Tim Merlier on Sunday won stage nine of the Tour de France in Chateauroux after a heroic long-range escape from Mathieu van der Poel was caught in the final kilometer.
There was no change atop the overall standings with Tadej Pogacar now holding a 54 second advantage over Remco Evenepoel in second, with French starlet Kevin Vauquelin third.
It was a second Tour win for Soudal Quick-Step sprinter Merlier this year, who was first across the line on stage three in Dunkirk.
Photo: EPA
Merlier was led in by team leader Evenepoel.
“It’s mad, we are supposed to be helping him [Evenepoel], but he’s helping us,” Merlier said.
“I need to make it through the mountains now, I won’t be any use to Remco there, but I want to help him in the other ones,” the 32-year-old said.
On a sun-drenched slog from the Chinon vineyards, Van der Poel and a teammate broke early and built up a lead of 5 minutes, 30 seconds on the flat roads to Chateauroux.
Jonas Rickaert won the combativity award for accompanying Van der Poel to within 10km of the line before slumping over his handlebars.
“I’m really happy. That was one of his [Rickaert’s] dreams, to win the combativity award and that’s why we went,” Van der Poel said.
“In the end we nearly made it, but we hadn’t expected to get that far,” he said of his 173km breakaway at an average speed of 49.9kph.
As with many heroic exploits, their epic escape was ultimately doomed to a gut-wrenching narrow failure, but with his gung-ho all-in style Van der Poel grew his Tour de France legend despite being caught with 700m to go.
The plaudits will be both his and Merlier’s.
“It’s hard to not be able to finish it off, but we put on a good show,” the Dutch rider said.
As Van der Poel was reeled in, it looked as though Jonathan Milan would win a second consecutive stage, but Merlier got ahead with 30m remaining as Milan finished second with Arnaud de Lie completing the podium.
Pogacar’s Tour de France title defense took a hit as his key teammate Joao Almeida threw in the towel two days after his nasty fall at the Mur de Bretagne, where he fractured a rib.
“It’s a big loss, he was in good shape. He’s our hero. I was suffering today, so I understand how he must have felt. Every respect to him,” the Slovenian said.
Wilyer Abreu watched the ball leave the park and tossed his bat high in the air. His Venezuela teammates streamed out of the dugout in celebration. The comeback was on and the win over the reigning World Baseball Classic (WBC) champion Japan was within reach. Japan, their 11-game WBC winning streak on the line, held a 5-4 lead in the sixth inning of Saturday’s thrilling quarter-final matchup when Abreu put his team ahead with the biggest swing of the game: a three-run shot off Hiromi Itoh that sent the loanDepot Park crowd into a passionate roar and helped seize Venezuela’s 8-5
A BREATHLESS BATTLE: France clinched the championship in a vicious back-and-forth match with England, denying Ireland the title by just a few points France won back-to-back Six Nations titles after beating England 48-46 on a last-second penalty-kick by Thomas Ramos in a thriller for the ages on Saturday. England scored their seventh try in the 77th minute and converted for 46-45. If the score held for a few more minutes, Ireland would have been crowned the champion. But France pressed yet again with 14 men, lost possession, regained it, and earned two simultaneous penalties after the fulltime siren. Captain Antoine Dupont debated with referee Nika Amashukeli where the penalty spots were. Ramos, who did not miss a goal-kick all night, finally lined up his seventh
Home runs are greeted with a celebratory shot of espresso and the donning of an Armani jacket. Victories are marked with bottles of red wine while the soaring voice of opera singer Andrea Bocelli echoes through the locker room. Welcome to baseball, Italian-style. Written off as 80-1 underdogs before the World Baseball Classic started, Italy’s fairytale tournament has carried them all the way to today’s (Taipei time) semi-finals in Miami against Venezuela. On Saturday, Italy — who scored a stunning upset of a star-studded US lineup during the pool phase — kept their unbeaten campaign alive with a nail-biting 8-6
Kimi Antonelli became Formula 1’s second-youngest race winner with a composed drive to victory for Mercedes in an eventful Chinese Grand Prix yesterday. The 19-year-old Italian was the youngest pole position starter and briefly lost the lead to Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari at the start, but retook it soon after and was in control after that. “We did it! We did it!” Antonelli shouted to his team on the radio amid laughs and whoops. It was another 1-2 finish for Mercedes to start the season as Antonelli’s teammate George Russell came through a battle with both Ferraris to finish second. Lewis Hamilton was
RSS