Simon Yates, the winner of the 2018 Vuelta a España, sprinted to victory in Bagnères-de-Bigorre in the French Pyrenees to add a stage win in the Tour de France to those of his in the tours of Italy and Spain.

Yates, who is riding the Tour as a support rider to his twin brother Adam, joined a 42-rider breakaway, prior to the first two category one climbs of the day, the Col de Peyresourde and La Hourquette d’Ancizan.

After the group dwindled on the climbs, Yates entered the final kilometres with only two other riders, Gregor Mühlberger, of Austria, and Pello Bilbao, of Spain, before dispatching them in the sprint to the line.

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“I’ve been saving energy until we got here in the mountains and this was the first chance to try something,” Yates said. “Normally, I would be back helping Adam but I had my own chance and grabbed it with both hands. I wasn’t very confident of beating either of them, as I didn’t know how fast they are. But my director said I had to be in front coming round the last corner so I made sure I did that.

“I’m very proud of winning stages in all three Grand Tours, hopefully there are more to come. We’ll see if there are more chances this Tour. My main priority is to help Adam. I just had the chance to get up the road today. I’ll see how I am in the next few days.”

The Mitchelton-Scott sports director, Matt White, also remains bullish of Adam Yates’s chances of a high overall finish in this year’s race. “He’s in a group of riders who will be challenging for the podium,” the Australian said.

“I still think there’s a lot of depth so far between the top seven or eight guys. Adam’s position in the general classification comes with experience. When we came to the Tour in 2016 we knew he was in great shape and he finished fourth as a 23-year-old. So a couple of years down the track he’s matured and so have we, as a team.”

But while Mitchelton-Scott celebrated their second stage win, the Bahrain Merida team of the former Tour winner Vincenzo Nibali appeared to be in meltdown after the world time-trial champion, Rohan Dennis, dramatically quit the Tour midway through the stage, on the eve of the individual time trial in Pau.

Dennis, the winner of the time-trial stage in last month’s Tour of Switzerland and the strong favourite for the only individual time trial in this year’s Tour, quit the race in the company of his agent, only hours after talking positively of his chances of winning the time trial.

“I’m disappointed about what happened with Rohan because we expected a big effort from him tomorrow,” his sports director Gorazd Stangelj said. “It was his decision to stop. We tried to speak with him. He said: ‘I don’t want to talk’ and just abandoned the race.” Stangelj added Dennis’s decision had “nothing to do with his physical condition”.

Dennis later issued a statement which read: “The individual time trial tomorrow had been a big goal for me, but given my current feeling it was the right decision to withdraw earlier today. I wish my teammates the very best for the remainder of the race.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rohan Dennis, centre, the favourite for Friday’s ITT stage, withdrew from the race unexpectedly on Thursday. Photograph: Chris Graythen/Getty Images

The Bahrain-Merida team have been the subject of some controversy this year in the aftermath of the Operation Aderlass doping investigation, which is ongoing and had connected Milan Erzen, of the team’s management, to the investigation. Erzen has forcefully insisted that any allegations against him are false and unfounded.

Asked after Thursday’s stage if there were any other issues that may have led to Dennis’s sudden withdrawal, Stangelj said: “Come on, don’t put words in my mouth.”

With five mountain stages still to come in this year’s Tour, the stage 13 individual time trial centred on Pau will prove pivotal to Geraint Thomas’s hopes of a successful defence.

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” he said of the time trial. “I’ve seen the course a few times and I’ll see it again in the morning.”

Thomas admitted he had been biding his time until the “race of truth”. “It’s been quite hard, waiting and waiting, but tomorrow I’ll get to go all in,” he said. “I’ve ridden it already three times and I like it. It’s fast and it should be hard. It’s going to be a big day.”