{"id":744875,"date":"2026-06-18T17:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T17:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/744875\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T17:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T17:02:12","slug":"axel-zingle-visma-lease-a-bike-falls-short-at-occitanie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/744875\/","title":{"rendered":"Axel Zingle (Visma | Lease a Bike) falls short at Occitanie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thibaud Gruel of Groupama-FDJ<\/a> won<\/a> the first stage of the Route d’Occitanie<\/a>. The young Frenchman held off Axel Zingle<\/a> (Visma | Lease a Bike), among others to become the first overall leader.With all the racing going on this week, you\u2019d think teams would be short on riders. But there was a full field at the start of the Route d\u2019Occitanie<\/a> in France. While the biggest names did stay away in favor of the Tour de Suisse<\/a> or the Baloise Belgium Tour<\/a>, it made for an open contest in the three-day stage race.<\/p>\n

It started with a stage suited for sprinters. With riders like Madis Mihkels (EF Education – EasyPost), Axel Zingle (Visma | Lease a Bike), and Matteo Moschetti (Pinarello – Q36.5), there were plenty of fast riders at the start. However, the course for the first stage wasn\u2019t entirely flat, which meant that some teams wanted to make it a tough race.<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

Visma | Lease a Bike controlsA four-man breakaway formed early on, but Jamie Meehan (Cofidis), Oliver Mattheis (BIKE AID), Th\u00e9o Delacroix (St Michel – Preference Home), and Laurens Huys (Nice M\u00e9tropole C\u00f4te d’Azur) were never allowed too much room, thanks in part to Visma | Lease a Bike<\/a> and EF Education-EasyPost. They controlled the race for Zingle and Mikhels.<\/p>\n

The breakaway was caught just before the day\u2019s final climb\u2014a 1.2-kilometer stretch with a 7.8 percent gradient, 9 kilometers from the finish. Decathlon CMA CGM took control there and had Johannes Staune Mittet follow several other attacks, as did Cofidis rider Ion Izagirre and Visma | Lease a Bike rider Tim Rex.<\/p>\n

However, everyone stayed fairly close together, so as expected, it came down to a sprint. In the sprint, Gruel got the better of Mikhels and Zingle, although the latter did make a strong push at the end.<\/p>\n

Stage 1 Results: Route d’Occitanie 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thibaud Gruel of Groupama-FDJ won the first stage of the Route d’Occitanie. The young Frenchman held off Axel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,280078,784,196503,358506,85,23372],"class_list":["post-744875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-axel-zingle","tag-cycling","tag-groupama-fdj","tag-route-doccitanie","tag-sports","tag-visma-lease-a-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744875","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=744875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}