The Inner Ring: Recent Episodes
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Watching the Femmes at the Tour de France? Do you know what all the team sponsorsdo? If you’ve ever wondered if Suez has something to do with water, or what Laboral Kutxa or VolkerWessels are about, here are some answers.
Visma-Lease A Bike is obvious as it’s the sister team to the men’s World Tour squad, with Norwegian IT services and payroll software specialist company Visma sponsoring alongside Lease A Bike, a company that offers bike leasing services to other companies and their employees that belongs to PON, a Dutch conglomerate that has a big footprint in cycling owning brands like Cervelo, Cannondale and Schwinn.
FDJ United-Suez sees the French state lottery provider and now Europe’s second biggest gambling company alongside Suez which is a French company that has two main activities, waste management and water services, so think of fleets of garbage trucks and recycling plants, as well as reservoirs, piping and sewage. Beyond the two headline names the jersey is notable for more blue chip names like Gan insurance and CB which is France’s answer to Visa payments. Team manager Stéphane Delcourt could teach his French peers in the men’s World Tour some lessons.
Canyon-SRAM is a factory team with German bike brand Canyon alongside US component manufacturer SRAM. The team has just dropped Zondacrypto mid-season after the Polish company vanished taking some people’s savings and has just signed a German retail brokerage platform Scaleable Capital inviting the obvious question of if they’ll scale up investment.
UAE Team l’IMAD is the Gulf state we know from the men’s team. IMAD is the sovereign wealth fund that used to be called ADQ hence the mid-season name change for the team, the fund has been chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE’s national security adviser, pictured with his trademark shades above. As well as spy chief he’s behind many corporate activities and the women’s team shares some of the same backers and links as the men’s team for example Analog is an IT company owned by G42 which has also been chaired by TBZ.
Team SD Worx-Protime has Belgian corporate services company SD Worx which claims to be “Europe’s leading HR, pay and time partner”, so playing a similar role to Visma. Protime is a brand belonging to SD Worx, its a corporate HR service to track and time workers to measure when they are in the office and logging time spent on a workstation.
Movistar is the Spanish telecoms operate Telefonica and its mobile brand and not just with Marlen Reusser today but arguably a team with a consistently better women’s team than the men but because of international recruitment, having hired Annemiek van Vleuten in the past while seeing home talent Paula Blasi go abroad. She has been strongly linked to the Spanish squad but things seem increasingly open at the moment.
Lidl-Trek is the German discount supermarket alongside the US bike brand and a big budget outfit keen to be cited among the top tier teams for both the men and women. The team is owned by Lidl which is interesting because the retailer’s premise is low prices and no frills but here they are spending probably €60 million a year on sport, still small compared to €140 billion in annual revenues but a big frill.
AG Insurance-Soudal is the sister team of the men’s Soudal-Quickstep outfit but think of a step-sister because it has had its own independent history before joining up with the men’s team and while the kit is similar and they share a bike sponsor, it’s a Belgian entity while the men’s squad is run out of Luxembourg. AG does consumer insurance, like car, travel and accident cover while Soudal is adhesives and other chemicals for construction and DIY.
EF Education-Oatly sees Swedish-Swiss language education company EF Education alongside Oatly, an “oat drink” – don’t say milk – company that was also started in Sweden but has since floated on the New York Stock Exchange.
Fenix-PremierTech is led by Italian company Arpa with its Fenix brand, it’s a plastic surface product offering “interior solutions”, think wall or worktop coverings that offer colour and are easy to wipe. The Belgian squad is is the sister team of the Alpecin-PremierTech men’s team but notable because of the different title sponsor for each. They share PremierTech, the Canadian horticultural company that started out selling peat but now offers agriscience products and machinery to plant seedlings and package crops.
Human Powered Health is a US healthcare company that specialises helping to promote athletic health, offering nutritional advice and VO2 max testing for example and a subsidiary of Optum which is itself part of UnitedHealth group, the American health and insurance giant.
Liv Jayco Alula sees Giant’s women’s brand Liv in lights alongside Australian caravan and camping car maker Jayco and Saudi tourist project Al Ula. Like the men’s team, it’s been a pet project of Gerry Ryan who started out backing women’s cycling in the 1990s by personally funding individual athletes to train for the Olympics. His long run as a patron of the team, men and women, could be coming to an end.
