Latest news with #Carcassonne
Japan Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- Japan Times
Tim Wellens wins Stage 15 as Team UAE continues to dominate Tour de France
Tim Wellens of Team UAE won a baking and hilly Stage 15 of the Tour de France in Carcassonne on Sunday after a 45-kilometer solo rampage toward the walled citadel. Tadej Pogacar held on to the overall lead with a 4-minute, 13-second advantage on Jonas Vingegaard, who had to fight to catch up after being caught behind an early mass fall. Wellens had been part of an early break which only really got away once the fall sent a shockwave though the race.
Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- Times
Tim Wellens surprises Victor Campenaerts to win his first Tour stage
The Tour de France rolled into Carcassonne for the 13th time on Sunday. Unlucky 13 for Visma-Lease a Bike. They came into the race believing they could win it, convinced theirs would be the strongest team. Everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife, Arsène Wenger once said. Visma got two of their strongest into the 24-rider breakaway that had the 15th leg of the Tour to themselves. Their great rivals UAE Emirates XRG had one. There was one outcome Visma did not want. Which was the one they got. Tadej Pogacar's friend and team-mate Tim Wellens broke clear of his fellow escapees 42km from the finish and soon disappeared from view. They would not see him again until after the race. Visma's Victor Campenaerts was second and their other contender Wout van Aert was fourth. Such is the determination to protect Pogacar, UAE's equipiers do not often leave him. On this occasion, Wellens embodied the Oscar Wilde principle that man can resist anything except temptation. There were good reasons why Wellens went for it. Having had trouble with his bike the day before, he was left behind on the Col du Tourmalet and could not contribute to the team effort. That left him feeling unusually fresh as the race left Muret for their journey to Carcassonne. One hundred kilometres from the finish, the attacks were so numerous that soon they were uncontrollable. Wellens went with the flow. Once part of the escape, he was able to play the Yellow Jersey card: with my boss leading the race, how can I be expected to contribute to the pacesetting? Campenaerts noticed Wellens in their group and sighed. 'We said today we wanted to go for the stage. It was a good situation with Wout and me in the breakaway, but Wellens… We have a good relationship outside of cycling, but in the races, he's the guy that you don't want to have in the breakaway.' Wellens then played the rider Campenaerts believes him to be. 'He's smart, he's sneaky,' Campenaerts said. 'He knows how to play it. He wasn't allowed to do any pulls. He was sitting on, but he was very strong. He didn't miss any decisive moments, and he did a perfect move on the highest point of the course. 'Of course, second is not what we race for, so it's a bit disappointing, but it is what it is. Wellens was really strong, and he didn't stroll this victory.' After the stage, the stage winner and the Yellow Jersey are obliged to do video conferences with journalists. As Wellens and Pogacar are team-mates, they opted for a duet. The race leader was content to let his team-mate bask in the limelight. Pogacar was asked why he chased down Matteo Jorgenson's attack at the time the breakaway was forming. He explained that when word came through that Jonas Vingegaard had been held up by a crash, he tried to get everyone to slow down so his No1 rival and others could safely return to the peloton. 