Eritrean Biniam Girmay won the eighth stage of the Tour de France in a sprint, right under Jasper Philipsen’s nose this Saturday, July 6 in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises. The Intermarché rider thus won his second victory in this 2024 Tour, for a team that had not yet won any in its history. Tadej Pogacar keeps his yellow jersey.
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Biniam Girmay was the first black African rider to win a stage of the Tour de France on July 1st in Turin. Now he has won a second one, barely a week later, in Colombey-le-deux-Église, at the end of a very tight sprint in which he beat Jasper Philipsen and Arnaud De Lie to consolidate his green jersey as leader of the points classification. He is also the first African to wear it. Slovenian Tadej Pogacar retains the yellow jersey and still has a 33-second lead in the general classification over Belgian Remco Evenepoel.
A light and agile sprinter, Girmay, 24, thus confirmed his status as a pioneer for his continent. In a stage run partly in the rain, the peloton had to work hard to catch the day’s escapee, Jonas Abrahamsen, who escaped at kilometer zero in Semur-en-Auxois.
First accompanied by Stefan Bissegger and Neilson Powless, then quickly alone, the Norwegian from Uno-X, very visible since the beginning of the Tour, opened the road for 169 kilometers. He consolidated his best climber’s jersey during the few climbs on the menu, before being caught 15 km from the finish. The sprinters’ teams then put their finishers into orbit in the last long final straight line on a false flat uphill with a 150-meter ramp to finish.
Excellent in this type of finish, Girmay, perfectly led by his Intermarché teammates, overtook his opponents in the final to win under the Cross of Lorraine. Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, the village of General de Gaulle, was a stage town of the Tour for the first time on Saturday, on the eve of legislative elections in France. In 1960, the peloton had passed through the village and stopped – an unprecedented scene – to greet the general, who had come to spend a few days at his property in La Boisserie.