Team Picnic-PostNL is a copy-paste of the men’s text, Picnic is a Dutch food retailer start-up that does home delivery, an online grocer and supermarket that is now expanding into France. PostNL is the Dutch postal service. Alas just like the men’s World Tour team it’s also struggling, no wins this season and overtaken by several second tier teams on the UCI rankings.
St Michel-Preference Home-Auber 93 is closing its men’s team to focus on the women. St Michel is an industrial bakery company making madeleines and biscuits which can be found for sale all over France, from supermarkets to railway vending machines. Preference Home is a house building company operating in the Paris area. Auber 93 is the town of Aubervilliers and Seine-Saint-Denis department, long a working class area just to the north-east of Paris where the team has its HQ. It has had a joint men’s team at Continental level but this is stopping to focus on the women’s project.
Cofidis is the French consumer credit company, it started out offering credit to people shopping from mail order catalogues and outgrew the parent business. Just like the men’s team, it has a roster of riders from other European markets it operates in, like Poland, Czechia and Italy. While several teams have men’s and women’s squads, Cofidis is notable as the only sponsor also funding a paracyling team too.
Laboral Kutxa-Fundacion Euskadi is the sister team to the Euskatel-Euskadi men’s team only with Laboral Kuxta they have a credit union as a sponsor of the women’s team, kutxa is Basque for a caja in Spanish. Like other women’s teams, it only has a minority of local cyclists with only a few Basques on the books.
VolkerWessels is a Dutch construction company building everything from housing in the Netherlands to railway infrastructure projects in the UK and reportedly the country’s second largest builder. It’s part owned by the Wessels family with workers also having a share of equity. Construction is not an advanced business but the kit looks like it was designed twenty years ago.
Uno-X is the Norwegian retail company Reitan and its service station business, offering fuel and charging points across Norway and Denmark. While the men’s team is 100% Norwegian and Danish, the women’s team is more international.
Lotto Intermarché Ladies is the full name, the “ladies” suffix does feel like something out of a Bronte novel that could be revised. Lotto is the Belgian state lottery and so by extension the Belgian government with a mission to support women’s cycling in Flanders and Wallonia alike although the roster looks very Flemish. Meanwhile Intermarché is a French supermarket giant that operates across Europe from Portugal to Poland via franchise that buy centrally from the company which itself sources and produces a lot of goods, it has extensive agricultural holdings and Europe’s largest fishing fleet.
Ma Petite Entreprise is French for “My Small Business” and a crowd-funded team backed by small businesses. There are different membership tiers, from individual supporters paying €120 a year to sponsors ranging between “access” entry point of €750 a year to the “pro” tier of €15,000, and there are over 642 of these corporate sponsors. It’s a novel project as an alternative model to the title sponsor system that every other team relies on and interesting because of this.
Mayenne Monbana My Pie sees the Mayenne department of France as the lead choice. With local government in France under pressure to make cuts you can see this may not be an essential service but there’s a logic to it with local politicians wanting to reach people in France to sell their area as a dynamic and active place to relocate. Monbana is a chocolate company located in the Mayenne. My Pie is a French company selling pies, founded by two entrepreneurs who discovered the New Zealand and Australian staple of pies when on a trip “Down Under” and decided to import the idea to France. Getting the French to eat new food may not sound easy but meaty sauce inside a buttery pastry is an easy sell and the business seems to be growing well.
- Men’s Pro Team sponsors explained
The post Women’s Pro Team Sponsors Explained first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A post-Tour look at the team standings to see who is up and who is down.
Two changes at the top. First the UAE team is still in the lead but they’ve pulled out a big lead after “only” having less than two thousand points on RedBull going into the Tour, now they’re over five thousand clear and with Pogačar racing the Vuelta likely to pull further ahead. The other movement is Lidl-Trek overtaking XDS-Astana, the German team enjoyed a successful team while the Kazakh squad found it hard to get a look in.
The grey line on the chart represents the border between 18th and 19th place. Notionally this is the relegation point at the end of the 2026-2027-2028 cycle. It’s far away, and also conditional on there being 18 teams in the World Tour. Pinarello-Q36.5 already look like a competitive World Tour team and signing the likes of Mauro Schmid only bolsters this. Movistar and Lotto-Intermarché might be where they’re expected to be but it’s not a comfortable place.
