Belgian sprint star Tim Merlier trebled up at the Tour de France on Thursday as he won the 12th stage in a chaotic and crash-marred dash for the line.
The Soudal-Quick Step rider edged out Dutchman Olav Kooij and fellow Belgian Jasper Philipsen to claim his third stage win of this year’s Tour, and sixth overall.
And he said this win was a bit more special because his partner Cameron and three-year-old son Jules were at the finish line to watch him.
“It gave me some motivation,” said Merlier, who brought his son with him to the winner’s podium.
“He’s still young, but maybe he’s going to remember this one later on also. We can show it later.”
It was yet another disorganised sprint made even worse when Colombian Fernando Gaviria hit the deck, bringing down several other riders, including the stage 11 winner Soren Waerenskjold.
Alpecin Premier Tech once again tried to set up Philipsen for the victory but Merlier, as he had done twice before in this 113th edition of the Tour, found a route through the traffic and powered home to take the chequered flag.
Stage five winner Kooij was pushed into second place for the second day in a row.
With no other obvious sprint stages left at the Tour, everyone was desperate to give this one a crack.
Milan Fretin tried to follow Philipsen’s sprint train but was passed by other fast-finishing riders and came home in fifth.
“I don’t think I have any regrets today. I took a chance, and at least I still managed to finish in the top five, so I can be happy,” he said.
“Today might have been my last chance on the Tour. Maybe we’ll have another opportunity on stage 17.”
‘Nice to look at’ –
Reigning champion Tadej Pogacar finished safely in the pack at the end of the 179km stage from the Magny-Cours motor racing circuit in Nevers to Chalon-sur-Saone.
He maintained his overall lead of more than three-and-a-half minutes to two-time former champion Jonas Vingegaard.
He said he was planning to keep his powder dry on Friday’s 205km-long hilly stage from Dole to Belfort ahead of back-to-back mountain tests over the weekend.
“Tomorrow is a bit (of a) weird stage, it’s very long, just one-and-a-half climbs towards the end, finish after (a) descent,” the four-time Tour winner said.
“It’s gonna be a hard day for us as a team but tomorrow we need to survive as best as possible because then Saturday and Sunday are the bigger days for the GC (general classification).
“Tomorrow we will see what happens but I think the best for us would be to save some energy for Saturday and Sunday.”
Around 25km into the stage, Baptiste Veistroffer set off on a breakaway for the third time, and for the second time completely solo.
Three riders counter-attacked and joined him after 57km but by the time he reached the final 50km, all three had dropped away.
A bunch of other counter-attacks in the final 35km saw a group of 14 go clear of an increasingly ragged peloton, but that was reeled in with 24km left.
That was a cue for numerous riders to try their luck on the rapid run-in to the finish but no group committed sufficiently to make their effort stick.
Two of the most active were American champion Quinn Simmons and his Lidl-Trek team-mate Mads Pedersen, who leads the sprinters’ green jersey competition.
“We tried something. We don’t win a sprint if we just go with the sprinter team controlling the sprint,” said Lidl-Trek’s sporting director Kim Andersen.
“We knew that would be difficult. I think it was nice to look at, no?” | AFP
