Laporte ends France’s Tour drought
Christophe Laporte ended the host’s drought of stage winners when he surged out of the peloton in the finale of the 19th stage and claimed his maiden win on the Tour de France on Friday.
Just two days before the race ends in Paris, Laporte spared the blushes for French riders who had not tasted a victory all month. Only twice in race history has France not produced a stage winner, in 1926 and 1999.
Laporte made his move after a trio of breakaway riders was caught with 1.5 kilometers left in the 188.5-kilometer flat stage to Cahors in southwestern France. On paper, the stage looked enticing for pure sprinters but Laporte made the most of the slight uphill section to deny them.
A support rider for race leader Jonas Vingegaard at Jumbo-Visma, Laporte won ahead of Jasper Philipsen and Alberto Dainese. It was the fifth stage win this month for the mighty Dutch team that also includes Wout van Aert.
The versatile rider from Belgium did not compete for the stage win on Friday, offering the chance to Laporte.
“I’m super happy, I can’t believe it. Wout told me, ‘Today is for you,’” Laporte said. “I was already fully satisfied by our great team work, but to win a Tour stage is a childhood dream come true.”
College football: The NCAA on Friday
charged Tennessee with 18 major rules violations involving allegations of providing impermissible cash, gifts and benefits worth about $60,000 to football recruits and their families under former coach Jeremy Pruitt. The school has until Oct. 20 to respond to the Level I violations, the most serious by NCAA standards, according to the letter it received from the association’s enforcement staff. The NCAA notice of allegations says at least a dozen members of Pruitt’s staff were involved in more than 200 individual violations over a two-year period. Pruitt and nine others were fired for cause in January 2021 after Tennessee started an internal investigation following a tip on Nov. 13, 2020.
Mountain climbing: A woman from Pakistan and another from Iran appeared to be the first from their countries to scale K2 on Friday, the world’s second-highest mountain and one of the most dangerous summits, a mountaineering official said. A second Pakistani woman scaled the summit minutes later. Samina Baig, a 32-year-old from a remote northern village in Pakistan, was the first to hoist her country’s green and white flag atop the peak of the 28,250 foothigh (8,610 meter) K2. Iran’s Afsaneh Hesamifard followed shortly after and was hailed for her achievement in Farsi-language posts on social media.
Tennis: The Big Four are forming quite a squad at the Laver Cup, with Novak Djokovic joining Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray on Team Europe in September. Event organizers announced Friday that Djokovic will participate. He won Wimbledon this month for his 21st Grand Slam title. That puts him one ahead of Federer and one behind Nadal for the most by a man in tennis history. Murray owns three major championships. That quartet has combined to win 66 of the past 76 Grand Slam trophies, and each has spent time at No. 1 in the ATP rankings.