{"id":685843,"date":"2026-05-21T20:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T20:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/685843\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T20:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T20:19:10","slug":"4-jours-de-dunkerque-breakaway-rules-stage-2-with-victor-papon-scoring-first-pro-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/685843\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Jours de Dunkerque: Breakaway rules stage 2 with Victor Papon scoring first pro victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of a second day in the early breakaway, Victor Papon (Nice M\u00e9tropole C\u00f4te d’Azur) staged a massive coup, winning stage 2 of the 4 Jours de Dunkerque<\/a> ahead of his fellow escapees Ma\u00ebl Gu\u00e9gan (CIC Pro Cycling Academy), K\u00e9vin Avoine and his Van Rysel Roubaix teammate Daniel \u00c5rnes.<\/p>\n

The chasing peloton failed to reel in the escapees, finishing seven seconds later, led to the line by stage 1 winner Laurence Pithie (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).<\/p>\n

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Pithie continues as the race leader as none of the breakaway riders finished in the lead group on stage 1. Lewis Askey (NSN) is second at six seconds, while Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) lies in third at 10 seconds.<\/p>\n

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“It’s unbelievable. I never expected it with all the sprinters’ teams,” Papon said. “When you go in the breakaway you always have a little glimmer of hope, and everything just lined up perfectly. I’m proud of the whole team.”<\/p>\n

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\"LIEVIN,\n<\/p>\n

Race leader Laurence Pithie (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), in the pink jersey, crosses the finish line just behind the breakaway and retains the lead (Image credit: Getty Images)How it unfolded<\/p>\n

It was a familiar start to stage 2 of the 4 Jours de Dunkerque, with the exact same team composition in the early breakaway as the opening stage.<\/p>\n

This time it was Ma\u00ebl Gu\u00e9gan (CIC Pro Cycling Academy), mountains classification leader Victor Papon and teammate Jaakko H\u00e4nninen (Nice M\u00e9tropole C\u00f4te d’Azur), another returnee K\u00e9vin Avoine and his teammate Daniel \u00c5rnes (Van Rysel Roubaix) in the breakaway.<\/p>\n

After going clear 20 kilometres into the stage, the five riders worked together to gain nearly four minutes. That margin fell steadily in the final hour of racing, dropping to one minute with 12 km to go as Tudor and EF-Education-EasyPost led the chase.<\/p>\n

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The quintet kept cooperating to try to hold off the chase and although they began to look ragged as the peloton slowly closed in, the breakaway still had half a minute with 5km to go.<\/p>\n

As the convoy were pulled out of the gap between the peloton and breakaway, the five leaders continued to believe in their cause. They lost H\u00e4nninen with 3km to go, but the remaining four continued to push.<\/p>\n

A crash in the chasing bunch briefly disrupted the peloton, and with 2km to go, they still had 20 seconds to close down as the quartet found another gear.<\/p>\n

Avoine led out the sprint, but it was Papon who claimed the win as the peloton timed their pursuit poorly.<\/p>\n

Results<\/p>\n

Results powered by FirstCycling<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the end of a second day in the early breakaway, Victor Papon (Nice M\u00e9tropole C\u00f4te d’Azur) staged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-685843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}