On a day of firsts, the Eritrean sprinter Biniam Girmay became the first black African rider to win a stage in the Tour de France, while Richard Carapaz became the first Ecuadorian to wear the race leader’s yellow jersey.
Girmay won stage three of the 2024 Tour in Turin after a crash in the peloton, three kilometres from the finish, dashed Mark Cavendish’s hopes of becoming the Tour’s record-breaking stage winner for yet another day.
The 24-year-old Girmay, riding for the Intermarché-Wanty team, and already winner of a stage in the 2022 Giro d’Italia and of the Belgian classic Gent-Wevelgem, took his first Tour success after sprinting ahead of Fernando Gaviria and Arnaud De Lie.
“Ever since I started cycling, I’ve always been dreaming of the Tour,” Girmay said. “But to win in my second Tour, in a big bunch sprint, is unbelievable. It means a lot, personally for me, and for the continent.
“I remember my father really liked to watch the Tour every July. He always showed us the Tour de France on TV. One day, I asked him if it was possible to be part of the Tour, and he said: ‘Keep going and everything is possible.’
“Today everybody will believe African riders can succeed in the World Tour. We must be proud, now we are really part of the big races, now it’s our moment, our time.”
Cavendish looked frustrated at the finish line, but in other ways he was happy to have escaped the mayhem intact. “I was just looking to stay up,” he said. “Someone skidded and I was just waiting for someone to hit me from behind.”
Although delayed by a double wheel change with 90km to race, Cavendish and his team sought to execute a plan that had been prepared months in advance. When his rival Jasper Philipsen’s key pilot fish, Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Mathieu van der Poel, was left behind, the stars appeared to align. But it was not to be.
“We kind of got through, but we were way off it,” Cavendish said. “With 2.5km to go, we were out of it.” He will now have to bide his time until later in the week, when more sprint opportunities are expected.
Carapaz, who has finished on the podium in all three of Europe’s Grand Tours and won the Giro d’Italia in 2019, is a force to be reckoned with. The 31-year-old crashed out of the Tour on day one last year, but this season he has built steadily towards his best form.
“It means the world to me, and the same for Ecuador, because there’s so few of us,” he said.
The extension of the rule that time lost in the final five kilometres would not count in the race standings did little to reduce the chaotic sprint finale, but it shuffled the pack in terms of the race lead. Carapaz leapfrogged Tadej Pogacar, the defending champion Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel in the general classification, thanks to his higher stage finish.
Tuesday’s first Alpine stage of the race will offer Pogacar another chance to test the form of his rivals, just as he did on stage two into Bologna, where he broke clear with Vingegaard.
Spectacular though his attack on that occasion may have been, Pogacar did not kick the door down and failed to open any distance between himself, Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Carapaz.
Yet Pogacar has already begun the elimination process. His accelerations on Sunday wounded his compatriot Primoz Roglic, considered one of the “big four” of Tour contenders. “I didn’t have the legs I hoped for,” Roglic said. “I wasn’t where I should have been. I couldn’t do a thing.”
The fourth stage crosses into the French Alps at the Col de Montgenèvre, prior to the gruelling haul from Briançon to the summit of the Col du Galibier, and the long, rapid drop to Valloire.
Vingegaard, seemingly recovered from his crash in April on a fast descent during the Tour of the Basque Country, can expect to be tested again by the Slovenian, both on the climb to the Galibier’s sky‑scraping summit and on the breakneck descent to the finish.
