Tour de France 2022: Wout van Aert wins stage eight as Tadej Pogacar extends overall lead

Belgium’s Wout van Aert sprinted to his second stage victory of this year’s Tour de France as Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar extended his overall lead on stage eight.

Jumbo-Visma’s Van Aert hung on up a category three climb to the finish to edge out Australia’s Michael Matthews.

Pogacar finished third to extend his yellow jersey lead to 39 seconds.

British trio Tom Pidcock, Geraint Thomas and Adam Yates all finished in the leading group of riders.

Pidock led the Ineos Grenadiers contingent over the finish line in 10th, with Thomas just behind in 11th and Yates in 18th place, with all three retaining their positions in the top 10 of the general classification.

For long stages of the 186.3km route from Dole in France to Lausanne in Switzerland another Briton, Fred Wright, battled gamely to record his first Grand Tour stage win.

The Bahrain-Victorious rider formed a three-man breakaway with Mattia Cattaneo and Frederik Frison but was forced to go solo in the final 10km before being caught around 3.5km from the line as the chasing group began to accelerate towards the finish in Lausanne.

Matthews, who was denied victory by Pogacar on stage six, opened up his sprint to the line too early and saw the Slovenian again come on to his wheel before Van Aert impressively surged past both to record his eighth individual Tour victory.

“I’m of course super happy with today’s win,” said the Belgian.

“I want to thank my team for chasing down the breakaway and then you have to finish it off. It was a pretty tough climb at the end. It was really steep – I had to fight to stay in wheel of Pogacar and his team-mates.

“I knew it was a bit flatter for the sprint, so I was waiting for that moment.”

Earlier on Saturday, a collection of the main GC riders including Pogacar, Thomas, David Gaudu and Romain Bardet were among those held up by a crash.

However, none ended up losing time as a result – unlike French favourite Thibaut Pinot, who was knocked off his bike by a collision with a soigneur from Trek-Segafredo just moments after his first crash with around 50km remaining.

Sunday sees the race travel back into France on a 192.9km route from Aigle to Chatel Les Portes du Soleil.