'But the attacks to join the breakaway continued. Visma already had two riders in the break and when Matteo went, I thought you don't need a third rider in the group, so I went after him.' Pogacar's feeling was that Visma's riders should not have been attacking when their team leader was trying to rejoin the peloton. Visma's strategy though has changed. They still say their No1 priority is Vingegaard's pursuit of the Yellow but that has evolved as Pogacar's lead has stretched to more than four minutes. Now they want to play on two fronts, with stage wins a new priority. Do not, though, feel sorry for Campenaerts and Van Aert meeting Wellens on the wrong day. What sympathy you have got, save it for Julian Alaphilippe, who punched the air after winning the sprint for third place into Carcassonne, believing that he was sprinting for first. 'He had a crash at the beginning of the race,' Raphael Meyer, the Tudor sports director, said. 'He had pain and a dislocated shoulder. He was seen by the doctor and he still has some pain. He's going for x-rays.' Alaphilippe pressed his right shoulder back into its socket and carried on. In the crash, he also damaged his earpiece and had no contact with the team car for the rest of the stage. Joining the lead group after Wellens and Campenaerts had gone clear, he mistakenly thought he was in a group sprinting for victory. All the favourites were in a group 6mins 7secs down on Wellens which was a good place for Oscar Onley to be. He has now got the second rest day to consider the final push to Paris. He sits in fourth place overall, in position to emulate Robert Millar's fourth place in the 1984 Tour. For a 22-year-old in his second tour, Onley has been a revelation in the race so far. So too have been the size of the crowds. The Tour organiser Christian Prudhomme said the crowds at Lille for the opening weekend were the greatest since Yorkshire in 2014, which were the greatest of all. An hour before the finish at Carcassonne I met two Welshmen, Glenn Seaborne and his son Louis. What tempted them to leave Ebbw Vale for the southwest of France? 'Five years ago,' Glenn said, 'I was talking with Louis, who was 16 at the time, and he said he'd been watching the Tour de France and would love to spend a few days at the race. I said, 'We'll do it.'' Glenn had played rugby for 30 years, a semi-professional as an adult. Louis is a football goalkeeper, but once the kid mentioned the Tour, Dad decided it really would happen. After Glenn finished rugby, he became a bike rider. A year after that first conversation, he bought an old Volkswagen and converted it into a camper van. It was all part of a plan. Last year, they made their first trip to the Tour. Four stages. They loved every minute. This year, they've come for 16 days. 'We left home last Thursday week, drove three hours from Ebbw Vale to Portsmouth, took the ferry from there to Bilbao. Thirty-six hours. Then drove to Carcassonne from there. This time we'd brought our bikes and on Saturday we climbed the Col du Tourmalet together, reached the top and then went back down, had a bit to eat in the camper van and then watched the race go by.' Though Geraint Thomas will always be their hero, they couldn't help noticing Pogacar in the group of favourites. 'The way he sits on the bike,' Glenn said. 'He makes it seem just effortless,' Louis added. They are now on their way to Avignon and from there to the foot of Mont Ventoux which they will climb together on Tuesday morning, again before the race. This time, they are going to stay high on the Ventoux and see the riders on the upper slopes of one of the iconic climb. I joke that the Ventoux only gets really bad when they pass through Chalet Reynard and turn left to begin the last six kilometres. They say they cannot wait. I mention to Glenn that it must be some experience to make this trip with his boy. Suddenly this old rugby player, who doesn't seem like he would have been a pushover on the pitch, has tears in his eyes. 'I'm sorry, I'm getting upset now, emotional. It means the world to me to be able to do this. I never had anything like this with my own father. He was a miner, Marine Colliery at Blackwood in South Wales. When he was 40 and I was 10, he had a stroke. He didn't have very good mobility after that and I never could do anything like this with him. Doing this with Louis is unbelievable, just unbelievable.'
