Today’s eighth Tour de France stage offered an interesting parcours with opportunities for either a breakaway or a punchy sprint finish on the slightly rising road to the finish line. No significant breakaway was allowed to get clear, and the wind was not strong enough to shape the race, so all eyes were on the punchy sprinters again. Team dsm-firmenich PostNL did a good job dropping Nils Eekhoff in the final, who led home the team today.
After the finish, Nils Eekhoff said: “It was a nervous day out over hilly terrain with quite some rain. John and Romain did a great job keeping me in front in the final. Unfortunately, I got stuck behind some other riders dropping to the back which made me lose a lot of positions; I couldn’t correct this anymore. Now we look to tomorrow where we have new chances.”
Speaking after the stage, Team dsm-firmenich PostNL coach Matt Winston said: “We were looking for a breakaway scenario, especially between kilometres 20 and 40, but nothing was really looking like it would go as the sprint teams had it really controlled, so we focused on Nils for the sprint. Oscar and Warren unfortunately crashed earlier in the race and were not able to help in the final, so we were a bit short on numbers coming into the harder final. Romain and John did a really good job bringing Nils into the final, but we ran a bit out of men and legs, so no result today, but there are more opportunities for us to come in this race.”