Thanks to a good Tour EF went into the Tour below the grey line, now they’re well above it with Richard Carapaz scoring over 1,300 points. Cofidis are just above the line but Tudor are close, the Swiss team had a discreet Tour de France but have signed Arnaud De Lie who ought to score big for them next year, the team need this. Marc Hirschi for example only has 308 points this season.
A poor Tour for Groupama-FDJ, around 300 points of which two thirds came from Clément Russo’s stealthy top-10s. They will be worried about relegation, especially as they’re still highly reliant on Romain Grégoire. He’s extended his contract with the team which helps but injury or illness could be ruinous for the team. Valentin Madouas is leaving and you can understand why, he’s only got 120 points this season when he’s been second in the Olympics and the Ronde alike and notionally one of the leaders; the same for David Gaudu with 98 points this season with talk of a breakdown in relations and the team wanting to unload him but he’s got a valid and lucrative contract so in no hurry to leave. Having seen Stefan Küng leave and now Madouas there ought to be some budget for some scorers. House sprinter Paul Penhoët is leaving too.
Picnic-PostNL are in a catastrophic position. Only one win this season is poor but it’s the absence from podiums, placings and other results that is proving so damaging. They’re really missing Max Poole, their stage racing talent, but only three riders in Pavel Bittner, Frits Biesterbos and Bjorn Koerdt have a points score in triple digits, with Bittner the top scorer on 580 points. They’re 4,339 short of Cofidis, to avoid relegation they’re going to need to score at a rate like Soudal-Quickstep just to get back on terms. Fabio Jakobsen could be leaving the team in the coming days
One year rankings
Everything else being equal* the best three ProTeams this season get automatic invites to the biggest races for next year, so Pinarello-Q36.5, Cofidis and Tudor clear for this award but there’s still time for the Unibet Rockets to close the gap but they can bank on a wildcard invite.
To be eligible for a grand tour a ProTeam has to be inside the Top-30 at the end of the season so plenty of familiar names including Bardiani which has climbed up. But the rule means the likes of Euskaltel-Euskadi and Modern Adventure Cycling are out of the picture now so new Euskaltel signing Mikel Landa may not have the romantic farewell at the Vuelta.
As written before the top-30 rule is based of the rankings at the end of the year which will include teams like Kern Pharma and TotalEnergies and only the first has said it’s stopping and the second is probably going to stop too but no announcement yet so if they won’t exist next year it doesn’t make sense to include them.
* an open question with an uncertain future for several teams, see July’s Race for Survival post
The post UCI Team Rankings first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Years ago “revenue sharing” was all the rage with team managers making public calls for the major race organisers to pay them money. Only even if a race owner felt inclined, when you looked at the data the sums available were small.
Today the calls remain but the sums have changed so time to look again with updated numbers. Especially as it’s been floated by no less than the New York Times, as the screengrab above shows.
The premise of the NYT article (paywall) is that the Amaury family that owns Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) is “thoroughly resistant to change”, mentioning the FIFA World Cup which “is expected to pull in $13 billion, double the sum of 2022’s tournament. It started with more teams and matches; interrupting games with “hydration breaks” that increased the number of television commercials; and enacting “dynamic pricing,” which sent ticket prices soaring” and the suggestion the Tour de France and pro cycling should embrace similar practices
The article also says “The family doesn’t share any of the television rights revenue, reportedly worth more than $170 million a year. That starves the sport of capital that could expand the fan base and leaves cycling in a precarious spot.”
The $170 million comes with a hyperlink to sportspro.com which in turn links to bfmtv.com which uses a €150 million number (roughly $170 million). Only BFM itself says this is an informed estimate, and crucially this is total revenue, as in TV income and hosting fees, the publicity caravan, merchandising and more and cites a number of €150-200m. It’s not the TV rights, but we’re not here to fact check the NYT.
Still let’s take the $170 million. Let’s also assume ASO has no costs, ie no offices, no staff, no suppliers, no tax, and hotels give away rooms in July so that $170 million of revenue is still there, untouched. Now compound that wrong assumption by another where ASO pays out half of this money to teams, a pot of $85 million. Divided between 23 participating teams that’s $3.7 million per team. Nice but it doesn’t get teams out of the “precarious spot”.
