Winning three stages in one Tour de France is a rare feat in itself but for a cyclist who is neither a sprinter, a climber, a time-trial specialist nor the eventual overall winner the achievement is a collector's item. According to Tour officials it has happened only twice since the second World War; yesterday the Dutchman Erik Dekker made it three.

The 30-year-old is merely a strong all-rounder with a sense of adventure, who has tried repeatedly to take just one stage in Tours past. Having already achieved what he came here for twice over, yesterday's nail-bitingly close finish left him dazed and tearful.

At Villeneuve-sur-Lot, Dekker won alone due to his own freshness while at Revel he stayed out in front for 125 miles, and, happily, took with him a Colombian, Santiago Botero, who cannot sprint.

Yesterday's win was a jigsaw whose pieces fell randomly and uncannily into place. The stage - brief, fast, and lacking major climbs after the second category Col des Mosses - was destined to be a mass sprint, but only the Deutsche Telekom team of Erik Zabel was willing to take up the chase behind a nine-rider breakaway.

A dragging climb broke the legs of Zabel's tiring team-mates. There were corners galore, and the Dutchman sprinted into a right-hander, sensing that the front of the peloton would ease and let him go, which they did. A plunge back to the lakeside followed, with so much road furniture - including a row of trees - that Lance Armstrong himself decided to lead, presumably feeling that if anyone was going to fall off, they could do it without endangering him.

Into the finish, Dekker's companion, the Belgian Mario Aerts, made no attempt to bluff, but shared the pace, while Zabel's one remaining team-mate, Alexandr Vinokourov, slowed up just too far from the line, leaving the German - heading seamlessly for a record fifth win in the points competition, but has not won a stage since 1997 - with just two bikes' lengths too much to do.

Rather curiously, the finish was actually visible from the start across Lake Leman in Evian but that did not encourage Marco Pantani or Alex Zulle. Pantani had a funny tummy after his efforts of Tuesday, and returned to Rimini, while Zulle is a shadow of the rider who finished second in 1995 and 1999, and climbed off once the race reached his native Switzerland.