SBS Australia
2 days ago
- Sport
- SBS Australia
Tour de France: Australian Storer helps save Tudor's celebration blushes
Australian star Michael Storer has bagged the much coveted daily combativity prize for being the most aggressive rider after his constant attacks enlivened a thrilling afternoon on the 15th stage of the Tour de France. But the Perth rider's illustrious Tudor Pro teammate Julian Alaphilippe will want to forget the embarrassment of celebrating a stage win in the ancient city of Carcassonne which he later discovered was actually only a third-place finish. At the end of the 169km route from Muret, the race had actually already been won by UAE Team Emirates' veteran Tim Wellens, wearing the Belgian champion's jersey, with compatriot Victor Campenaerts (Visma Lease-A-Bike) second in a fitting one-two on the eve of Monday's rest day, which is Belgium's National Day. The pair had both been in the breakaway with the buzzing Storer but the Australian was eventually swallowed up amid the sprint for third, won by Alaphilippe, who celebrated as though he had won the stage. Alas, the former double world champion had been without a working radio due to an early crash, during which he had also dislocated his shoulder, so hadn't realised the two Belgians were ahead. "I tried to put in the best sprint possible and thought about the stage win. Like an idiot, I raised my hands, but there were a few guys ahead of me," the 33-year-old later told French television while also revealing he had put his dislocated shoulder back himself. "I remembered what they did to me in the hospital previously and managed to pop it back in," Alaphilippe said. "The day could have gone better — but I could also have had to go home, so it's okay." While Raphael Meyer, CEO of the ambitious Swiss-based Tudor team, pointed out they would have been very happy with third if offered that before the stage, he also paid tribute to Storer's "amazing" ride after the 28-year-old had come home among the pack of sprinters behind Alaphilippe in 22nd place. Further back, there was no change at the top of the general classification, with the main favourites finishing some six minutes after Wellens following a few exhausting days in the high mountains. Tadej Pogacar remains four minutes 13 seconds clear of Jonas Vingegaard (Visma Lease-A-Bike) with Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe) third, just shy of eight minutes off yellow. Ben O'Connor remains the top Australian in the standings in 12th place, 25:44 behind Pogacar. The day's breakaway had formed after the crash had split the peloton. With Vingegaard and Lipowitz delayed, UAE and Pogacar tried to slow the peloton to enable them to catch up — mirroring a similar sporting response by his rivals when he crashed a few days ago. The breakaway was gradually whittled down to four with Storer attempting to go solo at that point only to be reeled back in. With a little over 40km to go, the leading group was eight-strong, at which point Wellens, who had been sitting on the others' wheels, launched his break which quickly became decisive as the rest dithered over how to respond. "It was a very special victory," said Wellens, after his maiden Tour win. "Everybody knows the Tour de France, everybody wants to ride the Tour de France but not many get to win at the Tour de France, so it's very beautiful."
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Tour de France: Alaphilippe celebrates on stage 15 … but discovers Wellens won long before him
French stage wins in the Tour de France are increasingly rare, so when they do happen, there are wild celebrations. Julian Alaphilippe, the former world road race champion, raised his arms in triumph in Carcassonne, thinking he had won, only to be told seconds later that he had in fact finished third behind two Belgians. Ahead of the crestfallen Alaphilippe, Tadej Pogacar's Emirates-XRG teammate Tim Wellens took a solo win on stage 15 of the Tour, well ahead of compatriot Victor Campanaerts, a teammate to Jonas Vingegaard. 'Julian's radio wasn't working,' Alaphilippe's Tudor Pro team manager, Raphael Meyer, said in an effort to explain his rider's ecstatic but misplaced fist pump. A win from the French rider would have been all the more remarkable, given he had crashed earlier in the stage and popped back a dislocated shoulder, all on his own. For Vingegaard it was another stressful day on which his Visma-Lease a bike team showed questionable strategy. They have one day good, the next bad, while Pogacar and his team remain a model of consistency. If Vingegaard's team increasingly resemble a house on fire, Pogacar's remain an impregnable fortress. In the shadow of Carcassonne's citadel the 34-year-old Wellens, already a stage winner in the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España, took his first Tour de France stage win. The Dane had been caught up in the same early crash that saw Alaphilippe come down. Inexplicably, as Vingegaard, second overall to Pogacar, chased to rejoin the peloton, some of his teammates, including Campanaerts, were at the front, forcing the pace and distancing their team leader. It took a radio intervention from Pogacar's own team car to return the goodwill shown to the Slovenian in Toulouse, after his own crash on stage 11. Finally with 128km to race, Vingegaard and Florian Lipowitz rejoined the main group. Even the defending champion seemed bemused by what was going on around him. 