Rather than use fourth-hand estimates, ASO does publish annual accounts. 2024, the latest available, show total revenue of €415 million, costs of €284 million and a profit of €131 million, you can see this highlighted in the screengrab above from the accounts filed with the French government.
The government page also helpfully lists the numbers over the years and even plots them in a chart. You can see above how revenue and profits have been growing chez ASO. (For any sticklers, one image has gross revenue of €415m, the other uses net revenue of €375m).
ASO is famous as the Tour de France organiser but promotes other cycling races, you can see the portfolio in the screengrab from the Tour de France website. It also does the Dakar motorsport rally, the Paris marathon, the Etape du Tour ride and more. It was also the organiser for some of the Paris Olympics, handling the cycling, triathlon and open water swimming events, apparently the first time a private company was brought into run part of the games.
Let’s make some more wrong assumptions. Assume the €130 million annual profits all come from the men’s Tour de France. Now imagine half of these profits are paid to 23 teams and it’s €2.8 million per team. Nice again, but even less game-changing and we’re still relying on wild assumptions.
We might as well go full reductio ad absurdum and assume all of ASO’s profits must be paid out to men’s cycling teams: they’d get €5.7 million each.
The average World Tour for 2026 is €33.1 million ($38.7m). So €5.7 million is 17% of the average team budget which could help, but it still doesn’t change the brittle model where teams rely on funding from title sponsors.
If Movistar, Cofidis or EF decided to halt sponsorship today and the structures could not find a replacement in time, €5.7 million would not keep a team afloat it, it doesn’t make the sponsorship model less precarious. Above all, remember to use this amount we’ve used wild assumptions.
If you’re bogged down in numbers by now, let’s step back as the concept sounds bold. Teams owned by nation states, billionaires and multinational corporates want money from company that turns over €415 million? It sounds like reverse redistribution.
The Tour organisers could equally turn around and ask teams for money instead, why not charge a start fee knowing that teams depend on participation, and the money could be re-invested in added safety? Or indeed point out that teams make money because of the Tour de France, if the race did not exist or their teams could not ride then team managers would have smaller budgets to reflect the reduced audience. Audacious? Yes but it’s more rational than assuming all of ASO’s profits come from the Tour, that all of this should be donated to the teams and it would make a meaningful difference.
Conclusion
Revenue sharing is one of those zombie arguments that won’t die. Whether an American newspaper or a social media post, there’s an enduring the sense that ASO should share profits, but often with little follow-up on the actual numbers or distribution because the moment you go from “ok” to “how much?” is when you can see it’s not as obvious as it sounds. Even if ASO decided to donate all its profits to men’s pro cycling teams it wouldn’t alter their brittle sponsorship model.
What’s probably behind the sentiment is the monopoly ASO has on the sport, the way the Tour de France is the dominant event and how this matters for sponsorship but also for control over the sport. It’s less the money, more the position.
The post Revenue Sharing Re-Revisited first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Tadej Pogačar attacked on the Tourmalet with 5km to go before summit and 43km left in Stage 6. In the picture above Jonas Vingegaard is out of the picture but only just, some 30 seconds behind at the top of the pass. But on the descent and then the valley road up to Gavarnie he multiplies this advantage by five to take back the yellow jersey and leave his rivals in no doubt they can’t dent him or his team.
The race started in Barcelona with a 19km team time trial, which with foresight was a selection trap for several teams who picked riders for the opening day but with less thought for what was to come. The “Paris-Nice rules” format probably needs a new label but saw Visma-LAB win with Jonas Vingegaard coming home first to take yellow, as good as their and his Tour would get.
Sunday’s stage told us plenty with Tadej Pogačar helping set up Isaac del Toro for the win and seeming more delighted with this than if he’d just won himself. He’d win the next day, for all the talk of riders not wanting the weight of the yellow jersey, Pogačar seemed privately determined to defrock Jonas Vingegaard, there’s a hint of spice to their rivalry that goes unsaid.
After a stage to Foix that saw Mads Pedersen score beaucoup points and put Torstein Træen in yellow we got a classic day in the Pyrenees. UAE set the pace all day and did another team time trial up the Tourmalet with a tailwind to launch Pogačar who set a record time on the climb, with chasers like Vinegaard at 30 seconds over the top and then Paul Seixas leading the others at 1m22s, still beating the old record too. Half a minute’s gain in 15 minutes of climbing was strong but it was the remaining 44 minutes of the stage that saw Pogačar extend his lead by over two minutes to finish 2m38 clear of Vingegaard and nearly three minutes on the next eight with the rest of the field scattered to the winds. If Pogačar won here, the selection made among the others was as crucial for the following three weeks.
