Tour de France | Victor Campenaerts wins stage 18 in ultimate breakaway showdown
Cycling
The day everyone battled to be in the breakaway at the Tour de France. All the glory on the day was been taken by one man: Victor Campenaerts, who was in the right place at the right time all day long and managed to take an impressive victory ahead of Michal Kwiatkowski and Mattéo Vercher.
This was a day for the breakaway and everyone knew it right from the start. Hence, it took no time for dozens of riders to try their luck on the last day where a non-climber could emerge victorious. The hilly day in the Alps avoided large climbs and so it was open for many riders to succeed. In the breakaway there was a total of 36 riders.
Among them were Guillaume Martin and Steff Cras who began to threaten the Top10 later in the day as the gap grew above 10 minutes. This group included stage 17 winner Richard Carapaz, Wout van Aert and Michael Matthews among many other quality riders.
In the peloton it was a calm day all the way to the finish, with UAE Team Emirates and late in the day Israel - Premier Tech setting the pace. In front the action started with 65 kilometers to go, notably Ben Healy trying to force a small group to go up the road in the final longer ascent, unsuccessfully which also led the Irish rider to crack soon after.
Attacks were non-stop in the group as riders knew that in such a large group without meaningful climbs, 'group 2 syndrome' could prove deadly and so the first group to get a real gap off the front could go on to win the stage. This proved to be the case as Michal Kwiatkowski attacked at the summit of the final categorized climb with 38 kilometers to go and got a gap, shortly after closed by Victor Campenaerts and Mattéo Vercher of TotalEnergies. A group of five chased on including Lazkano, Neilands, Hindley, Skujins and van Aert's teammate Bart Lemmen, but neither this group or the big one had a good degree of cohesion and began to lose time to the front trio.
Going into the final 10 kilometers it looked obvious that the victory was in front. The trio did not play too many games; Vercher almost took perfect advantage of a little look-around between the other two riders but Kwiatkowski closed the gap. Campenaerts was the first to launch the sprint at the finish, from behind, and had the speed to take the victory on the final hilly day of the race. Vercher sprinted to second whilst Kwiatkowski rode in in third.
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- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
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