The yellow jersey of Tour de France leader is firmly back on defending champion Tadej Pogacar’s shoulders, after the Slovene outsprinted rival Jonas Vingegaard to the win on stage seven in Mur-de-Bretagne.
Mathieu van der Poel had been in yellow by a margin of just one second after being in the breakaway on stage six, but the Dutchman could not replicate his heroics on the punishing Mur-de-Bretagne climb in 2021, when he attacked twice to take the overall lead and his maiden Tour stage win.
Instead, it was his Classics rival Pogacar who distanced him, with team UAE Emirates-XRG setting an infernal pace up the final slope to whittle the field down to a select group of climbers, including Remco Evenepoel, local boy Kevin Vauquelin, and Briton Oscar Onley, who ultimately finished third.
But as has already happened multiple times in this race no-one could live with the acceleration of Pogacar bar Vingegaard himself, and as the Slovenian attacked in the final few hundred metres he held off the two-time champion for his 101st career victory and 19th at La Grande Boucle.
Pogacar said afterwards that he was hoping for a couple of “easy days” in the saddle, and after a challenging few days in Normandy and Brittany, the sprinters finally get another chance on stage eight. It’s one of just five friendly days for the fast men in this year’s route, a 174km ride from Saint-Meen-le-Grand in Brittany to Laval in the Pays de la Loire region.
And even this one has a spanner in the works in the form of an uphill drag to the line, the sort of finish Mark Cavendish would roundly object to.
It means that the likes of Tim Merlier, winner of stage three, may find themselves struggling to power past the more versatile sprinters.
There’s also the matter of a categorised climb in the final 20km, the Cote de Nuille-sur-Vicoin, which at 3.8% for 900m is short but steep enough to punish the pure fast men and ensure they waste some energy ahead of the final.
Other than that it’s pretty much pan-flat, and with the sprinters’ teams no doubt controlling things all day, we may see no riders bother with a breakaway at all. Let’s hope they do, because it’ll be a long day otherwise.
Route map and profile
Start time
Stage eight’s neutralised start is at 1.10pm local time (12.10pm), with the finish time expected to be around 5.15pm local time (4.15pm BST).
Prediction
This may be one for the punchier sprinters given the uphill finish, so in truth it could be anyone’s game. Wout van Aert hasn’t looked on song so far in this Tour and his primary role is support for Jonas Vingegaard, but if he’s feeling up for it, he could do well. Marijn van den Berg can sprint but has been nowhere in the two previous sprint stages; Biniam Girmay doesn’t look to be on the sparkling form of last year but was second on stage one.
The green jersey of Jonathan Milan is an absolute powerhouse but might struggle on the cat-four climb, but if his team protect him and get him back at the front, he might be the best-placed of the fast men to haul himself over the uphill drag.
