Biniam Girmay added a fourth place to his two podium finishes already at this year’s Tour de France as he was once again in the mix on stage 12 in Chalon-sur-Saône on Thursday.
Biniam was brilliantly placed on the wheel of Jasper Philipsen (APT), but could only truly start his sprint in the final 75 meters as the finish line slightly veered right.
The stage was potentially a blueprint for what Tour sprint stages could be like in future: enough obstacles to encourage late, opportunistic attacks, but climbs that are not hard enough to distance the truest of fast men.
After George Bennett and Krists Neilands had helped keep the day’s early breakaway in check, Lewis Askey, Marco Frigo, and Matîs Louvel all helped mark threatening moves before Tom Van Asbroeck and Jake Stewart got working in a technical final five kilometers.
Biniam was thankfully ahead of a late crash involving fellow sprinters Fernando Gaviria (CJR) and Dorian Gordon (NCI) approaching the line.
Biniam says: “I just didn’t have enough room to do my sprint. I was just waiting, waiting, waiting until [the gap] opened, and it came just too late.
“I’m just happy I wasn’t involved in the crash – I hope those riders are OK.
“I felt super good throughout the day, and thanks to the team for the unbelievable effort. I’m just disappointed I couldn’t finish it off today.”
“We were close again, but the overall performance of the team was great today,” says Head DS Sam Bewley.
“The guys were great today. We knew we’d be under pressure at the start, and we knew we’d be under pressure on the hills in the final.
“We wanted to smother the breakaway and keep them under control – we used our guys really well during the first phase of the race. Then we managed all the attacks in the final 30km, and the guys executed really well in the finish.”