First sprint, first victory for Arnaud Démare: the French champion won extremely narrowly, Tuesday at Villafranca Tirrena in Sicily, the 4th stage of the Giro, now deprived of the Welshman Geraint Thomas, the winner of the Tour de France 2018. “C 'is great, luck is with me, ”said Démare, who threw his bike on the line to precede, by a tiny gap, the Slovakian Peter Sagan, already second Sunday in Agrigento.
“Even at home, I train to throw the bike,” smiled the French champion, who responded to his first meeting in the Giro, the first massive sprint of the event, after having to give a violent brake on the approach of the last two kilometers because of a dog on the edge of the road.
On the Villafranca Tirrena lungomare, away from the Aeolian islands, three riders finished almost on the same line.
Besides Démare and Sagan, the Italian Davide Ballerini joined in an atypical sprint, deprived of the Colombian Fernando Gaviria, left behind during the stage following the acceleration of Sagan's men.
Atypical?
The Australian Miles Scotson, one of the runners of the Groupama-FDJ team's “train”, relaunched strongly and made the hole at the entrance to the long finish straight (750 m).
Chased by the team of Italian Elia Viviani, he held up to 400 meters before Italian Jacopo Guarnieri started the sprint for Démare.
Démare signed the 66th French success since the creation of the Giro in 1909. His second, since he had already won last year in Modena (center-north).
But he then had to wait for the 10th stage after having missed several opportunities "for lack of confidence", he said today.
The beheaded Ineos team
Nothing like this this year: since the resumption of competitions at the end of July, the Frenchman has had successes at 29, especially in the Italian semi-classic Milan-Turin and in the French championship.
Absent from the Tour, for which his team favored Thibaut Pinot, he devoted himself to the Giro, his major objective for the season, with the support of his usual “train” (Konovalovas, Scotson, Sinkeldam, Guarnieri).
This 140-kilometer stage, the shortest of the event outside the time trial, marked the end of the Sicilian trip which had a lasting influence on the general classification led since Monday by Joao Almeida.
On Tuesday, the young Portuguese of the Deceuninck team, 22, even secured his pink jersey by taking two bonus seconds in an intermediate sprint to push Ecuadorian Jonathan Caicedo back to ... 2 seconds.
The day after his fall in Enna, caused by a container rolling on the road, Geraint Thomas left the Giro before the start of the stage in Catania.
Examinations carried out Tuesday morning detected a "small fracture without displacement in the lower part of the pelvis", according to Dr. Phil Riley, doctor of the British team.
For the Ineos team, the black series continues.
After Egan Bernal's retirement from the Tour de France, the Welshman's forfeit decapitated the British formation, the most powerful and richly endowed with the peloton, now reduced to chasing stage successes.
On Wednesday, for the first day on the continent, the Giro goes up Calabria (south), from south to north, in the 5th 225-kilometer long stage between Mileto and Camigliatello Silano.
The hilly course crosses the Valico di Montescuro (24.2 km at 5.6%) less than 12 kilometers from the finish.
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