Premiere victory for Jonathan Milan: The Italian confidently prevailed in the mass sprint with a bike length in the 8th stage of the Tour de France. Wout van Aert took second place, Kaden Groves finished third and Pascal Ackermann fourth.
Tour debutant Milan continued a very successful season with the victory on the slightly rising home stretch in Laval Espace Mayenne. For the 24-year-old it was already the seventh win this year, plus a success in team time trial. With the stage victory, Milan also takes the lead in the sprint rating of Tadej Pogacar. The Slovenian in the yellow jersey finished with the main field.
Ackermann was well positioned on the last few meters, but did not come up with the same speed as Milan and Van Aert. “Fourth, more was simply not in today, it was a club -hard finale”according to the 31-year-old from Kandel in the sports show interview. The second German sprinter in the final had a somewhat worse position than Ackermann, Phil Bauhaus had to be satisfied with twelfth place. 1.5 kilometers before the finish line, the Bocholter was still in a very good position, due to a near-grove crash “I lost everything, then it was over”he said.
Almeida with broken rib at the start
After the two previous stages with wavy profile and a demanding final, a typical flat stage was on the eighth day of the tour. It led over 171 kilometers through the Brittany from Saint-Méen-Le-Grand to Laval Espace Mayenne. The route planners had shown only a mountain ranking of the fourth category 16 kilometers before the finish. There it went over the highest elevation of the day with 105 meters.
At the start at 1:10 p.m. it was very warm at just under 29 degrees. Also there was Pogacar’s most important helper Joao Almeida, who had fallen heavily in the final of the previous day and suffered a break.
No testing after the start
After the two strenuous days in Normandy and Brittany, not much happened at the beginning of the stage. There was not even an exempt test, the field was strolled. Many professionals certainly wanted to save strength. This was also true for the classification drivers, for whom it will be really serious on Monday with the first mounting stage.
Tadej Pogacar (VL), Jonathan Milan and Remco Evenepoel at the 8th tour stage
The tenth stage through the central massif is extremely challenging at 4,450 meters of altitude, it goes up and down constantly. After his victory at the Mûr-de-Brittany, Pogacar might have already had Monday in mind when he was looking at the weekend spoke of “resting days”.
But it won’t be a stroll stage. Intermarché-Wanty and Lidl-Trek didn’t want to take it easy and started the pace work. With Milan and Biniam Girmay, both teams had promising candidates in their ranks. After an hour, the average stamp was 41.7 km/h – and that with a slight headwind.
At the top of the field, the German Jonas Rutsch in the Wanty jersey for Girmay and Quinn Simmons in the jersey of the American master for Milan did work.
Sportschau Tourfunk, 12.07.2025 7:14 p.m.
Result service by radio for Pogacar
There was a curiosity at the radio traffic of the UAE team to listen – there is probably only a flat stage. Pogacar got the ear that his girlfriend Urska had eighth place at the Giro d’Ialia. This was followed by the triple tour winner’s question after their placement in the overall classification. And the Slovenian wanted to know even more, asked about the stage result of the parallel tour of Austria. Here, too, there was good news for Pogacar: Teammate Isaac del Toro had won the fourth stage.
The closed field then reached the intermediate sprint 85 kilometers before the finish. Milan won easily and checked 20 points in front of Tim Merlier, Anthony Turgis and Girmay. And after the sprint rating, there were actually the first outliers. The two Frenchmen Mathieu Burgaudeau and Matteo Vercher (both total energy) tried it – but the duo could not drive out more than a minute.
Founding moment for New
There was a moment of terror 18 kilometers before the finish. After a fall, Jonas Rutsch was briefly motionless on the ground, but could continue. The 1.97 meter tall giant fell in the back of the field. A rubio behind it could not avoid and drove over the German and also went down. In the end, the end was the last with almost 14 minutes behind.
The outlier duo still reached the only mountain rating, Burgaudeau scored the point here. Versch was put off the field almost ten kilometers before the finish line. As a reward, Burgaudeau and Verschchen were the award as the most combative driver of the day. At high speed, we continued towards the stage.
9. stage: Cavendish won three times in Châteauroux
The 9th stage on Sunday is also a flat stage. It goes over 170 kilometers from Chinon to Châteauroux. Châteauroux was already the destination of the tour four times – and Mark Cavendish won three times.