At the Tour de France, Jonathan Milan extended the sprint time

In cycling sprints, time doesn't proceed linearly. It speeds up or slows down depending on the level of entropy. If a team manages to impose its will, then it flows like any other stage. If this isn't the case, then the gasps of breath and shivers of fear we feel slow our perception of the natural passage of seconds. And so the magnificence of speed is suddenly slowed by the fear that something unwelcome might happen.

Laval was the place where the Tour de France had decided to pay tribute to pure speed. The organizers had designed a nearly perfect course: wide roads, three roundabouts in a row to stretch out the peloton and significantly reduce the risk of a crash that could ruin the sprint, and a straight stretch nearly a kilometer long. Everything was ready to enjoy a sprint whose time corresponded precisely to the real-world ticking of the clock.

It didn't go that way. Throughout this carefully planned course, what was lost was team unity, and the pilot fish, the men who should have accelerated at the right moment to give the sprinters the chance to sprint in the best conditions, were lost.

And so the sprinters, bereft of their guides, had to make do with shoulder-to-shoulder thrusts, unexpected accelerations, slipstream changes, and a little imagination. A chaos that dilated the time we perceived, fearful that something unpleasant might happen.

Fears misplaced. Sometimes we forget that runners are masters of balance, especially sprinters.

These fears were misplaced, but they vanished in a flash, as soon as the chaos subsided, giving way to speed. And the speed Jonathan Milan manages to express is unmatched by many.

In Laval, Jonathan Milan won the eighth stage of the 2025 Tour de France , at the end of a tenacious sprint, which he risked not being able to perform as he would have liked on three occasions, but which he managed to win with mastery and tenacity.

The Lidl-Trek rider's final eight hundred meters were a constant mix of imagination and composure . It was almost a manual for the imperfect sprinter, with "don't try this at home" prominently written all over it. Because Jonathan Milan didn't do anything wrong, but certain things can only be achieved if you have his legs, are a six-foot-six beast, and have learned to ride on the track.

As he watched him move, as he shouldered past Jake Stewart, who was moving Pascal Ackerman up, and then dribbled past Mathieu van der Poel, time began to slow. Before we felt him accelerate, following the whirlwind of his pedal strokes. Kaden Groves, who had made the final push at the same time as Jonathan Milan , conceded at least five meters to the Italian. He finished third, behind Wout van Aert , who hadn't been seen at this level in a sprint since last year's Vuelta .

The sprint wasn't the only time to stretch. The 2,542 days since the last victory by an Italian at the Tour de France seemed at least double that until this morning. On July 29th, the absence of an Italian stage winner at the Grande Boucle would have been seven years. Since Vincenzo Nibali was first over the finish line of the twentieth stage in Val Thorens . Nibali has since retired, and even those who always underestimated him throughout his career now nostalgically recall his rides among the peaks of the Alps and Pyrenees.

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