Tour de France: Van Aert raises his own bar with exceptional sprint win
An already deeply impressive debut for Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) in the World Tour this season showed no signs of ending in the Tour de France on Monday, as the Belgian clinched his first Grand Tour stage victory in a dramatic small bunch sprint at the end of stage 10.
Van Aert has already had plenty to celebrate this season, with a solid Classics campaign followed by back-to-back time trial and bunch sprint victories in the Critérium du Dauphiné, not to mention the Belgian time trial championship.
But in what is proving to be a dream Grand Tour debut for Van Aert, after three Tour stage victories and a lengthy spell in the overall lead for Jumbo-Visma, the 24-year-old Belgian has now notched up an individual Tour stage win of his own.
If, on Monday's fraught final half hour's racing, Jumbo-Visma's management had nurtured any nagging concerns over the absence of the team's main man for the bunch sprints, Dylan Groenewegen, in the front group, it turned out that Van Aert had the bases more than covered.
A surging-early sprint saw Van Aert shadowed closely by Deceuninck-Quick Step's Elia Viviani all the way to the line in Albi, but that was as good as it got for the Italian.
Van Aert managed to stay ahead, leaving Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) forced to settle for his fourth top-three finish without a victory in 10 days.
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