Tour de France 2022 – Laporte ends French drought with Van Aerts help

Laporte finally secured the first stage win by a Frenchman in this 109th edition of the ‘Grand Boucle’ on the third to last day of the Tour.

“I still can’t believe it. I’m super happy. The team trusted me today. Wout told me today during the race that I would get a free ride in the final,” said the day’s winner: “We made sure of it that Jonas (Vingegaard) can safely go to the last three kilometers and then I did a very, very long sprint.”

Laporte’s teammate Vingegaard easily crossed the finish line in the peloton.

Third place in Cahors after 188 kilometers was Italian Alberto Dainese (Team DSM) ahead of French champion Florian Senechal (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) and, somewhat surprisingly, Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates).

Shortly after the start, a quintet of escapees formed around German champion Nils Politt (Bora – hansgrohe). The group was strong, but in the peloton the top sprinter teams took control and never let the lead grow to more than a minute and a half.

After around 65 kilometers there were only 15 seconds left on the clock and Politt dropped back. His four companions, however, accelerated and moved a little further away to around a minute again.

Sprinter teams keep breakaways on a short leash

With this lead, the quartet continued for a long time, while at the back of the main field Alpecin-Deceuninck, BikeExchange-Jayco, DSM, Lotto Soudal and TotalEnergies each controlled the gap with one rider.

53 kilometers before the finish, Quinn Simmons (Trek-Segafredo) attacked in the leading group at the first mountain prize in the medieval town of Lauzerte and shortly afterwards he was on his own. The American was still the only leader for almost 20 kilometers with a lead of around 25 seconds, but was then caught in the second and last climb.

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) briefly created an interesting moment when he attacked. But second place overall was immediately brought back into the peloton by Wout Van Aert (Jumbo – Visma), who then formed another trio with Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious) Alexis Gougeard (B&B Hotels – KTM) and Jasper Stuyven (Trek – Segafredo) solved. They gained a half-minute lead with 20 kilometers to go, but the sprinter teams went full throttle and didn’t let them go any further.

The trio came anyway, also because the route in the final was very technical and many roundabouts waited until the final kilometer.

However, the sprinter teams had kept the gap small early on and in the final, Wout Van Aert gave his all for his regular helper Laporte in the wind to narrow the gap to five seconds.

Shortly before the 1,000 meter mark, Laporte jumped out of the field to the front of the three, breathed on their rear wheels and then launched a long uphill sprint with 400 meters to go, which nobody could counter.

Wright ended up finishing stage 18 as the best of the three breakaways. scored.