The Tour had to use the Pyrenees given the start in Barcelona but what if the stage had been softened? Then Pogačar would have used the stage to Le Lioran instead, maybe the suspense lasted longer and gap would have been smaller but the psychological blow to rivals would have been as big. If Le Lioran was the next GC appointment when Pogačar attacked nobody even bothered to get out of the saddle and respond. When Pogačar attacked on the Col du Haag the others just chased and like the Tourmalet it was after the climb that Pogačar gained most time.
Fast forward the GC race to Paris and here are the GC standings of the top-7 overall plus the broken lines of Vingegaard and Lipowitz, loyal readers should know how the chart works by now and it’s pleasing to see many other outlets using the same format. Stage 6 sees everyone fall away from Pogačar after his Tourmalet coup. Stage 10 sees the black line of Del Toro dip after he was distanced on the road to Le Lioran, likewise Lenny Martinez lost time and was 9th overall but if not seen as a GC contender, still among the few who’d reached Gavarnie just behind Vingegaard.
A good Tour ought to see lines rising and falling but here the story is how they all fall away in unison, the order of the weekend in Barcelona is sustained for a long time. Evenepoel’s storming time trial performance barely registers on the y-axis. Those calling for more time trial kilometres should be satisfied next year – you read it here first – but you could double the distance on the day, and have three of these TT stages and it might take Evenepoel closer to Pogačar. But only so much and then the Slovenian could respond in the mountains rather than play chaperone to Del Toro.
Vingegaard’s Tour can be seen ending on Stage 15 after his crash on a roundabout. The team’s tactics were one contributing factor to their downfall, racing hard on the roads to the foot of the final climb which just suited Pogačar and let his UAE colleagues sit back. Mineralogists use Moh’s scale, an index to compare and sort rocks found in the field. Quartz will always scratch gypsum and never the reverse, a diamond will scratch quartz, and so on. In the Tour Pogačar seemed unbeatable and the tactic of trying to wear him down seemed to be like using up a lot of softer rocks hoping to eventually wear down a diamond. Perhaps pushing in the hope of finding a fault was the only tactic left, Visma don’t have a co-leader; but Red Bull did and couldn’t deploy this tactic either. The chart shows Florian Lipowitz’s exit, the stage after he’d lost time at the Plateau de Solaison and where two leaders had proved a difficult strategy to execute.
Vingegaard’s exit probably changed the race. We saw this on the stage to Le Lioran where he did not try to match Pogačar’s winning move but did shape what happened behind, leading the chase. He’d have likely done more in the Alps including the day he left where his pacing probably wouldn’t have allowed Pogačar do go at Del Toro’s rate and this could have affected the GC, some stage results, and possibly the mountains competition if Visma kept trying to wear down UAE.
The biggest GC move on the chart is Lenny Martinez who got in the breakaway on Stage 19 and if he cratered his chances of winning the stage by playing (too much) poker he got up on GC and held on the following day to finish 5th overall. This year he was supposed to go for GC in one week races and hone these skills, all while having free reign for stage-hunting and the mountains competition but because he never sat up to lose time and so stayed in the GC race, and benefitted from Ayuso and Skjelmose falling away. One thing he didn’t benefit from much was his team, often invisible.
Other competitions were more lively. The points competition came alive later in the race. Tim Merlier avoided intermediate sprints to save himself for the stage finishes and with three wins this paid off. Jasper Philipsen’s quest for a stage win looked difficult on the outside and apparently unbearable on the inside with talk of long silences at the dinner table but he delivered a win in Voiron and was within a handful of points of taking the green jersey with plenty on offer in Paris. Only for Mads Pedersen to go on the rampage and win the competition in the Alps.
The mountains competition was competitive throughout the race. It gave Caja Rural something on home soil on the opening weekend (and more than several other teams would get out of July) and while Tadej Pogačar took the polka-dots thanks to crossing the Tourmalet, Richard Carapaz and Valentin Paret-Peintre set about scoring points and duelling for the jersey and Carapaz came out on top thanks to a relentless three days in the Alps.
