Thomas Gachignard (Team TotalEnergies) won a two-up sprint to the finish line to win the opening stage at the Tour du Limousin-Périgord-Nouvelle Aquitaine.
Launching his sprint first from about 400 metres out, he held off late-race breakaway companion and runner-up Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) in La Courtine.
Gachignard leads the overall classification as the race heads into stage 2’s 174.3km race from Thiviers to the summit of Grèzes (Les Côteaux Périgourdins) on Wednesday.
The opening stage of the four-day Tour du Limousin-Périgord-Nouvelle Aquitaine was no simple affair, with a route that included three categorized ascents in the final third of the 184.6km race from Panazol to La Courtine. While the course was undulating throughout, the final climbs happened in succession over Côte de Liffaud, Côte d’Abbas-Féniers and Côte de la Croid de la Mission.
An early breakaway included Simon Guglielmi (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Pablo Lospitao (Caja Rural-Alea), Iván Cobo (Equipo Kern Pharma), Joan Albert Riera (Illes Balears Arabay), Théo Delacroix (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93) and Kenny Molly (Van Rysel Roubaix).
The riders gained nearly two minutes on the peloton as TotalEnergies and Intermarché-Wanty, but that dropped to under a minute with around 60km remaining.
They held a slim lead over the first of three climbs, Côte de Liffaud, but they were reeled back in to the main peloton on the Côte d’Abbas-Féniers and a new breakaway forming that included Geoffrey Bouchard (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Sylvain Moniquet (Cofidis), Alexandre Delettre and Thomas Gachignard (both Team TotalEnergies), Axel Mariault (CIC-U-Nantes) and Andrea Mifsud (Nice Métropole Côte d’Azur).
The seven riders extended their lead to half a minute on the roads toward the final climb, Côte de la Croix de la Mission, but with Groupama-FDJ joining the efforts at the…
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