Credit Agricole were last out on the 67km course for the fifth stage and finished a full 31 seconds ahead of second-placed ONCE, the acknowledged masters of the time trial.

The win means that Credit Agricole riders now occupy the top three positions in the overall standings.

O'Grady, who has a 26-second advantage over German Jens Voigt with American Bobby Julich one second further back in third place, was delighted with his squad's efforts.

"It's great, great. What a team!" he said. "Everyone in the team should get a yellow jersey for their efforts.

"We're not a super-strong team but we showed that we work well as a collective.

"We finished fourth in last year's team time trial in St Nazaire and our objective going into today was just to get a similar result," said the Australian, who has been in yellow since Tuesday.

"I knew the race would be tough today because of the wind and we were going up against some powerful teams.

"We were just looking to lose no more than a minute on the winners but this will spur us on to better things."

Festina finished in third place, with Lance Armstrong's US Postal team back in fourth place one minute and 26 seconds behind Credit Agricole.

The American team recovered from a crash late on when Roberto Heras and Christian Vandevelde caught each other's wheels.

Armstrong, the Tour winner in 1999 and 2000, is now back in 15th place one minute and 53 seconds behind O'Grady.

Telekom trouble

But there was much worse news for the man considered to be Armstrong's main rival for overall victory, the 1997 winner Jan Ullrich.

His Deutsche Telekom team, who were among the favourites for the stage, finished seventh, one minute and 50 seconds behind.

He has now dropped back to 19th on general classification two minutes and 20 seconds behind the leader.

The stage also marked a change in the fortunes of Briton David Millar.

His Cofidis team were first to leave the start and posted a challenging time to finish eighth overall.

However, Millar remains in last place, over 47 minutes behind the leader as he struggles to recover from a fall in the prologue time trial.