The white jersey and podium went down to the last mountain pass too with Decathlon-CMA CGM trying an all or nothing gamble to dislodge Isaac del Toro. The fact that Paul Seixas was fourth overall and within touching distance of the podium at the foot of the Col de Sarenne felt ordinary in the moment but go back to, say, March and this was the fever dream of a French fan. Two years ago he spent July doing the junior Ain Bugey Valromey Tour where four out of five days were under 100km. It slipped out this week he’d crashed before the TTT – which explains the bandages, they weren’t just there from June – and he was mildly ill in the first week and the whispers around his team say that his watts were higher in April than this July. That aside, note the progress he’s made in the last 12 months and if you think he can find a fraction more still, you can see why Netcompany-Ineos are flirting with him and his agent, and his current team are in the market for Ben O’Connor, Laurens De Plus, Pavel Sivakov and more to build a project around him.
Speed was a theme for an edition that set the record average speed of 43.227km/h. Søren Wærenskjold’s sprint win in Nevers set a new stage record of 50.910km/h, breaking the record from 1999 which had enjoyed a tailwind, and more, while this time the wind barely below. The next day was almost as fast at 49km/h and the day after was ridden at 50km/h despite the Ballon d’Alsace in the way; stage-winner Mauro Schmid fitted a 58T chainring, a set of wisdom teeth for the pace. Many times if the peloton was on flat road it was doing over 50km/h. But unlike previous editions there were few crashes and speed as a safety topic was not a big deal.
One factor in the speed is having most of the top names in the action. Breakaway days don’t see some wildcard riders go clear but you have Mathieu van der Poel, Mads Pedersen, Tom Pidcock and others making the moves. Some of the most entertaining stages were the mid-mountain days, like the stages to Ussel, Belfort and Voiron.
The flipside to this exclusivity is the exclusion, the lack of opportunity. Wærenskjold’s win was almost the revelation as, excepting Olav Kooij who has hardly raced this season, he was the lowest-ranked rider on the UCI rankings to win a stage; the average number of pro wins for a stage winner in the race was 69; boosted by Pogačar but without him the number is 50. This is a trend and so makes it hard for riders, and whole teams, to hope of a breakthrough win. The romance of sport needs to allow for this.
Talking of droughts, this was a dry Tour, taking place across parched landscapes and not just the habitual southern transition stages. Luke Durbridge mentioned that many riders were complaining their shoes smelled from of pouring water over themselves all day but that was a small problem compared the public safety issue of crowds waiting hours in the heat and the outbreak of wildfires which required emergency services to be diverted from Tour duties. Environmental issues came closer to the Tour and the race will have to respond. Despite some polemical headlines, the organisers are conscious of this, current broadcast contracts stipulate timings so any move to a morning slot is off the question now but up for review later on.
Another polemic saw anti-doping became a story but this time it was the testers who faced questions instead of the riders, in part because those tested shrugged balefully and got on with the racing even if sections of the media did not. Normally tests that return negative are never reported on but we have had press releases in the past on how the anti-doping procedures including a line that all tests came back negative.
The final stage in Paris was a thriller, the Rue Lepic performing alchemy as the peloton went in together and out at the top came a golden selection each time with the last distillation giving us just Pogačar and Van der Poel. The longer approach to the finish heightened the drama with Pogačar grimacing, seemingly prepared to lose to Van der Poel as long as they could stay away. Freezing the times overall before the finish line feels wrong on sporting terms and if it did rain at lunchtime, most of the circuit had dried in time. For all its thrills even in the dry the circuit does have a frantic aspect coming off Montmartre.
The Verdict
Standing on the top step of the podium put Pogačar alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain more than the two men flanking him on Sunday evening. He was unrivalled this year and if he took five stages he could easily have had more, possibly eight if his team had avoided illness.
Evenepoel rode a measured race, his only temperamental expression was reserved for team mate Lipowitz. But how to win, or is a podium sufficient? Still 26 years old the answer might be “wait” but he saw a 22 year old Del Toro on the other step.
Any suspense from the overall classification melted like an ice cream in July’s enduring heatwave, what looked likely before the race became inevitable within the first week and this vintage isn’t going to be held up as a classic. There was plenty left to enjoy, if Pogačar gobbled up riders like Pacman at times, the stage in the Vosges lively, the same for the Alpe d’Huez finish. There was also a lot going on among the other GC contenders, the race-without-Pogačar was lively.
