Italy’s Jonathan Milan won a crash-marred finale to stage 17 of the Tour de France in lashing rain on Wednesday, extending his lead in the sprint points race.
Overall leader Tadej Pogacar and his closest rival Jonas Vingegaard (4min 15sec behind) finished safely despite a mass fall 800m from the finish line at Valence at the foot of the Alps.
On the rain-slick roads at Valence once one rider had fallen his interminable slide across the tarmac sent riders flying like skittles leaving only 10 to contest the sprint.
This was a second stage win for Milan, who won Italy’s first stage since 2019 on stage eight. The 24-year-old Lidl Trek rider now has 312 points, and is in a powerful position to win the battle for the green jersey in Paris as Pogacar is second at 240 with only two possible sprints left at 50pts each.
As the remaining 164 riders embarked from the sleepy Provence village of Bollene, the collective will of the peloton made for a slow approach of the Alps.
Billed as a sprinters stage on an unusually mild (22C) day the riders were also spared the 50kph winds that had been forecast.
But the rain deprived the stage a full bunch sprint due to the horrid fall. The three massive climbs culminating with the ascent to the 2304m altitude Col de la Loze on stage 18 will sort the wheat from the chaff on Thursday’s Queen stage.
While Friday’s hellishly designed five mountains of madness on stage 19 sound the final call for any pretender to knock Pogacar off his high perch.
Unless that is the three ascents of the cobbled roads to the Sacre Coeur Basilica in old Montmartre descend into chaos on Sunday. Milan prevailed in a 10-man sprint after the peloton was held up behind a massive crash with just one kilometre to go as riders went down on slippery roads in a rainy finish in southeastern France.
Eritrean Biniam Girmay was attended to by race doctors.
“I’m really happy and without words, I have to say. After surviving (the ascent to the Mont Ventoux on Tuesday) I didn’t survive alone,” said Milan, who holds the green jersey for the points classification.
“I survived all this with the help of my teammates. I really have to practice this because without all this I would not be here. Maybe I would have already dropped in one of the climbs (of the day).
“So, with the help every single day of my teammates, we achieved this result. Today was a really tough stage ... We controlled it from the beginning, of course, with the help of some other teams. But they helped me also when I dropped. In the first climb, in the second one, they really did a good pace.”
Frenchmen Quentin Pacher and Mathieu Burgaudeau as well as Jonas Abrahamsen of Norway and Italian Vincenzo Albanese broke away early but stood little chance against the collective power of the sprinters’ teams.
With the peloton breathing down their necks, Abrahamsen went solo with 11km remaining, only to be reined in 4.3km from the line.
Thursday’s 18th stage is a brutal mountain trek between Vif and the Col de la Loze, one of the most feared ascents in the Tour de France. — Agencies
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