Tour de France

What happened Thursday and a look ahead at today’s stage:The relatively flat stage, a 124-mile trek from Semur-en-Auxois to Bourg-en-Bresse, should favor the sprinters again:

* Thursday’s Stage 5: The route featured eight climbs of moderate difficulty and led riders on a 113.4-mile trek from Chablis to Autun.

* Winner: Filippo Pozzato, an Italian rider of the Liquigas team. Oscar Freire was second. Daniele Bennati was third.

* Yellow jersey: Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC. The Swiss rider leads Andreas Kloeden by 33 seconds. Pozzato is third.

* Quote of the day: “I don’t know. My chain came off.” -- race favorite Alexandre Vinokourov, when asked about his crash with 15 miles to go. The Kazakh rider lost 1 minute 20 seconds and fell from 12th overall to 81st.

*--* STAGE 5 RESULTS 1. Filippo Pozzato, Italy 4:39.01 2. Oscar Freire, Spain same time 3. Daniele Bennati, Italy same time 4. Kim Kirchen, Luxembourg same time 5. Erik Zabel, Germany same time

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*--* OVERALL LEADERS 1. Fabian Cancellara, Switzerland 24:28.56 2. Andreas Kloeden, Germany :33 behind 3. Filippo Pozzato, Italy :35 behind 4. David Millar, Britain :41 behind 5. George Hincapie, U.S. :43 behind

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