In 1930 the Giro organisers paid Alfredo Binda not to take part. As tempting as it may be for fans to crowdfund the start fee for Pogačar to add next July’s Tour of Austria to his palmarès, it would quickly leave many frustrated that the best rider was not there. Pogačar included, who seems to crave the contest more than cash.
On many other days the quality of the racing high and often action that began and the start and lasted to the finish line and there was satisfaction in seeing the subsidiary jersey contests all battling until the last weekend. And then there was Paris.
Quand finit le Tour de France, j’ai une espèce de dépression qui ne nécessite pas que j’aille dans une zone de repos, mais je sens qu’il manque quelque chose : une grande partie de l’enchantement paradisiaque de mon été vient de se terminer
– Salvador Dali
That’s Dali lamenting on the post-Tour blues. But he didn’t have the Tour Femmes starting this weekend.
The post The Moment The Tour de France Was Won first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A final stage and abbreviated to Paris only but this won’t alter the sport. A prestigious stage win awaits and potentially a duel between Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel.
Stage 20 Review: if a “grand tour is an exercise in hierarchy” to quote Antoine Blondin, or a Bayesian simulator to use science, then how much can the last mountain stage tell us? Even a day with 5,450m of vertical gain and 70 points for anyone capable of passing the marked mountain points first was probably going to confirm rather than reveal.
Still, There’s plenty to be said for replicating results on a day when many struggled to hoist themselves out of bed and even scaling a bridge over an autoroute was sapping. Richard Carapaz proved he could even improve on the performances of recent days made him the rider of the day, going from a one point lead in the mountains competition to a 56 point unassailable and incontestable win in the mountains competition.
Similarly Mads Pedersen hauled himself over the Alps, attacking at one point to bridge across to the breakaway and then take maximum points at the intermediate sprint to secure the green jersey, an immense ride. The Tour has it’s Supercombatif prize and it’s surely between Carapaz and Pedersen, probably Carapaz but there are good arguments to litigate either way.
The day’s breakaway was reduced to Carapaz, Sep Kuss and Jai Hindley on the lower slopes of the Col de la Sarenne. Another day, another trio starting the climb to Alpe d’Huez with three and half minutes’ lead. But this time Pogačar wasn’t in pursuit mode.
The higher slopes of the Sarenne had no crowds, the road closed to spectators. It was pleasant to see the mountain like this, and no bad advert too for cyclists wanting to explore this road. But also a premonition of what awaits us after the Tour when the sport reverts to sparse crowds and silence.
Kuss led over the Sarenne, but only just. Carapaz had the American in sight and was closing. Then Kuss crashed twice and the second time he was lucky there was netting on the exit of the bend, while Carapaz sped past. Despite the dirt on his kit from falling Kuss looked the fresher climber and could have reversed matters. Only Carapaz is among the cast of riders who can be impossible to bring back if they get five metres.
Behind Decathlon-CMA CGM had tried to ratchet up the pace in an all-or-nothing move to dislodge Isaac del Toro off third place overall only it came to nothing with Seixas unable to sustain the move and cracking, while Del Toro had the luxury help of Tadej Pogačar. Pogačar could have won the stage if he wished but played butler, a high altitude Jeeves.
Evenepoel attacked on the final run to Alpe d’Huez, symbolic perhaps but notable as he’d survived 5,000m of vertical gain, each stomp on the pedals in the final kilometres a serving to every media outlet in Belgium who’d declared he was not a grand tour contender.
As Pogačar and Del Toro came into the finish together they were photo-bombed by Lenny Martinez who secured his fifth place overall, albeit 13 minutes down but he’ll take plenty from the consistent performance and how he was one of the few to hold firm in the third week, all while having turned 23 during this year’s Tour.
The Route: “On n’est pas a Thoiry, ici“. Well almost, there’s a presentation in Thoiry for the crowds and host politicians but then the riders are bussed to Paris. It’s 89km and laps of the Champs-Elysées before moving to the 15km long Champs-Elysées – Montmartre circuit. The stage is reduced from 133km because of a police shortage with the emergency services mobilised to help with public safety, notably in the Cap Ferret/Arcachon area. In pure cycling terms nobody is missing out on the early parade and we might see a lap or two reserved for this before the racing begins.
