Sprint for green will go down to the line

Only two issues remain to be settled in this Tour de France. The yellow jersey is Lance Armstrong's for the third year running, barring accidents.

The measled mountains vest, with its red polka dots, will go to Laurent Jalabert, an unexpected and popular triumph for the rider who has become known as "the panda" thanks to a cartoon on French television which has been picked up by the roadside public.

The green, which rewards the best sprinter, on the other hand, has turned into an intense contest between the German Erik Zabel, winner for a record five years running, and the Australian Stuart O'Grady, who has led the competition for the last 12 days. Becoming the first Australian to win the maillot vert, or indeed any jersey in the Tour, has been O'Grady's prime objective throughout the race; it has been eating away at him since two years ago, when he pushed Zabel hard until a crash at Bordeaux with three days to go.

Yesterday, for the second day in succession, the pair sprinted into the finish side by side in what is becoming their own private competition, which Zabel won with sixth to "Stuey's" seventh, 13 seconds behind the unexpected winner, Serge Baguet of Belgium.

Zabel was caught behind slower riders in the final metres, and only broke through with what O'Grady described as a "desperate manoeuvre".

On Wednesday at Sarran, 130 miles to the south, Zabel again cut O'Grady's lead by a single point after they finished eighth and ninth; the Australian is just 11 points to the good and the chances are that their personal contest will last as far as the Champs-ElysΘes on Sunday.

"It's a good, clean fight," he said yesterday. "There's a lot of mutual respect there." Not, one suspects, that that will stop them leaning on each other when push, as it were, comes to shove.

O'Grady is a few kilometres per hour slower when it comes to terminal velocity in the finish straight, but he knows that as long as Zabel does not finish more than one place ahead, he is relatively secure, so the pair ride the final kilometres of each stage like Siamese twins.

Yesterday the peloton was in curmudge-only mood, and the day's 16 escapees never gained more than five minutes; the constant chase from the Correze pinewoods into the pastureland of Limousin kept the average speed close to 29 miles per hour in the 30C heat. Against all the odds, three of the 16, Baguet, Italy's Massimiliano Lelli, and the Danish national champion Jakob Piil, fought out the finish, with the bunch hot - and pouring with sweat - on their heels.

In the final kilometres Lelli refused to share the work at the front, much to Baguet╣s anger, but the Belgian proved easily the strongest in the uphill finish. This was literally a case of the worker having his day: the 32-year-old, whose biggest win previously was a stage of the Tour of Britain in 1993, was so disillusioned with his lack of results that he took three years out to work as a roofer.