Tour de France: Milan's sprint victory breaks a six-year drought.

Italians are good people. It may be debatable, but it was known. But finally, they're also good riders. After six years and 113 stages, an Italian has returned to victory at the Tour de France. This Saturday, July 12th, is a date to mark in the annals.

The author of the feat, which broke this very long fast, is Jonathan Milan, a 24-year-old sprinter from Friuli, who in the Saint Méen le Grande - Laval stage (171 kilometers), thundered past the Belgian Wout Wan Aert and the Australian Kaden Groves in a sprint.

A regal sprint, slightly uphill in the final stretch, which the giant from Friuli dominated, sprinting in the final two hundred meters. "I could have started earlier," Milan commented, "but I knew I'd leave a gap. It's a wonderful feeling, one I share with the whole team, which finally allows me to win my first stage of the Tour. I wanted to make up for it because I was unlucky in the early stages. But now everything is beautiful. I'm even struggling to understand what happened. I'm also happy for Italy, our country. For once, we were the protagonists," concluded Milan, who also took the green jersey in this seventh stage.

A double win that makes this Friulian sprinter doubly happy, as he's almost unrivaled in long, gently sloping sprints. The victory in Milan is even more significant because it came after a chaotic and hard-fought finale in which the Italian was repeatedly threatened by his opponents. His opponents were top-level, one of whom, finishing second, was none other than Belgian Van Aert, a specialist in these white-hot finishes.

Italian rider Jonathan Milan of the Lidl-Trek team celebrates on the podium wearing the green jersey for best sprinter after the eighth stage of the 112th edition of the Tour de France, a 171.4-km ride between Saint-Meen-le-Grand and Laval Espace Mayenne, western France, on July 12, 2025. (Photo by Anne-Christine Poujoulat / AFP)

Milan, born in Tolmezzo on October 1, 2000, and standing 1.93 meters tall and weighing 84 kg, broke this spell that had last seen us on the podium since July 27, 2019, when an Italian rider, Vincenzo Nibali, managed to win in Val Thorens. Those were different times, especially when we had a champion like the Shark who managed to earn respect in major stage races.