{"id":32081,"date":"2026-07-11T18:24:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T18:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tour-de-france-tim-merlier-makes-it-back-to-back-stage-wins-in-another-sprint-finish\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T18:24:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T18:24:20","slug":"tour-de-france-tim-merlier-makes-it-back-to-back-stage-wins-in-another-sprint-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tour-de-france-tim-merlier-makes-it-back-to-back-stage-wins-in-another-sprint-finish\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France: Tim Merlier makes it back-to-back stage wins in another sprint finish"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Belgium’s Tim Merlier made it back-to-back wins on stage eight of the Tour de France on Saturday.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Soudal Quick-Step rider claimed victory in a sprint for stage seven on Friday<\/a> and followed that up during another bunch finish in Bergerac.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old looked out of contention as the riders turned into the final 500 metres as he was caught out of position, but Merlier launched a long-range charge to reel in all of his rivals.<\/p>\n

He hit the front with less than 200 metres remaining and held off Biniam Girmay for his fifth stage win on the Tour.<\/p>\n

That kept Girmay waiting for his fourth win – after the Eritrean’s first three in 2024 – while Dutch rider Olav Kooij, who won his first stage on Wednesday,<\/a> was third.<\/p>\n

“If you win one, you can win a second, and I’m happy,” said Merlier. “Three [sprint] stages, I won two – definitely my Tour de France.”<\/p>\n

The stage victory saw Merlier move within 15 points of Mads Pedersen in the sprinters’ green jersey standings.<\/p>\n

Defending champion Tadej Pogacar still holds the yellow jersey having maintained his overall lead over Jonas Vingegaard on the flat 180.4km ride from Perigueux to Bergerac.<\/p>\n

The eighth stage in the Dordogne, wound past some of the region’s 1,000 castles and looked set to finish with a bunch sprint.<\/p>\n

After spending most of the day in a three-man breakaway, Liam Slock went clear with 40km left but the Belgian was caught 1.3km from the line.<\/p>\n

Mathieu van der Poel did his best to set up Alpecin-Premier Tech team-mate Jasper Philipsen for the victory on the home straight but Merlier powered into the lead.<\/p>\n

“I needed to fight for my position all the time until the last minute,” Merlier added. “Just before the corner, I was a bit boxed in, and then they almost crashed.<\/p>\n

“I thought it was over, so I gave it a try to come back off the guys who did the lead-out. I was coming with so much speed.”<\/p>\n

The ninth stage will be shortened because of an “intense heatwave” in the Correze region.<\/p>\n

Tour organisers have adjusted Sunday’s route from Malemort to Ussel, reducing its length from 185.5km to 155.5km.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Belgium’s Tim Merlier made it back-to-back wins on stage eight of the Tour de France on Saturday. The Soudal Quick-Step rider claimed victory in a sprint for stage seven on Friday and followed that up during another bunch finish in Bergerac. The 33-year-old looked out of contention as the riders turned into the final 500 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32083,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32081\/revisions\/32083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}