When Bahrain Victorious lined up at the start of the Tour de France boasting a lineup of GC contenders Jack Haig and Damiano Caruso and past stage winners Dylan Teuns, Matej Mohorič, and Luis León Sánchez, few would’ve expected third-year pro Fred Wright to end the Tour as their most impressive performer.
That’s no disrespect to the Briton, who turned 23 in June and who scored a top 10 at the Tour of Flanders back in April. Rather he was expected by most to fulfil a similar domestique role to the one he occupied last July.
Instead, the Londoner has now come close to a stage win at the Tour three times, the latest being his breakaway attempt on stage 19 to Cahors.
The end of the breakaway during the blisteringly quick stage came at 35km from the line, before the final throes of Quinn Simmons’ attacking was replaced four kilometres later by Wright, Simmon’s Trek-Segafredo teammate Jasper Stuyven, and Alexis Gougeard (B&B Hotels-KTM).
The trio were never allowed more than 30 seconds on the lumpy run to the uphill sprint finish, but they pushed it almost all the way to the end, with Wright the last man standing as stage winner Christophe Laporte (Jumbo-Visma) swept past 500 metres from the finish.
“I mean, they were asking ‘oh are you disappointed?’, but you know, I was just trying to go, just trying to see what I could do,” Wright told Cyclingnews as he rode up the hill past the finish line to his team bus.
“Like, I’m not going to win the bunch kick against Jasper [Philipsen, second on the stage] and these guys. So, I saw the opportunity and I went for it and didn’t look back until the end. But yeah, it wasn’t to be, man.”
Wright, along with Stuyven and Gougeard, took advantage of a lull in proceedings after the early break had been caught inside the final fifth of the 188.3km stage, which was run at an intense average of over 48kph.
Tadej Pogačar had been among a cluster of riders to try something on the hills in the interim, but it was Gougeard who provoked the attack that stuck out front, with Wright and then Stuyven tacking on the back before the trio pushed on ahead of the peloton.
“Well, Gougeard went first, and I was like ‘ooh OK, people are trying to get away from the sprinters here’ on this last climb,” Wright said. “I was a bit far back, but sometimes that’s better and the space opened up and I just went for it. I think when it’s a bit of a climb the sprinter’s teams aren’t keen to really press on.
“So, they sort of gave us the gap and then,…
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