Cycling: Dutch clean sweep brings Bastille Day humiliation

Kroon takes stage victory as home riders falter in breakaway while Armstrong reveals concern about threat posed by Gonzalez

A trio of Dutchmen collectively steamrollered any French dreams of a local win on 14 July by sweeping the first three places in yesterday's 217-kilometre stage of the Tour, with the victory going a little-known 25-year-old from the Netherland's southern provinces, Karsten Kroon.

Just to rub salt into wounded national pride, France's chances of hitting the jackpot were mathematically higher than they had been in all of the Tour's first week when it became clear that the move would make it to the finish because they had three riders in the break-out's total of seven.

However, the host nation's hopes rested on the shoulders of three riders, Franck Renier, Stéphane Auge and Sebastian Hinault – well-respected as domestiques but when it comes to the cut-and-thrust tactics of small-break finishes, almost as green as the dense Britanny brocage that lined much of Sunday's route.

Furthermore, the presence in the break not only of Kroon, but also of his team-mate Erik Dekker – nicknamed the "Flying Dutchman" in honour of four Tour stage wins taken in the teeth of the fast men – not to mention the equally doughty 2000 Paris-Roubaix winner, Servais Knaven, hardly augured well. True to form, Dekker opened up the late attacks from the group of seven some 25 kilometres from the finish in Plouay, last used in cycling's 2000 World Championships. But even when he dropped behind from the break, apparently exhausted, it was Raivis Belohvosciks, a Latvian, who seemed the strongest.

Despite being outnumbered by Dutch and Frenchmen in the break by three to one, the rider from Riga launched no less than eight attacks as the race wound its way past huge bracken patches and over the final fourth category climb of Côte of Tyr-Marrec.

Rather than split the seven, as he had clearly hoped, Belohvosciks caused the break's collective resolve to harden and – after Dekker had, equally unexpectedly, managed to return to the group at the last minute – the move reached the final kilometre still together and with the Dutch in complete control.

The two Rabobank riders, Dekker and Kroon, began a joint final charge for the line which left Knaven bewildered. Trying to respond to Dekker's attack on one side of the road, he hammered the handlebars in frustration as another bright orange jersey, belonging to Kroon, whizzed across the downhill finish line ahead of him on the far side of the tarmac.

Not that this mattered much to the French. The contrast to last year's Bastille Day success, where the veteran Laurent Jalabert upheld national pride with a lone win at Colmar, could hardly be stronger, particularly given that Britanny is considered a French cycling heartland.

However, Kroon had his own special motivation. Four days ago his best friend's partner died in her sleep from heart trouble and the Rabobank rider, who has just one victory in his four-year-career, promised to take a stage in her memory. Needless to say, the winner's bouquet of flowers have been sent on to her family in the Netherlands.

As for the peloton, it had a thankfully crash-free ride through deepest Britanny, with the race leader Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano's ONCE-Eroski squad never really forcing the pace. The Basque was probably thinking more about today's 52-kilometre race against the clock, where Lance Armstrong is widely expected to take his first important step towards a fourth consecutive win.

It is probably symbolic of what most of the media think of Gonzalez de Galdeano's chances of defeating Armstrong that he received a grand total of two questions in the post-race press conference.

Looking relaxed and confident despite coming close to crashing on Saturday, Armstrong held court to a small group of journalists the same evening – who had rather more questions for the Texan – but none the less seems to take Gonzalez seriously.

"He could beat me by 30 seconds. Then he'd have a minute's lead and the race would be interesting. Then we would have to be aggressive," Armstrong pronounced, his use of the first person plural making him sound disturbingly like a scientist intrigued by his discovery of some new – if ultimately harmless – form of cell life.

"He [Armstrong] is the favourite," Gonzalez insisted, although his second place in the Tour's last race against the clock in 2001 and victory in the Spanish national time trial championships a fortnight ago has given rise to speculation he could just turn the tables on the Texan.

Nor can Britain's David Millar be discounted. His leg injuries caused by a mid-week crash appear to be healing faster than expected, and the Scot is talking of a top-five placing today.