Since Chris Boardman's dramatic crash on Monday, the yellow jersey has been on a different pair of shoulders every day, and yesterday the Briton's young Australian team-mate Stuart O'Grady regained the lead for Boardman's GAN team.

The 24-year-old from Adelaide, who won the Pru Tour of Britain in May, had spent a sleepless Tuesday night after coming within three seconds of the race lead when he rode into Lorient in the winning escape of nine riders. "I was pretty depressed because I knew an opportunity like that doesn't come up often," he admitted.

However, he rode out of Plouay yesterday morning knowing he had to win only one intermediate sprint during the fourth stage to become the first Australian to take the yellow jersey since Phil Anderson in 1982. And the first sprint of the stage at the village of Plumelec fell to him after 38 rolling Breton miles, and he increased his lead over the man defending the jersey, the Dane Bo Hamburger, to nine seconds. He won the second sprint 25 miles later.

Coming into the finish in Cholet, all that O'Grady had to do was stay upright to collect the golden fleece. But the inevitable `chute' on a right-angle bend two kilometres from home put him on the deck and his final sprint was a long and nervous one. Fortunately, neither Hamburger nor the other man in contention for the race lead, the American national champion George Hincapie, had made it into the little group of sprinters who fought out the stage finish a few seconds ahead of the peloton, with O'Grady on its shirt-tails.

"This has been my dream since I started cycling. It's very special to be the first since Phil Anderson. I'm a happy man," said O'Grady, who sparkled in the intermediate sprints on only his second appearance in the event.

The Festina manager Bruno Roussel then disappeared with gendarmes for questioning about last week's customs seizure of banned drugs, and his team's hotel was searched.