'There were three Visma guys, all trying to go in the break again and they had Jonas chasing at the back,' Pogacar said. 'It was just a weird situation.' While Pogacar was eventually able to repay the sportsmanship shown to him four days ago, Wellens was not in the mood to hang around and made his decisive solo move with 43km to race, on the Col de Fontbruno. The Belgian champion never looked back and pushed on into the final kilometres on the rolling roads of the Languedoc, to win by almost a minute and a half from Campanaerts. As the Tour began, Vingegaard's wife and personal manager had criticised the Visma-Lease a bike team for failing to commit wholeheartedly to her husband's cause. On the road to Carcassonne, her fears seemed well-founded, with both Campanaerts and Wout van Aert apparently racing for the stage win. Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion 'I hope he gets the full support of the team, rather than there being all sorts of different goals,' Trine Vingegaard Hansen said this month. 'If you're also aiming for stage wins with other riders, then those resources can't be used for Jonas. You can only respect how Tadej Pogacar's team handles it. When he starts a race, there's no doubt about who the leader is. Everyone knows their role. I think that's super-important.' Pogacar, meanwhile, despite saying after the stage he had a slight summer cold because of the fluctuating temperatures and too much time spent in air-conditioning, never looked in trouble. As Vingegaard was pondering his teammate's motivations, Pogacar was becoming Wellens's cheerleader-in-chief. 'How is he looking?' he radioed his team car as Wellens progressed. 'How does Tim look? You should reply: 'He looks fabulous!'' Monday is a rest day, while the 16th stage on Tuesday takes the peloton from Montpelier to the daunting Mont Ventoux, where Pogacar will almost certainly seek to increase his lead with a prestigious stage win.
Khaleej Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- Khaleej Times
UAE Team Emirates dominate Tour de France as Wellens wins stage, Pogacar maintains lead
Tim Wellens of Team UAE Emirates won a baking and hilly stage 15 of the Tour de France at Carcassonne on Sunday after a 45km solo rampage towards the walled citadel. Wellens' teammate Tadej Pogacar held on to the overall lead with a 4min 13sec advantage on Jonas Vingegaard, who had to fight to catch up when caught behind an early mass fall. Wellens had been part of an early break which only really got away once the fall sent a shockwave though the race. It was a large and mixed group that was whittled down to five before the Belgian champion suddenly accelerated and caught the others napping. This was a fifth win for Team UAE with Pogacar previously having won four stages on a thoroughly dominant Tour for the team. Wellens was so far ahead at the finish line he had time to high five dozens of Belgian fans on the run in on the eve of Belgium's national holiday. "This makes me happier than winning a stage myself," said Pogacar. "He helps me keep this thing every day," he said pointing to the jersey. Having previously won stages on the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana this triumph completes the set of stage wins on the three big tours for Wellens. "Everybody wants to win a stage at the Tour de France, this is the special one," said Wellens. "I knew I was going to complete the trilogy and was enjoying the home straight with the fans. I'd been planning to lift the bike in the air, but I was so happy I forgot to do it" Alaphilippe red faced The remaining 167 of 184 riders embarked towards Carcassonne on yet another nervy stage. After a mass fall early on with Florian Lipowitz and Vingegaard involved, the Pogacar group raced on, leaving two-time winner Vingegaard and a pack of 30 riders to exhaust themselves catching up. There was embarrassment for Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe, who celebrated at the line thinking he had won when in fact he was third. Sprinting for third place long after Wellens and Victor Campenaerts took the top two spots, Alaphilippe pipped Wout van Aert at the line. Poor Alaphilippe hung his head when his horrified compatriots told him. He had been part of the early fall, losing his race radio, and had no idea the stage had already been won, he explained. Pogacar 'coughing' Pogacar entered the Pyrenees on Thursday trailing in second behind surprise yellow jersey Ben Healy but emerged with two more stage wins and a four-minute advantage at the top of the overall standings in his bid for a fourth Tour de France title. The defending champion said he had been ill. "Half the peloton is coughing," said Pogacar. "I've got this red nose. It's because of all the ice packs and air conditioning I think, but I'm better now." Monday is the final rest day before the 2025 edition soars into the Alps on Tuesday's stage 16 with the 15.8km ascent of Mont Ventoux at 7.9 percent gradient to its 1901m high summit. "Mont Ventoux is for after the day off, so I don't want to talk about it now," Pogacar said after the podium ceremony at Carcassonne. "All I know is that Jonas will be attacking, I just don't want to think about it."
