Tour de France 2019 Favourites stage 7: Back to the fast men

The Tour de France serves its longest ride on the seventh day. The route runs on undulating roads, which shouldn’t come as a huge surprise as the riders are traversing the rolling Burgundy region. Near finish town Chalon-sur-Saône the route evens out to provide a perfect opportunity for a fast finishers showdown.

Chalon-sur-Saône saw its last pro-peloton finish in 2017. Not surprisingly, a sprinter took the spoils. Sam Bennett outgunned Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb. None of them is riding the Tour de France.

Given his 2019 credentials, Groenewegen is the sprinter to beat. He won ten races, Ewan nine, Viviani took seven sprints, Kristoff four, while Sagan powered to three wins. Yet, the Dutchman crashed hard on stage 1 and did not sprint pain-free until now.

The first sprint on this year’s Tour de France was marred as he went down inside the last 1.5 kilometres. Surprisingly, his lead-out Teunissen took the reins and outgunned Sagan in a millimetres sprint, while Ewan finished in third.

Viviani powered to his first ever Tour de France stage-win in the second sprint opportunity in Nancy. Kristoff and Ewan rounded out the podium.

The sprint in Chalon-sur-Saône is fairly straightforward, so perfect for the pure sprinters.

Favourites 7th stage 2019 Tour de France

*** Dylan Groenewegen, Elia Viviani
** Peter Sagan, Caleb Ewan, Alexander Kristoff
* Michael Matthews, Christophe Laporte, Giacomo Nizzolo

Take a ook at the route of the 7th stage on the Tour de France.

Tour de France 2019 stage 7: profile and finale

Click on the images to zoom

profile

finale