Tour de France Stage 9 preview: Route today as sprinters head for ‘Cavendish City'
Stage 8, 171km from Saint-Meen-le-Grand - the birthplace of three-time Tour winner Louison Bobet - was always heading for a battle among the fast men, and it was the Italian who surfed the wheels best after losing his lead-out train, hopping onto Mathieu van der Poel 's leadout before breaking clear.
He beat Wout van Aert and Kaden Groves to the line, picking up the first stage victory for Italy since Vincenzo Nibali won on stage 20 in 2019, a remarkable statistic considering the quality of Italian cycling.
It was a more relaxed day for the likes of yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar, second-placed Remco Evenepoel and two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard, who stayed safe in the bunch on a day that saw no changes in the GC standings. Joao Almeida, riding with a broken rib after a crash towards the end of stage seven, completed the stage despite fears over the severity of his injury.
The Tour has opted for rare back-to-back sprint days, but unlike yesterday's this one is clear-cut, with a flat finish perfectly tailored to the pure sprinters at the end of 174km in the Loire.
This double-header of sprint days falls, intriguingly, on a weekend, an unusual choice for the current era of Tour direction, favouring hyper-difficult mountain stages and GC fireworks as it does.
Today will be a rather sleepy day for the TV cameras until the peloton swoops closer to Chateauroux: expect plenty of beautiful chateaux and charming French countryside, interspersed with bits of bike racing.
The route heads east all day from Chinon, traversing a couple of mild bumps before a very flat approach to a town which has hosted a Tour finish four times. All three times this century that stage was won by Mark Cavendish; which fast man will inherit his crown today?
Route map and profile
Start time
Stage nine gets underway in Chinon at 1.10pm local time, 12.10pm BST, with the finish scheduled for around 5.10pm local time (4.10pm BST).
Prediction
Jasper Philipsen no doubt would have enjoyed this stage, particularly with his utterly world-class Alpecin-Deceuninck leadout.
In the absence of the Belgian, though, this stage feels like a toss-up between the world's two best sprinters: Philipsen's compatriot Tim Merlier has one win to his name already on stage three and got the better of his Italian rival Jonathan Milan then, but Milan was unstoppable on the uphill finish into Laval yesterday, leaving the pair with a win apiece. Let's back Jonathan Milan to carry his momentum from stage eight into today's sprint.
Any number of the second-string sprinters could have a dig today too, but all things going to plan - and of course they often don't in a sprint - it's hard to look past this duo for the win.
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