Remco Evenepoel wins stage seven time trial to cut Tadej Pogacar's Tour de France lead

Remco Evenepoel overcame a late scare to win the stage seven time trial on the Tour de France and eat into Tadej Pogacar's lead in yellow as the front two put time into their other rivals.

Ireland's Ben Healy finished ninth on the stage with the EF Education-Easypost rider, 59 seconds shy of Evenepoel's time which leaves him 29th overall in the general classification.

Sam Bennett, meanwhile, is 13th in the green jersey points classification ahead of Saturday's flat stage between Semur-en-Auxois and Colombey-les-Deux-Églises.

Evenepoel's first Tour stage win on his race debut came on his preferred territory, with the world time trial champion having enough in the bank to take the victory by 12 seconds despite thinking he had suffered a puncture inside the last three kilometres on the approach to Gevrey-Chambertin.

Evenepoel was signalling to his team car for help before bouncing his back wheel to test the air pressure, reassuring himself and recovering his rhythm as he went on to cut his overall deficit to 33 seconds over a 25.3km course defined by a gentle climb midway through.

The stage win gives Evenepoel, in the white jersey as the best young rider in this Tour, stage victories in all three Grand Tours at the age of 24.

"It's crazy," the Belgian said. "I was on a good day. The climb was pretty tough. I wanted to start fast and I had to keep something for the climb so it wasn't easy. Then the descent when you're on the limit was pretty technical and fast.

"But I enjoyed every metre of this time trial and coming out with the win was simply amazing."

Evenepoel was no doubt running on a little extra adrenalin after fearing a late puncture was going to end his hopes of the win.

"I was pretty sure I had a puncture," he said. "I