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.
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