With only 500 meters to go in stage 8 of the Tour de France, Tim Merlier was still behind a dozen riders as the sprinters barreled towards the Bergerac finish line. Up ahead, superstar leadout man Mathieu van der Poel was hammering away for his Alpecin-Premier Tech teammate Jasper Philipsen. Worse, behind the first seven riders on the road was a gap of about three bike lengths to the clump of riders in which Merlier found himself.
His Soudal-Quick Step teammates had worked all day to set him up for this finish, but things had gone awry as he lost ground in the final corner. Merlier would not have been the first sprinter to resign himself to defeat in that moment, with so much ground to cover in so little time. Instead, he went for it anyway.
Thirty seconds later, Merlier raised his hands to celebrate his second stage win of this year's Tour, the fifth of his career.
"In the last corner I almost crashed," he said afterward. "There was a lot of riders who were passing me, and I was thinking, 'They worked so hard for you. Don't give up.' So I tried to sprint for a top five or something. I didn't know in that moment what was possible, but I was coming in the slipstream and with so much speed. I had such high cadence, I said 'I'll give it a try, and I can pass them, and I can just keep the space until the finish. Nobody else is still fresh, they can't pass me anymore.'"
That's exactly what happened, as Merlier kept his cool, followed wheels where he could, closed the gap, and then surged clear of the whole sprint field in the blink of an eye. Runner-up Biniam Girmay (NSN) and third-placed Olav Kooij (Decathlon CMA CGM) were not particularly close in the end.
For the second straight day, the 33-year-old Belgian showed off a turn of speed none of his rivals could match. As Soudal-Quick Step sports director Iljo Keisse told Escape Collective after the finish, "In a fair and square sprint, he is the fastest."
But this particular win was also a testament to Merlier's skill at navigating traffic in a hectic finale, and his resolve to stay in the fight.
Did we do a good job with this story?
