Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux are in their debut season in the WorldTour. Taking over the WorldTeam license of the disbanded CCC Team, French supermarket Intermarché joins Belgian engineering companies Wanty and Groupe Gobert as co-title sponsors. The team is in its fourteenth season and has one of the lowest budgets. That's not a disadvantage.
The team is on an impressive tear having won stage wins in two Grand Tours this season following Taco van der Hoorn's victory in the Giro.
"This victory is not completely unexpected, as I was feeling really good and as I discussed for a long time about this opportunity with our smart sports director Valerio Piva yesterday evening. I won stages in the Giro and the Vuelta before, but I was dreaming about knowing how it feels to be a leader in a Grand Tour. I was pretty close this spring in the Tour of Italy when Joe Dombrowski won the stage. Also when I took the Giro stage victory in 2016, the American rider was present in the breakaway.
I'm 34 so not many opportunities will come across anymore. That's why I started the stage with a clear mission this morning. The stage win was possible today because I really believed in myself. Our breakaway was composed of eight strong riders and I considered Elissonde and Dombrowski as the most dangerous contenders. It is not the first time I was in this situation and this experience made me stronger. The biggest question was whether the peloton was hungry for the stage win or not. This is fantastic, I'm going to enjoy this a lot the next days!
-Rein Taaramae
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