Steels celebrates victory

The Belgian beat German pair Erik Zabel and Marcel Wust in another fierce sprint to the line, to pick up his second stage win and retain the green points jersey.

Two riders, the German Jens Voigt of the Credit Agricole team, and Memorycard rider Michael Blaudzun broke away for much of the stage, but the pair were caught with 10km to go

Although the pair grabbed sprint bonuses during the 161.5km run, neither could gain enough time to threaten Millar's lead.

The Cofidis rider was relieved that he had held onto a slender advantage at the head of the race.

"I didn't want to lose the lead after all the hard work my team's done over an incident like that," he said afterwards.

Millar had to sprint just to get onto the group containing Lance Armstrong, the defending champion, who is just four seconds adrift of the Briton.

However he did lose time to Laurent Jalabert, who is now six seconds behind and Jan Ullrich - a further two seconds adrift.

Millar retains Yellow

But the 23-year-old Scot guaranteed he will begin tomorrow's stage - a team time trial - in yellow for the third day in a row.

Ullrich's Telekom team, the ONCE squad of Jalabert and Armstrong's US Postal outfit are among the favourites for this stage.

Unless Millar's Cofidis team rise to the challenge he is likely to lose the jersey he has enjoyed for the past two days.