Tour de France 2023 Stage 8

photo credits @ ASO

Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) won stage 8 of the Tour de France today, beating Jasper Philipsen and Wout van Aert in an uphill finish in Limoges.

Despite today’s hilly route that favored the puncheurs over the sprinters, the peloton came together during the final 5 kilometers, morphing into a sprint finale that saw teams and their respective sprinters vying for position.

While Matteo Trentin and Christophe Laporte were fast at work delivering van Aert to the front, Mathieu van der Poel and Philpsen were quick to mark their move. But, it was Pedersen who found himself in the best position during the final kilometer.

Philipsen initially latched onto Pedersen’s wheel, but the Belgian rider was unable to match his Danish rival’s turn of speed during the final 100 meters, while Dylan Groenewegan saw his third place snatched up by a resurgent charge from van Aert.

However, the real drama of the day involved the abandonment of Mark Cavendish following a crash with 60 kilometers to go, which saw any hope of the British rider surpassing the record of 34 stage victories in the French Grand Tour that he holds jointing with Eddy Merckx evaporate.

Meanwhile, another crash towards the end of the stage saw Simon Yates (Jayco AlUla) and Mikel Landa (Bahrain-Victorious) distanced, with the duo losing 47 seconds on their GC rivals.

“We didn’t know this morning if it would be a breakaway or sprint,” Pedersen said post-stage. “But it looked like that the sprinter teams didn’t want it to be a breakaway day so we stayed calm and, man the boys did a perfect lead-out day and even with the long sprint I still had the legs to finish it off.

“I tried a few times but I realized that they wouldn’t let us go so after that I just hung on and tried to save some energy. When we passed I knew I won, but oh man it was a long sprint and this uphill kick was really painful,” he continued. “I was this close to sitting down with 50 meters to go, but I think Jasper [Philipsen] had to do a pretty good sprint from behind and make it that close. [It was a] tough one, but it doesn’t matter if you win with two metres or one centimeter.”

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