In a win that no one expected and no one was talking about, Biniam Grimy (Intermarche – Wanty) took the sprint win in Stage 3 of the 2024 Tour de France. The Eritrean has been so close so many times, but this is his stage win in the Tour.
“I’ve always been dreaming of being part of the Tour de France — but now, I can’t believe it, to win at the Tour in my second year … for me it is unbelievable,” Girmay said at the finish. “I want to thank my family, my wife, all the Eritreans and Africans. We must be proud. We are now really part of the big races. It’s our moment, our time. I just want to congratulate my whole team, because we didn’t have a victory yet [in the Tour de France]. But now is our moment.”
Casual Start
As we joined the live TV coverage, the peloton was winding along on their last stage in Italy, all together for the time. There were some earlier attacks, but all was calm at the moment. The average speed over the first three hours of the stage have been 39km/h.
While a generally flat stage, today’s route marks the longest stage of this year’s Tour, covering 230.8 km on the way from Plaisance to Turin, where the sprinters are expected to do battle at the finish. There are three categorized climbs en route to Turin – easy enough for the sprinters to manage – before the wide, flat roads of the final kilometers that will give the leadout trains plenty of room to work.
Cavendish Watch
Mark Cavendish was again all smiles this morning. He’s taking his 213th stage start, and of course going for the all-time stage win record today.
“Even if we hadn’t had a couple of hard days, it normally takes me a couple of sprints to get into it,” Cavendish said before the day’s start. “There’s better opportunities than today. But we go all in for it and see what happens. We’re one man down, so that puts us at a kind of disadvantage, to want to use guys up to pull. So we’ll see how the race unfolds. We still have a couple of kickers. The last one comes with 50km to go, 3km climb. Hopefully we don’t get a team go full gas over that. But it’s the Tour de France, anything can happen.”
In birthday news, it’s the 25th birthday of Matteo Jorgensen and the 121st anniversary of the first ever Tour de France.
The first intermediate sprint came at km 94.3, and it was Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) cranking it up to 75km/h to take the first sprint points of the day.
Though there was 73km still remaining, the young guns of the sprinter world were already making themselves known at the front of the peloton, notably the leadout men for Jasper Philipsen and Mads Pedersen.
Greiller Attacks
With a little under 67 to go, Fabian Greiller attacked and opened a modest lead, but was ultimately caught with 28km left.
15km to go and the peloton was all together once more.
With 5km remaining, speeds came up and a number of riders were being spit off the back. Mathieu Van der Poel suffered a puncture and was chasing to rejoin to help in the sprint.
3km to go and all the sprinters were in there.
Crash Mars Final Kilometers
Several riders knocked bars inside a 2km and a number of riders went down. Ultimately, Cavendish blamed the crash on keeping him out of the chance at the sprint. Israel-Premier Tech and Cofidis riders went down, and Cavendish and his Astana-Qazaqstan lead-out train were stuck behind them. “My chances were ruined by that crash,” Cavendish said after riding to his team bus.
Carapaz Into Yellow
Richard Carapaz finished in 14th place in the sprint to move into the maillot jaune. For the first 200 kilometers, Carapaz and his teammates kept their cool, rolling across the Italian countryside in the peloton, but moved to the front in the final kilos with the intent of grabbing the lead for the Ecuadorean.
“It’s a dream for me because of all the respect I have for the Tour, to wear yellow at the best race in the world. I’ve always prepared so much for this and today to enjoy this moment is huge,” Carapaz said after the stage. “We knew we had the opportunity. We knew that the finish was the first sprint of the Tour. There were many nerves and we had to be very well positioned. There were many risks like crashing and the team did such an amazing job where they left me at one kilometer to go and from there I could defend myself as well as I could, and then Marijn and I just went full into the finish line. It was spectacular.
“I worked so hard for this moment. It also means a lot to my country. There are not a lot of us in the WorldTour and I hope this helps cycling so it can grow in my country,” he added. Tomorrow is a very hard day. It’s a very hard one to defend the jersey but I will try. Every day I feel better and I feel ready to defend the jersey.”
Stage 3 Brief Results
- Biniam Grimy (Intermarche – Wanty) @ 5h 26′ 48”, B : 10”
- Francisco Gaviria (Movistar) s.t., B: 6″
- Arnaud De Lie (Lotto Dstny) s.t., B: 4″
- Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) s.t.
- Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-AlUla) s.t.
General Classification After Stage 3
- Richard Carapaz (EF Education – Easypost) @ 15h 20′ 18”
- Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) s.t.
- Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) s.t.
- Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma Lease a Bike) s.t.
- Romain Bardet (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) @ 6″, B:10″
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