Cycling

Tour de France, Milan's winning sprint: Italy breaks a six-year fast

Jonathan Milan, a 24-year-old sprinter from Friuli, sprinted from Belgium's Wout Wan Aert and Australia's Kaden Groves in the Saint Méen le Grande - Laval stage (171 kilometres).

12 July 2025

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12/07/2025, ciclismo Tour de France 2025 tappa 8 - Saint Méen le Grande - Laval (171 chilometri) - Il vincitore della tappa Jonathan Milan durante lo sprint finale. (foto IPP/zumapress/David Pintens//belga Laval)

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Italians good people. It may be debatable, but it was known. But finally also good riders. After six years and 113 stages, an Italian has returned to win the Tour de France. A date to mark in the annals this Saturday, 12 July.

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 kilometres), sprinted past Belgian Wout Wan Aert and Australian Kaden Groves.

A regal sprint, slightly uphill in the last stretch, which the giant from Friuli dominated by sprinting in the last two hundred metres. "I could have started even earlier," Milan commented, "but I knew that I would have made a gap. It's a wonderful emotion, which I share with the whole team, that finally allows me to win my first stage at 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. Then I am also happy for Italy, our country. Once in a while we were the protagonists," concluded Milan, who also took the green jersey in this seventh stage.

A double victory that makes this sprinter from Friuli, who has almost no rivals in long, gently sloping sprints, doubly happy. An even more significant victory, that of Milan, because it came after a very chaotic and hard-fought finale in which the Italian repeatedly risked being closed in by his adversaries. Opponents of the highest level, one of whom, having finished second, is the Belgian Van Aert, a specialist in these white-hot finishes.

Il corridore italiano del team Lidl - Trek Jonathan Milan festeggia sul podio con la maglia verde di miglior velocista dopo l'ottava tappa della 112ª edizione del Tour de France, 171,4 km tra Saint-Meen-le-Grand e Laval Espace Mayenne, Francia occidentale, il 12 luglio 2025. (Foto di Anne-Christine Poujoulat / AFP)

Milan, born in Tolmezzo on 1 October 2000, and 1.93m tall and 84kg, broke this spell that had not seen us on the podium since 27 July 2019, when an Italian rider had managed to win in Val Thorens with Vincenzo NIbali. Those were other times, above all we had a champion like the Shark who managed to make himself respected in the big stage races.

Milan's success does not, of course, erase all our difficulties, but it does make the balance of a Tour that, until now, had always seen us as spectators less bitter. Last Saturday in Lille the stage seemed packed for Johnny, but the Visma fan surprised him by leaving him trapped in the second group.

Even in Dunkerque, two days later, Milan was only a few centimetres behind Tim Merlier. Sprints, especially at the Tour, are like that: always complicated and unpredictable. Everyone wants to win and no one backs down. Suffice it to say that in the last kilometre, despite the gradient, Milan sprinted 78km then. An extraordinary power, that which this giant from Friuli unleashes, apparently timid but in reality extremely determined, as he also demonstrated on the track when in 2024 he won the rainbow gold medal in the individual pursuit by setting the 4km record (3'59"153).

For one day at the Tour, there was no mention of Tadej Pogacar, who of course continues to lead the general classification with 54" over Belgian Evenepoel and 1 minute 11" over Frenchman Vaquelin. Dane Vingegaard, Pogacar's great rival for the podium in Paris, is fourth at 1 minute 17".

The Tour is still open, but so far the Slovenian has always proved to be the strongest. This Sunday a new stage for sprinters from Chinon to Chateauroux of 174 kilometres. A great opportunity for Milan to strike while the iron is hot.