Merlier wins Tour de France seventh stage in sprint finish

Belgian Tim Merlier won the Tour de France seventh stage in a sprint finish at the end of a 175km run from Hagetmau to Bordeaux on Friday.

Norwegian Soren Waerenskjold took second place with Eritrean Biniam Girmay third as reigning champion Tadej Pogacar held onto the race leader's yellow jersey.

In a relatively uneventful day in the sweltering southwest of France, when the temperatures reached 38C in Bordeaux, Merlier timed his effort to perfection, reeling in compatriot Jasper Philipsen and Girmay to secure a clear victory.

Asked if it was a perfect sprint, Merlier said: "I don't know, because I launched my sprint with, I don't know how far it was.

"It was a mess to be in position, but I made it, thanks to the team, it was great work from them."

This was the 33-year-old former European champion's fourth stage win in his third Tour participation.

Philipsen's Alpecin-Premier Tech team seemed to have set up the 10-time Tour stage winner perfectly for his dash to the line but he simply did not have the straight line speed to hold off Merlier.

Philipsen was fifth behind German Max Kanter in fourth, while Dane Mads Pedersen retained his lead in the sprinters' green jersey points competition after finishing eighth.

The overall contenders all finished safely in the peloton.

- 300km in breakaways -

It was another day with a breakaway doomed from the start, and few riders showed an interest in being a part of it.

Frenchman Baptiste Veistroffer escaped from the chequered flag for the second time in three days.

Having ridden 144km alone on Wednesday, this time he had Czech Jakub Otruba for company.

The sprinters' teams were not prepared to take any risks and never let the duo get more than a minute and a half up the road.

They were caught with 18km left after 157km out in front -- meaning that Veistroffer had spent 301km in breakaways over the last three days.

"I had good company... at least I had company," said Veistroffer, whose nickname is the Wild Boar of Fouesnant, the Breton town where he was born.

"It's a shame that they only gave us a minute, so we held back a bit, but there you go, that's the Tour.

"We're lucky to be here and today I had the same feeling (as two days ago) of paying my respects to the race and to my team," added Veistroffer, who is a Tour debutant.

Uno-X Mobility, whose rider Torstein Traeen had worn the yellow jersey for two days before a crash on Thursday forced him out of the race, repeatedly launched attacks to try to escape off the front of the peloton, but to no avail.

"After all the work two days ago and today, we were the only team with Alpecin who were riding to bring the breakaway back so I'm happy that it's not another team who won," said Merlier of the Soudal-Quick Step team.

Stages to Bordeaux -- the heart of perhaps the most famous wine region in France -- are renowned for ending in bunch sprints.

Great former sprinters such as Mark Cavendish, Jean-Paul van Poppel and Djamolidine Abdoujaparov have won stages in the city.

Philipsen had won in Bordeaux, beating Cavendish into second in 2023, the last time the Tour had a stage finish in the city.

Bordeaux is the second most visited French city by the Tour after the capital, Paris.

This was the 81st time a stage finished in the city. The first was in the very first edition of the Tour in 1903.

bc/dmc

© Agence France-Presse