Having already raised their arms aloft in victory twice so far at this year’s Tour de France, Team Sunweb set out with a plan to make it three wins this afternoon on stage 19. After another perfectly timed late attack, Søren Kragh Andersen went solo all the way to the line with Nikias Arndt perfectly disrupting any chase behind.
With a two-pronged approach of setting Cees Bol up for the finish, or following any dangerous moves in the finale, the team had several options to play. When a big group of 12 riders escaped, Nikias Arndt and stage 14 winner Søren Kragh Andersen excellently infiltrated the move for the team. With the peloton sitting up it soon became clear that those ahead would fight for stage honours. Sensing his moment to strike, Kragh Andersen produced a stunning attack to go clear on the right hand side of the road, with no one able to follow. As the gap continued to grow, Arndt did the perfect job behind to slow any chase – allowing Kragh Andersen enough time to sit up and celebrate as he took Team Sunweb’s third 2020 Tour de France stage win in Champagnole.
“The motorbike told me you have one minute and I realized in the last kilometre that I had the second win.” beamed an elated Kragh Andersen at the finish. “The first one is of course magical, but today is even more crazy in my opinion; I’m speechless. First of all, Nicholas did a great job on the front the whole day. We were going for Cees with a sprint finish but the race developed, and it was my job to be represented in the attacks. Nikias was there so we planned that I would attack from the group and he would go for the sprint. The moment came after Trentin’s attack when it was super hard. I took the chance and I was lucky they let me go.”
Team Sunweb coach Matt Winston added: “Quickly we reverted to ‘scenario b’ after the intermediate sprint where we saw groups going clear and we knew what was going to happen. We were in a really nice situation with Søren and Nikias in the breakaway but it was a world class group. We said to each other that we’ll have to go long and Søren stepped up to the challenge and made a really nice attack, and all of the guys behind started to look at each other. Søren is also a really strong guy and if you give him ten seconds – he’s gone. Nikias was able to just follow then behind and mark things to disrupt the chase. I think all together it was a really nice job from the guys today once again. The atmosphere we’ve got in the team at the moment is really good. Everyone is in great spirits and we’re all hungry to keep moving forward, keep learning, talk about what we’ve done and keep progressing. The whole team is hungry to keep doing well and keep getting good results.”
