Description
July 7, 2024
111th Tour de France 2024 🇫🇷 (2.UWT) ME – Stage 9 – Troyes – Troyes : 199 km
The 111th edition of the Tour de France starts in Florence,
Show more...
July 7, 2024
111th Tour de France 2024 🇫🇷 (2.UWT) ME – Stage 9 – Troyes – Troyes : 199 km
The 111th edition of the Tour de France starts in Florence, Italy, on Saturday, June 29 and ends three weeks later in Nice on Sunday, July 21. It is the first time the Tour starts in Italy. The Tour de France will not finish in Paris as it usually does. Instead, the finish is in Nice to avoid the preparations for the 2024 Olympics Games, which begin just a week later in Paris. The 2024 Tour de France route is 3,492km long with some 52,320 metres of overall elevation, passing through four nations – Italy, San Marino, France, and Monaco. It features two individual time trials for a total of 59km, four mountain-top finishes, a series of gravel sections on stage 9, and a final hilly time trial to Nice.
It was a good day for France, as Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) was the fastest in a breakaway sprint to win the highly anticipated gravel stage 9 of the Tour de France.
Turgis was part of an all-day breakaway of 12 riders that set off inside the first 50km of then nearly 200km stage into Troyes. The breakaway caught late-race attacker Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek) under the flamme rouge and raced a tactical final few hundred metres as they sprinted for the stage win.
Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) led the group into the final metres where Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) was the first to open up his sprint.
Turgis and Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) were quick to react as the Frenchman stormed over the line to take his first WorldTour victory with Pidcock finishing second and leaving Gee to settle for third place on the day.
“It’s a year since I’m on the Tour. At the start of the Tour I always saw the cameras for the wins on different riders and always the big favourites. I have always believed that if I go to race, I go to try and win,” Turgis said.
“I’ve never won on the WorldTour. But now, to win on the WorldTour at the Tour de France? It’s incredible. It’s not any stage, it’s one of the key stages. Stages like this are incredible.”
Of the original 12-rider breakaway, only seven succeeded to the finish line: Turgis, Pidcock, Gee and Healy, along with Stuyven, Alex Aranburu and Javier Romo (both Movistar), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan).
As the breakaway showed signs of fatigue in the final kilometres, Stuyven launched a late-race attack over the final gravel sector, Saint-Parres-aux-Tertres, committing to an all-out solo effort, but the Belgian was caught with one kilometre to go.
“We have had a big day. When I saw this group, I thought we could go a long way on this stage. There were a lot of big champions,” Turgis said.
“I anticipated Jasper would have a big attack. I was going to try to follow but not do too much; in the back of my head, I was thinking: Don’t do too much and stay calm. If it comes back together, I could win the sprint.”
It was a chaotic day for the overall contenders, with multiple searing attacks coming from yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep).
However, there were few changes to the top 10 in the general classification, with Pogačar maintaining his hold on the yellow jersey.
He is leading the race by 33 seconds ahead of runner-up Evenepoel, 1:15 over Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and 1:36 over Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe), who all finished in the reduced group that crossed the finish line 1:46 behind the breakaway.
“It was fun riding. I was not expecting that the gravel would be so gravely. There were a lot of rocks and sand, and it was difficult to ride on. It was quite fun, but I would make that loop the opposite way so that we would have a tailwind to the finish because [the headwind] was not in favour of our attacks today,” Pogačar said.
“I was watching Remco, and he was watching me. We couldn’t go together, but it was still a fun day, and tomorrow is finally a rest day. I had great legs. I must say that today was one of the hardest of the Tour and I felt good. I can’t wait to start the proper mountains.”
Results :