Against the odds, all 165 remaining riders in the Tour de France were able to start stage 10 on Tuesday. It was a super-flat day along the Atlantic coast which brought the promise of strong crosswinds, and while there wasn’t as much echelon action as on stage 7, the race did split into several pieces. There were plenty of crashes too, thanks to an abundance of road furniture.
Route for today’s #TDF2020 is incredibly dangerous. I mean, it’d be fine if the peloton were 25 riders, or if it were 1908 and the guys were all 20 minutes apart from each other. But it’s not…
— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) September 8, 2020
A group of 66 got to the finish where Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) sprinted to his first-ever Tour de France stage win, and boy did it mean a lot to him.
Here’s how our photographers saw the action on stage 10 of the 2020 Tour de France.
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- The Tour’s 10th stage started on the island of Oléron.
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- The Slovenian and the Slovakian, leading the Tour’s two main classifications.
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- The peloton crossing the viaduct that connects the island of Oléron to the French mainland.
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- Swiss duo Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) and Michael Schär (CCC) got away on the viaduct.
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- The leaders weren’t given much latitude at all and were caught with a little less than 100 km to go.
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- There were no real breakaways after Kung and Schär were caught, but there were splits in the crosswinds, and several crashes.
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- Nicolas Roche (Sunweb, right) and Maxime Chevalier (B&B-Vital Concept, centre) were just two of the riders to hit the tarmac. Roche landed on a chainring in his fall and ended up with a nasty gash.
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- Davide Formolo was one of the worst injured. After grovelling in for last place on the stage, Formolo got an X-ray which revealed a broken collarbone. Mitchelton-Scott’s Sam Bewley abandoned the race after breaking his wrist in a fall.
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- Hugh Carthy on his way to the finish.
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- Crowds await the sprint finish on the island of Ré.
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- Sam Bennett left his sprint late …
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- … which meant Caleb Ewan didn’t have much time to get around.
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- It was close though …
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- … with Ewan having the better throw for the line …
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- … but Bennett held on for his first Tour victory.
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- Ewan congratulates Bennett after a hard-fought contest.
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- Bennett and his lead-out man Michael Morkov celebrate the team’s second stage win at this year’s Tour.
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- Matej Mohoric was another rider to fall foul of the day’s many crashes.
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- With his stage victory Bennett moves back into the green jersey. Peter Sagan has a big fight on his hands this year.
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- Coming soon from cycling’s hottest band, Vert et Jaune, the new hit single, “Mon petit lion d’or”.
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