Française de Jeux's Sandy Casar made amends for his narrow loss to Cedric Vasseur last week by taking a breakaway victory in stage 18 of the Tour de France.

The Frenchman proved the strongest of a quartet that had been in front all day, sprinting clear of Axel Merckx, Laurent Lefevre and Michael Boogerd while Tom Boonen led home the peloton 8 minutes 34 seconds later.

Yellow jersey Alberto Contador finished in the second part of the peloton, and saw his lead in the overall standings over Cadel Evans cut by three seconds to one minute 50 seconds.

After a series of unsuccessful attacks at the start of the stage, Lefevre (Bouygues Telecom) and Casar attacked on the Côte de Salvezou, and were quickly joined by Frederick Willems (Liquigas) and Boogerd (Rabobank).

Keen to take his first ever stage win in the Tour de France in the last year of his professional career, T-Mobile's Merckx hared off from the peloton in pursuit of the lead quartet.

Up the road, the second canine collision of the Tour took place, as a stray dog ran out into the road, causing Willems to crash and taking Casar with him. While Casar was soon back up on his bike, Willems took far longer to recover, and was eventually caught by the peloton.

The incident played into the hands of Merckx, who was able to join Casar and work with the Frenchman to reach the duo out in front.

With none of the teams in the peloton bothered about taking the stage to a mass sprint, the quartet were given a free reign and built a lead that grew to almost 18 minutes. Seeing Mikel Astarloza's place in the top ten of the general classification under threat from Boogerd, the Euskaltel finally stirred life into the pack with 25 kilometres to go, and the time gap between the two groups came tumbling.

Aware he was unlikely to prevail in a sprint, Lefevre launched a huge attack six kilometres from home, and Boogerd was forced to dig deep to close the sizeable gap the Frenchman created.

Casar then took advantage of a traffic island to burst clear three kilometres from home, only to be caught in the final kilometre with Boogerd again having led the chase.

The Frenchman would not be denied though, and moved clear of his three rivals over the last 150 metres to take his first stage win in the Tour.

Eurosport