the Tour finishes in Paris in two and a half weeks.

One of the contenders, Slovenian Primoz Roglic, lost nearly two minutes on Wednesday. Roglic was runner-up to countryman Tadej Pogacar at