Tour de France Victor Lafay wins the second stage

(San Sebastian) Opportunistic and clever, Frenchman Victor Lafay (Cofidis) won the second stage of the Tour de France on Sunday in San Sebastian by breaking away from the group of favorites one kilometer from the finish.

Briton Adam Yates (UAE) retains the yellow jersey at the end of this second day in the Spanish Basque Country.

Lafay, 27, won ahead of two of the biggest stars in the peloton, Belgian Wout Van Aert and Slovenian Tadej Pogacar who, despite their best efforts, failed to catch him. Van Aert, favorite for victory with his sprint quality, slammed his handlebars in rage after crossing the finish line.

“I believed in it until the end, it’s crazy! Yesterday I was a little frustrated at the finish. To achieve today from the second stage is a sick thing,” said Lafay, who brought the first Tour de France victory to his Cofidis team since Chavanel in 2008, 15 years ago.

Canadian Michael Woods earned his second top 10 with a seventh position while Quebecers Hugo Houle and Guillaume Boivin respectively finished 66^e and 104^e.

The day before, Lafay had already made a very strong impression by switching to the lead with Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, the two big favorites of the Tour, in the Pike coast, before finishing sixth in the stage in Bilbao.

On Sunday, he did it again to do “the kilometer trick” and get out of a group of around twenty riders in which the main favorites for the general classification remained.

“I was a little worse than yesterday, in addition I had a side point in the middle of the stage, but I really hung on,” said the Lyonnais, winner of a stage on the Giro in 2021.

A few minutes earlier, Pogacar and Vingegaard explained themselves in the Jaizkibel, a mythical climb in the Basque Country, crowded with people. Fighting over the bonuses at the top, the two men created a huge gap in a few meters with what remained of the group of favorites.

At the top, shrouded in fog, Pogacar used his superior punch to scrape eight seconds of bonuses ahead of Vingegaard who took five. With 16 km still to go until the finish, Pogacar led the descent ahead of his rival, who did not take over.

The two men did not insist and were quickly taken over by the group from which Lafay would emerge to win the best victory of his career.