By now, Jumbo-Visma are winning almost by accident. On stage 19 of the Tour de France, the team’s sole objective was to ferry overall leader Jonas Vingegaard safely to the finish, with Wout van Aert himself sacrificing his chances to serve as the helmsman on the sinuous finale in Cahors.
Almost as an afterthought, the team gave Christophe Laporte the freedom the contest the finish and he decided he might as well win. His searing effort on the drag up Boulevard Gambetta carried him to stage victory, the first by a French rider on this Tour.
“This was not the plan, it was the rider who followed his instinct,” directeur sportif Merijn Zeeman admitted afterwards. “Today was just about protecting Jonas. Of course, we knew the parcours very well, and it was tricky with narrow roads, so we wanted to hit the front. You could see the sprinters’ teams have had to work really hard already and there was a lack of control and the break almost made it. But Christophe had very good legs and he used his opportunity and his instinct.”
Laporte has always had a decent turn of pace in an uphill sprint and an aptitude for short but sustained efforts, and during his lengthy tenure at Cofidis, those talents carried him to wins at races like Étoile de Bessèges and the Tour of Poitou-Charentes. Since joining switching teams last winter, those gifts have been amplified considerably and the 29-year-old’s victories are now taking place in altogether vaster auditoriums.
After landing his first WorldTour victory when he led a Jumbo-Visma one-two-three on the opening day of Paris-Nice, Laporte notched up the biggest win of his career in Cahors on Friday. As the peloton struggled to pull back a late trio of escapees on the drag to the line, Laporte channelled Beppe Saronni at Goodwood by unleashing an astonishing fucilata with 500m remaining. After catching the escapees, Laporte proceeded to blow right by them, freewheeling across the line a second clear of Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Fenix).
“The briefing was clear, the aim was to protect Jonas until 3km to go because it was a very nervous stage,” Laporte said. “We rode at the front, as we needed to do, and it was decided that we could go for the sprint after 3km to go, provided Jonas was safe and sound. With 100km to go, Wout told me he’d look after Jonas until then, so I had carte blanche to go for it in the finale.”
Laporte credits move to Jumbo
Earlier in this Tour, L’Équipe carried an interview with Zeeman in which he pushed back…
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