2020 Tour de France Stage 8 Results & Recap
Stage 8 of the 2020 Tour de France is in the books. The final results and standings are below, followed by our recap of how the race unfolded.
Race Recap
Peters wins stage 8
France's Nans Peters stormed to a solo victory today in Loudenvielle today at the Tour de France, attacking on HC Port de Balès and maintained his lead over the col de Peyresourde to the finish. Toms Skujins (Trek-Segrafredo) finished second and Carlos Verona (Movistar) was third, 47 seconds behind.
"This is crazy. It was already something unbelievable to win a stage on my first participation in the Giro d'Italia last year, and now it's the same at the Tour de France. I told myself, why not try at the Tour too. It was a dream, and I made it. I knew Zakarin was stronger than me up the climbs but I never gave up. I convinced myself not to crack. I had seen in the downhill of Port de Balès that he descended like a goat, so I was confident of beating him in the stage's finale. I had no earpiece, so the only info I had was by looking back. Only 2km to go, I thought that I was going to win."
Adam Yates finished in a group of GC favorites to keep the yellow jersey. He's still three seconds ahead of Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma). Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) is nine seconds back.
"I'm pretty happy," Yates said. "This was a really tough day. We let the break go because the best guy in the break was way behind in the GC, so it was a good one for us to control. At some point, the pace was a bit too high, there were attacks left and right, and I had to let it go a bit. I had to collect myself and crawl back to the group where the rest of the favorites were. I tried to do my thing, manage to stay with the best guys, and here I am. Tomorrow is another hard stage. I hope to stay out of trouble and keep the yellow jersey tomorrow. I think everyone was on the limit today."
The first day in the Pyrenees saw attacks from the start. Benoît Cosnefroy and Nans Peters (AG2R-La Mondiale), Ilnur Zakarin (CCC), Kevin Reza and Quentin Pacher (B&B Hotels-Vital Concept), Michael Morkov (Deceuninck-Quick Step), Neilson Powless (EF), Fabien Grellier and Jérôme Cousin (Total Direct Energie), Carlos Verona (Movistar), Toms Skujins (Trek-Segrafredo), Soren Kragh Andersen (Sunweb) and Ben Hermans (Israel Start-Up Nation) made up the large group off the front.
The 13 riders were allowed a long leash of 14 minutes as they made their way over the Col de Mente (Cat. 1), but it was brought down to inside 10 minutes when they got to the Port de Balès (HC). Cousin attempted an attack on the early slopes but was eventually reeled in with 9km to the summit.
Cosnefroy reached the top of Col de Mente to collect 10 points, which was enough to stay in the polka dots for another day.
"I didn't expect to be here this evening with the polka dot jersey," Cosnefroy said. "Above all, it's a very nice day for Nans [Peters] who achieves something incredible on his first Tour de France. Besides that, my jersey is insignificant. It was complicated to catch the breakaway. Then we dealt with the time gap pretty well. Nans attacked strongly and I couldn't follow him. I knew he'd make a difference in the downhill. In the meantime, I enjoyed sharing my polka dot jersey with the crowd."
Peters, Zakarin and Pacher countered and rode away from their breakaway companions. Pacher couldn't hold pace and dropped back to the chasers. Peters easily dropped Zakarin on the descent off of Port de Balès and held a 45 second advantage to the win.
Amongst the GC contenders, the battle was on to gain time on Yates. Pogacar launched a mightly attack on the GC favourites, followed by Roglic and Quintana. He continued to attack and ultimately rode away to put 37 seconds into Yates, which moved him into the top 10 on GC.
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