Michael Matthews (BikeExchange) won stage 145 of the Tour de France covering over 192km between Saint-Etienne and Mendy, where from very early on there was a great escape with over 20 riders managing to make the way through the peloton distance of over 12 minutes.
In the escape the contestants were like Colombians dAnil Felipe Martinez (Inios Grenadiers) and Rigoberto Uran (EF Education Easy Post)as well as Thibaut Pinot (Groupama DJ), Luis Leon Sanchez (Victorious Bahrain), Andreas Kron (Loto Soudal), Jacob Vogelsang (Israel Premier Tech), Alberto Pettiol and Nelson Paulis (EF Education Easy Post), among others.
The group in which the captain, Jonas Vinggaard (Jumbo Visma), and his biggest rival, Tadej Pogakar (UAE Team Emirates) traveled, remained calm throughout the day, which stood out for being extremely hot and exhausted by the half ports. The mountain that appeared.
Nairo Quintana changed the bike during the day, but that happened before the race commissioner gave the official start, so it wasn’t a major complication for the Colombian to return to the main peloton.
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Escape after half way realized that they could proceed with a stage victory, so there was a fight between several riders. The first to attack the escape was Australian Michael Matthews (BikeExchange) with Kron (Loto), Groupchartner (Bora) and Sanchez (Bahrain), which took no more than a minute. Kron holed up and stayed with the group of Martínez and Urán who worked hard to be able to catch the three at the top.
On various occasions, there were attacks on the splinter group, but they were unsuccessful, as the stage was controlled by some teams that had more tricks to break up, such as EF and Bora Hansgrohe.
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Climbing to Mindy would be the perfect scenario for choosing which group would fight for today’s victory, because despite it being a class two climb, It had a graded difficulty of 10%, which made it extremely difficult for runners with lower climbing strength and stamina.
Matthews managed to reach the finish line on his own after passing Bettiol, who caught up with him on the Mende climb. Back Urán and Martínez tried to close the gap but the wear and tear made them give up and let the race go ahead without finally being able to look forward to a win over the last 3.5km to the finish line.
However, Rigo was the best Colombian to enter 11th place, while Daniel entered 17th, more than 4 minutes behind the winner. Quintana’s overall classification remains sixth at 4′:15″, unchanged after this Saturday in the Tour de France. Rigo climbed to 20th and Daniel 23rd, more than an hour behind Vinggaard who continued to lead by more than two minutes ahead of Pojácar.
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