Adam Yates held on to his overall lead in the Tour de France after he safely negotiated a tense second stage, the longest of the 2023 Tour, from Vitoria-Gasteiz to San Sebastian, won by French rider Victor Lafay.
Lafay, already the surprise package of the Tour’s opening stages, took his Cofidis team’s first Tour success for 15 years after breaking clear of the race favourites in the final kilometre of the stage. The 27-year-old from Lyon, now placed fourth overall and already one of the best performers in Saturday’s first stage to Bilbao, frustrated the best laid plans of a bitterly disappointed Wout Van Aert of the Jumbo-Visma team.
“I just went out there and did everything I could,” Lafay said. “Yesterday I was a bit frustrated, but today, to be there at the end, that’s amazing. I knew there would be attacks towards the end and I thought I could do something. I just said to myself: ‘Go for it.’”
As in Saturday’s opening stage, a select group, including UAE Emirates leader Tadej Pogacar and overnight race leader Yates, locked horns with defending champion Jonas Vingegaard towards the top of the final climb, the Jaizkibel.
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Mindful of how close his rivalry with Jumbo-Visma leader Vingegaard might be, Pogacar targeted the eight-second bonus available, but after winning the sprint to the top against the 2022 champion and extending his margin over him to 11 seconds, he then accelerated into the mist-shrouded descent with the Dane in his slipstream.
But Vingegaard, aware that his teammate Van Aert was in hot pursuit in the group behind, refused to assist the Slovenian and they were reeled in by their pursuers with 12km to race.
Although several riders, including Adam Yates’s UAE Emirates teammate Matteo Trentin, crashed in conditions that ranged from sunshine to showers, the Lancastrian was relieved to retain the race lead. “There was a lot of stress in the bunch, wet roads and a lot of road furniture,” he said. “We had a little bit of bad luck with Matteo crashing. In the end we set up Tadej for the bonus seconds and in the final I think we did a good job.
“Tomorrow’s a little easier on paper, but you never know with the Tour. Every day is super-hard, super-technical, it’s not just easy to go to the finish and keep yellow. We’ll see what happens.”
The main break of the day was animated by American Neilson Powless of the EF Education EasyPost team, a past winner of the San Sebastian Classic, and Norwegian veteran Edvald Boasson Hagen of the TotalEnergies team. But as the pair entered the final 40km Boasson Hagen faded and Powless pursued the move alone. Eventually though, the rapidly-gaining peloton, led by Vingegaard’s Jumbo-Visma team, chewed him up and spat him out well before the top of the Jaizkibel.
But it was a better day for the Ineos Grenadiers team, with Tom Pidcock taking fourth in the sprint and Egan Bernal in the front group at the finish, although the British team do not yet have any riders placed in the top 10.
It was another tough day, however, for Mark Cavendish, of the Astana Qazaqstan team, who was again distanced by the succession of short sharp climbs. The 38-year-old is hoping for better in Monday’s expected sprint finish in Bayonne. “Hopefully it is (a sprint),” Cavendish said. “They ride hard on the climbs to control it (the race). They just look at the numbers. All the sprinters are on the back saying, ‘calm down!’ Hopefully we can have a nice bunch sprint.”
