The 30-year-old, who rides for the Ineos Grenadiers team, won the 18th leg of this year's race, crossing the finish line narrowly ahead of teammate Richard Carapaz of Ecuador after the two broke away from the main pack in tough mountain terrain.
Photo: PAP/Panoramic/Pool
Belgium’s Wout Van Aert came home third, and Slovenia’s Primoz Roglic, the overall race leader, finished fourth on Thursday.
"It was an incredible day for us, and I will never forget that," Poland's Kwiatkowski was quoted as saying after the race.
"I’ve had some nice moments in cycling but that was something new.”
Michał Kwiatkowski celebrates his win of stage 18 in the 2020 Tour de France amid the global coronavirus pandemic. Photo: PAP/Panoramic/Pool
He completed the 175-kilometre route from Meribel to La Roche-sur-Foron in the Alps in 4 hours 47 minutes and 33 seconds.
This marked the sixth time in history that a Polish rider took a stage victory at the Tour de France race.
Zenon Jaskuła claimed the first ever Tour de France stage win for Poland and finished third overall in the race in 1993.
In 2014, Rafał Majka won two of the stages and became the race’s fastest climber. He followed up with a stage win in 2015 and best climber title in 2016.
In 2017, Maciej Bodnar won the Marseille time trial stage to become the third Pole to win a Tour de France stage.
Kwiatkowski, the 2014 world road race champion, won the 2018 Tour de Pologne, Poland’s largest cycling race.
In March 2018, he won the weeklong Tirreno-Adriatico race in Italy.
(gs/pk)
Source: PAP, TVP, polsatsport.pl
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