Tadej Pogacar beat fellow Slovenian and overall leader Primoz Roglic to win the 15th stage of the Tour de France as defending champion Egan Bernal all but abandoned his crown after a brutal failure on Sunday. 

The Colombian was dropped 13km from the finish at the top of the Col du Grand Colombier, an unforgiving 17.4-km ascent at an average gradient of 7.1 percent, and lost seven minutes 20 seconds on the line. 

Two-time runner-up and fellow Colombian Nairo Quintana also quickly lost contact with the leading group led by Roglic's Jumbo-Visma team mates, who set a frantic tempo from the bottom of the climb. 

Roglic leads Pogacar by 40 seconds with six stages remaining, with Rigoberto Uran in third at one minute 34 seconds, with Miguel Angel Lopez and Adam Yates rounding out the top five. 

"Tadej is very strong, I have to say he has great legs. My team mates did a great job today as I really wanted to win but I have to admit Tadej was slightly stronger," said Roglic, who still had the support of team mates Tom Dumoulin and Sepp Kuss with two kilometres to go. 

"Today was a tough day, Jumbo-Visma controlled the race and set super high temp. A lot of riders were dropped and I wanted to focus on the finale," said the 21-year-old Pogacar. 

The race left Lyon with 157 riders, some of whom had their dreaded nasal swabs early in the day as the final COVID-19 testing round of this Tour started, and will be concluded on the rest day on Monday. 

(With input from agencies)