Stage 12 report: “African sprinting sensation, Biniam Girmay won the sprint finish to stage 12 in Villeneuve-sur-Lot, while Primoz Roglic lost more time in the overall standings, after a traffic island caused a bad crash in the heart of the peloton,” writes Jeremy Whittle.

A scrappy finish: Perhaps because of the crash a few kilometres previously, it was a very untidy finish and Arnaud Damare was the only rider to get a half-decent lead-out from his Arkéa–B&B Hotels team. It wasn’t enough and the man they call Bini, surfing a wave of confidence, popped up to nick the stage right at the death.

1km to go: Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious) is nicely placed with the front of the race strung out.

2.5km to go: Mark Cavendish is still prominent but is no longer nicely placed behind his teammate Cees Bol.

3km to go: Roglic is 1min 40sec behind the lead group.

5km to go: Mark Cavendish is nicely poised neasr the front of the bunch, with two teammates in front of him on the right-hand side of the road. Anyone who crashes or suffers a mechanical from this point on will get the same time as the winner.

7km to go: With the pace seriously intense at the front of the race, Roglic is losing more and more time, so his GC chances could take a serious dent today.

8 min: Jasper Philipsen is in the lead group but one of his chief lead-out men, Mathieu van der Poel is in the Roglic group and struggling to get back in touch. A very boring stage has just got interesting.

Men down! There’s been a crash and Lotto Dstny rider Jarrad Drizners is flat on his back on the side of the road with two of his teammates standing beside him checking to see if he’s OK. Here’s hoping he is. An Astana rider clipped a traffic divider in the middle of the road, went down and brought several more down. We have three or four different riders sitting on the road getting treatment.

15km to go: The bunch continues to pootle along without much in the way of early jockeying for position going on.

20km to go: Matej Mohoric (Bahrain-Victorious), who gave such a great and gracious interview after winning a stage of last year’s Tour, appear to launch an attack of the front of the bunch … but he’s just sprinting towards his team car, which is at the front of the race, to pick up a few bidons of light refreshment.

26km to go: The peloton has slowed down and is meandering along at 51km per hour.

30km to go: The road is wide, so Ineos move to the front of the bunch. Much like their entitled owner, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, trying to lay down the law in football’s Premier League, their sporting director Zak Dempster gets on the horn to his riders and asks them to tell the riders from other teams who are at the front to slow things down and lock down the road so nobody can get past them.

39km to go: The peloton reels in the breakaway shortly before hitting the picturesque town of hits the town of Fumel. We’ll almost certainly have a sprint finish.

More on those stolen bikes: TotalEnergies have let it be known that whoever it was who nicked 11 bikes from their truck overnight will have serious problems trying to move them on. They must be marked with those invisible UV light pens.

46km to go: While they may be level on points in the King of the Mountains stakes, Tadej Pogacar is the leader, by dint of the fact that he took maximum points on the highest climb of the Tour so far, the Col De Galibier. The gap is down to 17 seconds and our lead quartet is now a trio – Anthony Turgis has dropped back to the bunch.

48km to go: The gap is down to 36 seconds. As expected, Jonas Abrahamsen took the final King of the Mountains point available this afternoon to make it three out of three. He draws level on points with Tadej Pogacar.

60km to go: It’s more or less as you were with the gap at 57 seconds and Movistar and Alpecin-Deceuninck putting in the hard yards at the front of the bunch. The Spanish team are working for their Colombian sprinter Fernando Gaviria, who won two stages of the Tour in 2018.

75km to go: The gap continues to fall and is now just over 53 seconds. The final climb of the day is coming up and we can but presume Abrahamsen will make it a hat-trick of King of the Mountains points and draw level in the classification with Tadej Pogacar. We’ve about two hours of racing left today.

80km to go: The gap between the leading quartet and the peloton is at 1min 21sec. Movistar and Alpecin-Deceuninck are in charge of the chase.

Intermediate sprint result

1. Turgis, 20
2. Abrahamsen 17
3. Pacher 15
4. Madouas 13
5. Girmay 11
6. Philipsen 10
7. Coquard 9
8. Teunissen 8
9. Rex 7
10. Gibbons 6
11. Matthews 5
12. Oliveira 4
13. Dillier 3
14. Wellens 2
15. Guys 1

The former Australian sprinter Robbie McEwan, a three-times winner of the green jersey, is on Eurosport co-comms and points out the blindingly obvious – that Jasper Philipsen is running out of opportunities to hoover up Green jersey points and ideally needs to win today’s stage. If he wins and Girmay comes second, the gap would be reduced to 50 points.

Interestingly, Sean Kelly, a four-times winner who is also working for Eurosport, reckons the battle between the duo “will go all the way”.

