Tour de France points system a disadvantage for Milan against Pogacar - Analysis

Before the start of stage 8 of the Tour de France, a lot of people asked me what I thought was going to happen, because an uphill finish like that can be a bit hard to judge. I thought it meant we would see a mix of different types of sprinters up there, and that’s exactly what happened.

The big favourite was Jonathan Milan, and he won the stage, but there were also guys like Wout van Aert, Kaden Groves and Arnaud De Lie all up there, and that’s good to see. 

In Dunkerque on stage 3, Milan used up his Lidl-Trek lead-out before the final kilometre. Even though he finished second there, that wasn’t the wrong decision, and Milan and his team did something similar here. 

I think they made a clear decision to really position him well before the last important corner, which came at 1.3km to go. From there, he had one guy left with him, Jasper Stuyven, who did a great job bringing him into the last kilometre.

On these uphill finishes, it’s always tricky because the speed is not very high, so you have riders coming from behind. You need to be really careful not to get blocked in, so I think Milan really showed his class today. He positioned himself well without a huge lead-out, and then he got on Kaden Groves’ wheel and just waited for his turn to come in the last 200m.

Wout van Aert was sprinting off Milan’s wheel, and he wasn’t able to come around him, which shows exactly how strong the Italian was today. But second was a good result from Wout, considering that he hadn’t sprinted on the Tour yet, and personally I was very happy to see him back in the mix like that.

Wout had to do it himself, he had to move up and find a good position. He did all that, and he still had the legs to go for it and do a really strong sprint. There’s no shame in losing out to a sprinter like Milan, especially when he’s in form like this, so I think Wout can take a lot from it.

But there was nothing to be done against Milan today, and that win will be a big relief for him. I know from experience that when you miss your first chance or two at a Grand Tour, the pressure starts to build and build and build. It’s terrible! If you miss the first chances, you’re waiting and waiting for the chance to make amends.

But at the same time, I think Milan still would have taken confidence from the second place on stage 3. He was really close to beating Merlier, and he would have known that his legs were there, so it was just a case of putting it all together. Now that’s easier said than done, of course, and there was some extra expectation too, because his team had placed a lot of belief in him even before the race started. Mads Pedersen won four stages at the Giro d’Italia, but Lidl-Trek was adamant all year that Milan would be their sprinter for the Tour.

Today’s win was a relief, but not only because of the pressure of being here instead of Pedersen. I think the biggest relief for Milan will be the feeling that he has paid back the work of the riders who are on the Tour with him, because people like Simone Consonni and Toms Skuijns have been totally committed.

Milan was wearing the green jersey on stage 8, but he only had it on loan from Tadej Pogačar. The win – and the maximum points in the intermediate sprint – has now put him into the lead in the points classification, but it’s still going to be really hard for him to win it all in Paris.

The fact that Pogačar is only 36 points behind him after a week with a lot of normally flat stages shows you how hard the first week has been. And Pogačar was able to get full points for his win on an uphill finish at Mûr-de-Bretagne, so the new scoring system doesn’t help pure sprinters at all. 

That can be a big advantage for Pogačar going forward, especially when the race hits the mountains. It’s still too early to judge exactly how the points classification will play out, and Milan has another chance to pick up a lot of points tomorrow, but the system doesn’t work to his advantage. Pogačar is dangerous.