On Thursday, on stage 12 of the Tour, the Groupama-FDJ cycling team proved aggressive, just like it has been since the start in Florence. Although the day certainly suited the sprinters, it could have gone differently with a strong breakaway up front. The fight lasted for twenty kilometres, but only four men eventually broke away, including Quentin Pacher and Valentin Madouas. Their attempt came to an end forty kilometres from the line, and Biniam Girmay took his third win on the Grande Boucle. Quentin Pacher won the combativity award.
From Aurillac to Villeneuve-sur-Lot, the sprinters were once again expected this Thursday on stage 12 of the Tour de France. No major climbs were indeed to be tackled over the 203 kilometres of racing. However, one scenario could have made their task harder than anticipated. “The start of the stage was quite hilly, so a strong breakaway could have gone there,” explained Quentin Pacher. Groupama-FDJ wanted to seize this small opportunity, and Kevin Geniets stood out as the day’s first attacker, before Romain Grégoire, Stefan Küng, David Gaudu and Quentin Pacher also took part in the fight. This lasted for almost twenty kilometres, during which the sprinters teams tried to keep everything under control. Valentin Madouas finally managed to make a gap, he was joined by his teammate Quentin Pacher as well as Jonas Abrahamsen soon after, while Anthony Turgis made the group grow to four men. Unfortunately, the fight for the breakaway came to a sudden end following a crash in the peloton, which really settled things down.
“We’’ll try again as many times as we can”, Quentin Pacher
The quartet went clear, and the peloton looked satisfied with it. “The goal was to win the stage, that’s for sure, but since we were only four and that the gap was controlled from the start, it did not help our chances,” explained Quentin. “At first, we believed we could make it today. Otherwise, there’s no point in starting. There was a proper battle to take the breakaway, it didn’t go at km 0 with only the motivated riders.” “We wanted to be aggressive, and we would have liked other teams to be so too, especially since there was suitable terrain,” added Benoît Vaugrenard. “However, there were still too many sprinters’ teams.” Behind the four men, the peloton took no risks and remained at around two minutes for most of the day. In the middle of the stage, the riders overcame a few classified climbs, which had no impact on the race. “We wanted to stay within reach of the peloton in the climbs so that it would allow other teams to open up the race again”, explained Quentin. “We kept the hope that fresh guys would come from behind, that the group would increase to 8-10 riders, and that it would be a bit of a mess behind. It didn’t happen. We passed the climbs, and the peloton kept us close.”
After the last climb, seventy kilometres from the finish, the bunch was even back just a minute behind, leaving no hope for the four leading men, who then became three. “We had an average speed of more than 47.5 km/h when we got caught, we didn’t hang around along the way, there was a real fight, but it wasn’t the day”, said Quentin. The Groupama-FDJ duo was caught forty kilometers from the finish, then the peloton “quietly” headed towards the finish, where a bunch sprint indeed decided the day’s winner: Biniam Girmay, for the third time. Clément Russo slipped into 13th place, and Quentin Pacher was able to climb onto the ceremonial podium to receive the combativity award. “That was clearly not the goal,” he said. “The goal is to win races, to win stages. For a puncher, the opportunities are not too many, but there are some. The stage in Bologna proved it. We’ll try again as many times as we can.” “The guys did a great ride, and we can recognize the initiative,” concluded Benoît. “We try to impact the race, we now have to finish it off, find the right opening and continue to fight. We can see that it starts to be difficult for some sprinters. We must keep going. If we can, we’ll try again tomorrow.”
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