The duel of the giants goes to Wout van Aert

With perfect timing in the sprint, Wout van Aert won the Swiss tour of the Tour de France and celebrated his second stage victory at the Olympic Stadium in Lausanne. The Belgian prevailed on the eighth stage on Saturday ahead of Australian Michael Matthews and leader Tadej Pogacar.

There were only small changes in the overall ranking. The Slovenian Pogacar extended his lead with a time credit at the finish and is 39 seconds ahead of last year's second-placed Jonas Vingegaard. The Dane is particularly hoping for the longer climbs in the Alps next week to attack Pogacar. Geraint Thomas is third, 1:14 minutes behind. The Welshman is in better shape than perhaps he has been since his Tour win in 2018. A typical outlier stage – or not? After the first mountain finish, the peloton was willing to take it a little easier and give outliers a chance. But the stage started as hectic as in the previous days. After several attacks from the peloton, three riders were able to pull away. After eleven kilometers, a serious crash occurred on a straight road, in which Maximilian Schachmann and Pogacar were also involved. The 21-year-old American Kevin Vermarke from Team DSM had to give up the tour with a suspected broken collarbone. The Slovenian's UAE team calmed the tempo in the field until their captain, who was a minute and a half behind, caught up again.

The reduced pace in the field after the crash benefited the breakaway trio. The Italian Mattia Cattaneo, the Belgian Frederik Frison and the Briton Fred Wright dominated the stage for a long time and managed a maximum lead of three and a half minutes. Frison could no longer follow his escape companions at the end of the stage, a little later Cattaneo's strength ran out and Wright was caught on the final climb 3,5 kilometers from the finish. UAE took the sprint up the 4,5 kilometer long climb with a maximum gradient of 12 percent. In the final, Matthews opened the scoring before van Aert was able to outwit him in the last 50 meters. First corona cases in the peloton Before the start of the stage, the first corona cases on the tour were reported. Pogacar's most important helper for the area, the Norwegian Vegard Stake Laengen, had to give up the race after a positive test, as did the Frenchman Geoffrey Bouchard. Two sports directors from the Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team were also positive. Before the start of the tour in Copenhagen, six drivers had to leave due to positive tests. On the first day of rest on Monday there are mandatory tests for all drivers and carers.

“Vegard was negative in our internal tests on Friday morning. In the evening he complained of a scratchy throat and a rapid test was positive. A PCR test confirmed the result,” said UAE doctor Adriano Rotunno. AG2R announced that rapid tests were carried out on all drivers and supervisors every three days. The organizers also carried out tests. The world association UCI relaxed the Corona rules a few days before the start of the tour. Instead of PCR tests, only rapid tests were sufficient, and a team no longer has to leave the race after two drivers test positive. A new rule also states that a driver can stay in the race despite a positive test if he or she is symptom-free and not contagious. This was the case with Luxembourger Bob Jungels, a teammate of Bouchard.

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The duel of the giants goes to Wout van Aert

Wout van Aert takes his second stage win at the Tour de France. In the tough final, the Belgian prevailed in the uphill sprint against the yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar and his friend Michael Matthews.

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