The yellow jersey has already chopped and changed multiple times in the opening week of the Tour de France, with Mathieu van der Poel wrestling it back off Tadej Pogacar by just one second on a thrilling stage six, before the defending champion overhauled his Classics rival to take it back on stage seven.

This week’s Club Sportico essay looks at the way in which commercial sponsorships and detail-oriented cyclists sometimes clash at the world’s biggest bike race. Tour de France riders are obsessive about their equipment,

A three-week Grand Tour will always contain natural ebbs and flows, and, for much of Monday’s stage between Valenciennes and Dunkirk, it looked as if the peloton had declared an unofficial rest day, with the riders happy to cruise back towards the coast after a weekend of wind, rain and intensity.

Instead, it was his Classics rival Pogacar who distanced him, with team UAE Emirates-XRG setting an infernal pace up the final slope to whittle the field down to a select group of climbers, including Remco Evenepoel, local boy Kevin Vauquelin, and Briton Oscar Onley, who ultimately finished third.