photo credits @Le Tour
Third sprint was the charm for Jonathan Milan, who powered to victory in Laval to claim his maiden stage win in the Tour de France. Lidl-Trek’s powerhouse not only raised his arms in triumph for the first time, he also ended Italy’s longest drought in the history of the race. 113 stages had passed since Vincenzo Nibali’s success in Val Thorens (stage 20 of the Tour 2019), which corresponds to the emergency number for the police in Italy.
Meanwhile, Wout Van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) completed the stage top 3, with Mathieu Burgaudeau and Matteo Vercher (Total Energies) sharing the “combativity” award as recognition of their grit.
Race Highlights
After a couple of explosive stages in perfect weather conditions, the Tour de France 2025 returned to a flat stage between Saint-Méen-le-Grand (Louison Bobet’s hometown).
Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) and Jonas Rutsch (Intermarché-Wanty) quickly took the reins to drive the bunch at 41 km/h en route to the intermediate sprint set in Vitré. As usual, Milan (Lidl-Trek) was the fastest on the line, with the Italian powerhouse has claiming 112 of his 142 points in intermediate sprints, after he got the better of Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step), Anthony Turgis (Total Energies) and Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty).
After the intermediate sprint, Burgaudeau (Total Energies) upped the pace, while Simmons was keen to mark his move. But, the French attacker went again at 90km mark, this time with a teammate Matteo Vercher.
From there, the two riders opened a gap of 1 minute as they went through Ballots.
However, their gap fell to 40 seconds over the only climb of the day, the Côte de Nuillé-sur-Vicoin 16.4km to go.
With 13km to go, Burgaudeau jettisoned Vercher, but he was eventually reined in a further 9km.
The pace remained high all the way to the slightly rising finish in Laval, where Milan displayed his raw power to seize the stage honors by a bike-length.
There was no change at the top of the general classification, where Pogacar leads by 54 seconds from Remco Evenepoel, with Kevin Vauquelin third ahead of Jonas Vingegaard, who is one minute 17 seconds off yellow.
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