92km to go: In the breakaway, Turgis leads Abrahamsen over the line for the intermediatre sprint, but it goes uncontested. Back in the bunch, four riders from Binian Girmay’s Intermarche-Wonty move to the front. Girmay leads Philipsen over the line to extend his lead by another point. He’s 75 clear in the battle for the green jersey.

100km to go: Just over halfway through today’s stage and the gap is at exactly two minutes. The intermediate sprint looms and while our four leading riders will take 20 points, 17, 15 and 13, the next man over the line will get 11. Biniam Girmay currently wears the green jersey and has 267 points, while Jasper Philipsen is second in that classification with 193. Anthony Turgis, who is in the breakaway, is third with 121.

112km to go: It’s all very uneventful at the moment, with our four-man breakaway of Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies), Quentin Pacher (Groupama-FDJ) and Valentin Madouas (Groupama–FDJ) being kept on a very tight leash by a peloton that has its eye on a sprint finish. Such is the quality of the riders in the breakaway that the gap is being kept at around the two-minute mark. The peloton aren’t taking any chances.

120km to go: The gap between Turgis and chums, and today’s escape party is down to 1min 49sec, with Alpecin-Deceuninck making the pace at the front of the bunch. Jonas Abrahamsen takes another King of the Mountains point and is now just one behind Tadej Pogacer.

An overnight bike burglary: TotalEnergies had 11 of their bikes stolen from a team truck parked near the Village Montanha Lioran hotel in Saint-Jacques-des-Blats overnight. The racing bikes, valued at

“They broke into the truck last night and forced to get in,” the team’s Belgian rider, Steff Cras, told Road Code. “They broke open the door at the side and stole 11 bikes. Nobody heard them.

“I was lucky – they took my third spare bike but our mechanics still had to manage to get new bikes ready for today [and] they installed three new bikes this morning. It was not easy. We had enough frames in the truck and [enough] equipment – we were lucky we had a lot.”

In better news for TotalEnergies, stage nine winner Anthony Turgis is in today’s breakaway, despite riding a BMX borrowed from a local child. The stolen bikes have been valued at around €150,000.

133km to go: Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) is struggling badly at the back of the field, over two minutes behind the peloton. The Basque rider from Guernica had a very bad day yesterday and is reported to be ill. Our lead quartet’s gap over the peloton is now down to 2min 12sec.

138km to go: Wearing the polka-dot jersey on behalf of race leader Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates), Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X) snaffles one of three King of the Mountains pointsd available this afternoon by ascending the Category 4 Côte d’Autoire. The gap is down to two minutes, which will suit the peloton perfectly.

145km to go: Alpecin-Deceuninck are controlling the pace at the front of the bunch, as they’ll be hoping for another sprint finish and a second stage win in three days for their man Jasper Philipsen.

150km to go: Our lead quartet are being kept on a tight rein and despite their best attempts, are not being allowed to increase their lead. It continues to hover around the three-minute mark.

161km to go: The four escapees have opened a gap of 3min 19sec on the peloton.

169km to go: Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility), Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies), Quentin Pacher (Groupama-FDJ) and Valentin Madouas (Groupama–FDJ). Abrahamsen is wearing the polka-dot jersey on behalf of Tadj Pogacar, who took it from him yesterday but only leads the King of the Mountains classification by three points.

181km to go: Jonas Abrahamsen and three other riders have attacked off the front, while Fabio Jakobsen is now almost five minutes off the pace. There’s been a crash in the bunch and Tadej Pogacar has hit the deck but he looks fine. One of Alkpecin-Deceunick’s riders looks to have done themselves a mischief and is still lying on the road; I don’t think it is Jasper Philipsen.

186km to go: Our three-man breakaway has either been caught or have given up, but the peloton is seriously strung out. Belgian rider Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny) rider is at the front, trying to launch another breakaway.

192km to go: It could be a very long afternoon for Fabio Jakobsen (dsm–firmenich PostN) who has already been dropped by the peloton and is currently riding solo 1min 45sec behind it.

196km to go: Quentin Pacher (Groupama–FDJ) tries to jump across from the bunch to join his teammate Geniets and his current travelling companion, Gachignard.

197km to go: Thomas Gachingard (TotalEnergies) has joined Geniets and the duo have opened a gap of 22 seconds on the bunch.

Today’s roll-out is under way. The peloton is 167 riders strong, after losing another two racers overnight. Bahrain-Victorious rider Fred Wright finished eight minutes outside the time limit yesterday and has been disqualified, while Astana-Qazaqstan’s Michael Morkov has been forced to pull out of the race after testing positive for Covid.