In what was ultimately a fairly simple day for the Tour de France peloton, lone breakaway rider Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility) led the race for well over 100 km before the sprinters’ teams brought the bunch to the uphill kick to the line. It was a messy finale, but the terrain was ideally suited to Intermarché-Wanty’s Biniam Girmay who calculated his sprint perfectly to out-punch Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) with half a bike length in hand.
- Jonas Abrahamsen was the focus for much of the day. The mountains classification leader was briefly joined by Stefan Bissegger and Neilson Powless near the start, but after a flurry of activity from their teammates behind as Alberto Bettiol tried in vain to propel Ben Healy into the action, the EF Education-Easypost duo dropped back to the peloton and left the Norwegian to his own devices as the sprint teams essentially brandished their fists at the peloton
- On paper, stage 8 looked like there might be opportunities for aggressive racing from the chancers in the peloton, but the likes of Lotto-Dstny and Alpecin-Deceuninck had decided it would jolly well be a sprint.
- Abrahamsen stretched his gap to over six minutes on the often narrow and twisty country roads, but his doomed attack was finally brought to an end 14 km from the finish in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.
- Once all back together, control of the peloton was shared by both GC and sprint teams as a tricky finale beckoned. There were a few sketchy moments as pinch points forced riders into the grassy verge, but everyone stayed relatively safe on the run-in.
- EF Education-EasyPost were among the teams keen to punish the heavier fast men on the rollers that led to the line, but Fabio Jakobsen (DSM-firmenich PostNL) was the only really big name to drop out the back just inside the last 7 km. Wout van Aert also slipped off the tail of the bunch, but he’d done some work on the front for his team’s GC goals rather than prepare for the sprint.
- The final kilometre was really tough and hard to manage as the road peeled up, dead straight but very much not flat. Team Cofidis launched first, Bryan Coquard ready to be dropped off, but they ran out of gas and the Frenchman was isolated early. Girmay, though, was able to use Coquard to his own advantage, launching off the wheel and into space just as Philipsen got going just behind him.
- Philipsen seemed faster out of the blocks and quickly gained ground, but Girmay had the staying power and the gearing to sustain it, surging to a confident second stage win to add to his points haul in the green jersey competition.
- Belgian national champion Arnaud De Lie (Lotto Dstny) seemed to have some decent firepower, but he was all over the place in the finale, both doing too much work too early, then picking a channel that wasn’t really there in the final kick.
Top 10 on the stage
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GC Top 10 after stage 8
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Quotes of the day:
Voice of the Tour Sebastian Piquet cued up Girmay for the kind of quote you can’t help but love: It was the perfect finish for you with that uphill kick?
Yeah, that’s why I won! … My plan was first to win one stage in the Tour de France and then to wear the jersey to win another to gain more points. Absolutely perfect.”
Girmay said in his winner’s interview.
One of Girmay’s teammates, 26-year-old German puncheur Georg Zimmermann, explained for just how long the young team had been anticipating today’s finale as he celebrated his friend’s second victory.
The first stage win came a little bit as a surprise for all of us because the flat and easy stages don’t usually fit Biniam, but today … already in meetings all the way back in the winter, we discussed this [finish], this is an ideal uphill sprint for Biniam and it’s so sweet when the whole plan pays off. That’s the story of the day.”
Zimmermann told Eurosport after the finish.
Brief analysis:
- Lidl-Trek started the Tour de France without Tao Geoghegan Hart and with an only recently recovered Giulio Ciccone as co-leader with stage hunter Mads Pedersen, but now the team races on without their fast man too. The Dane crashed hard into the barriers a few hundred metres from the finish of stage 5, injuring his left shoulder but not picking up any discernible fractures, so he was cleared to start the following stage. However, after struggling through Friday’s time trial, the decision was made to withdraw Pedersen from the Tour so he can recover for his next major goal of the Olympic Games road race on August 3rd. Lidl-Trek now morph into a motley crew of stage hunters – indeed, their absence from the sprint stages may work in the favour of future breakaways given the impetus Declercq, Stuyven, Gibbons, Bernard, Skujińš and co. had been contributing to the bunch, as Ciccone and Verona sit back and wait for the mountains.
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