Tour du Jura Cycliste: Guillaume Martin outsprints Clément Berthet to secure summit victory

Guillaume Martin (Groupama-FDJ) won the one-day Tour du Jura Cycliste after outsprinting compatriot and rival Clément Berthet (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) at the top of Mont Poupet.

In a late-race attack with two kilometres to go on the final climb, the pair of Frenchmen caught the last-standing breakaway rider Odd Christian Eiking (Unibet Tietema Rockets), before sprinting for the finish line. 

Martin launched his sprint from 200 metres out and proved the fastest of the pair, leaving Berthet to settle for second. The reduced group crossed the line 18 seconds later with José Manuel Díaz (Burgos Burpellet BH) claiming third place.

At the one-day Tour du Jura Cycliste, the peloton tackled a 176km route from Fraisans to the summit of Mont Poupet (Salin-les-Bains). 

The course was primarily flat for the first two-thirds of the race, but that all changed in the final 60km as the roads became increasingly more challenging with three categorised ascents; Côte de Chamoz, Côte de Thésy, and Côte de Bracon, and several more unclassified climbs leading to the mountaintop finale atop Mont Poupet.

A three-rider early breakaway formed that included Tim Rex (Visma-Lease a Bike Development), Eiking, and Jaakko Hänninen (Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur). 

However, nearing the halfway point of the race, Rex and Eiking pushed onward ahead of a distanced Hänninen. They held a two-minute lead on Hänninen as the main field sat three and a half minutes back inside 40km to go.

The peloton, led by French teams Groupama-FDJ, Cofidis, TotalEnergies and St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93, reeled in Hänninen, but the two-man breakaway remained out front, still with more than two minutes in hand as they reached the Côte de Bracon.

Eiking attacked over the top, building a slim 15 seconds on Rex as they reached the uncategorised Saint-Thiébaud, which was the last climb before the final summit.

Rex was swallowed up by the fast pace of the peloton as they barreled into the base of the final summit. Eiking desperately hung on to a 50-second lead on the lower slopes of Mont Poupet, 4.1km that averaged 8.1%, but with sections as steep as 13%.

A decisive attack from Frenchman Martin and compatriot Berthet split apart the reduced group, and they caught and passed Eiking with two kilometres to the top.

The pair gained a handful of seconds on the next group, but it was all the time they needed before contesting the two-up sprint with 200 metres to the finish line, won by Martin.

Results

Results powered by FirstCycling