Merlier doubles up as Van der Poel denied epic win at Tour de France

CHATEAU, France: Tim Merlier won stage nine of the Tour de France at Chateauroux on Sunday after a heroic long-range escape from Mathieu van der Poel was caught in the final kilometer.

There was no change atop the overall standings with Tadej Pogacar now holding a 54sec advantage over Remco Evenepoel in second with French starlet Kevin Vauquelin third.

This was a second Tour win for Soudal Quick-Step sprinter Merlier this year, who was first across the line on stage three at Dunkirk.

Merlier was led in by team leader Evenepoel.

“It’s mad, we are supposed to be helping him (Evenepoel) but he’s helping us,” Merlier said.

“I need to make it through the mountains now, I won’t be any use to Remco there, but I want to help him in the other ones,” said the 32-year-old.

On a sun drenched slog from the Chinon vineyards, Van der Poel and a teammate broke early and built up a lead of 5min 30sec on the flat roads to Chateauroux.

Jonas Rickaert won the combativity award for accompanying Van der Poel to within 10km of the line before slumping over his handlebars.

“I’m really happy. That was one of his (Rickaert) dreams, to win the combativity award and that’s why we went,” Van der Poel explained.

“In the end we nearly made it but we hadn’t expected to get that far,” he said of his 173km breakaway at an average speed on 49.9kph.

As with many heroic exploits, their epic escape was ultimately doomed to a gut wrenching narrow failure.

But with his gung-ho all-in style Van der Poel grew his Tour de France legend here despite being caught with 700m to go, the plaudits will be both his and Merlier’s.

“It’s hard to not be able to finish it off, but we put on a good show,” said the Dutch rider.

As Van der Poel was reeled in, it