If the Champs-Elysées-Montmartre circuit already feels familiar there’s still a difference as after the descent of Montmatre, the course takes the riders to the Place de l’Etoile/Arc de Triomphe and then to the Champs-Elysées. Last year the descent led to the Place de la Concorde. The meaning here is that there’s 10km to the finish from the top of Montmartre when there was 6km last year so more chance for teams to organise a chase.
The Contenders: the circuit has a feel of a spring classic with the repeat cobbled climbs and if it’s only 89km everyone is tired and so it doesn’t need 200km to make the difference.
Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-PremierTech) is the obvious pick, the punch to jump away on the climb, the ability to win the sprint and he’s had this stage in mind for a long time. Jasper Philipsen is a second card to play in the sprint.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) got beaten here last year, one of the rare moments he lost a bike race in a straight contest. He’s been talking about this stage too and this makes life harder for the sprinters as his moves will distance them. He’ll get extra stimulation from going up against Van der Poel, his arch rival for the classics.
Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) ought to be tired but so far he’s been a force of nature in this Tour.
Olav Kooij (Decathlon-CMA CGM) and Biniam Girmay (NSN) can hope for a sprint and an opportunity.
Jayco pair Michael Matthews and Mauro Schmid have a chance. Netcompany-Ineos still have chance of salvation and Filippo Ganna might be their best bet. There’s no French stage winner so far and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) has a chance but he’s looked fried.
| | Van der Poel | | | Pogačar, Philipsen | | | Kooij, Matthews, Girmay, Schmid, Kanter |
Weather: sunny and 24°C.
TV: KM0 is at 5.55pm and the finish is forecast for 7.30pm CEST.
The post Tour de France Stage 21 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The last day in the Alps and a ferocious stage with hardly a metre of flat road.
If you want to watch it live, note the early finish.
Pacman: a group of 42 riders were away with Lidl-Trek pulling for Mads Pedersen who’d made the move and managed to get over the big Col du Noyer. Among the group was Lenny Martinez, 7th overall at the start of the day. Valentin Paret-Peintre won the sprint on the climb to take a virtual lead in the mountains competition.
Several riders from EF, Ineos, Visma towed the breakaway as fast as they could for their climbers which was a boost for Martinez. Having worked to pull the move clear for Pedersen, once past the intermediate point Lidl-Trek, Pedersen included, dropped back to pull the yellow jersey group which shrank drastically on the modest Col d’Ornon, a clue to the pace and fatigue, to try and recover time on Martinez.
The breakaway started Alpe d’Huez with about three and half minutes on yellow jersey group and soon Martinez, Richard Carapaz and Sep Kuss left the others behind. Only they quickly started to attack each other, notably Carapaz who was frustrated by Martinez who was either baggage or bluffing. It was a bluff, and Carapaz made five moves, increasingly frustrated as he could not get away. At one point through the village of Huez the trio stopped pedalling as they looked at each other.
Meanwhile Pogačar had set off solo, it was like watching an Australian-style handicap race where the best rider has to set off minutes behind the rest. In yellow, he was gobbling up riders from the breakaway like Pacman. Extrapolating his time gain per kilometre suggested the breakaway would be caught but you didn’t need mental arithmetic to work this out as the lead trio marked each other and buried their chances.
In the finish Carapaz and Martinez were able to latch onto Pogačar but he kicked one last time before the finishing straight and cracked Carapaz. Martinez was on the wheel of the Ecuadorian again and he probably took a pleasure in not moving and thereby ensuring Martinez could not win. Another stage for Pogačar. Easy to bank, to take for granted, to read as inevitable but this time with the Alpe record too.
Among the GC contenders Remco Evenepoel came in two and half minutes down, taking 12 seconds on Isaac del Toro and 16 on Mattias Skjelmose and Paul Seixas. The relative loser was Juan Ayuso who lost almost four minutes to his GC rivals, slipping two places on GC. Martinez is up to fifth now and his Bahraini team management swept away all talk of a loss thanks to this overall gain.
In the mountains competition Richard Carapaz leads by one point over Tadej Pogačar and seven points over Valentin Paret-Peintre. Carapaz has 91 points and there’s the possibility to win 70 points on Stage 20 so all to race for. Pedersen now has 52 points lead on Jasper Philipsen, not arithmetically secure but much more comfortable now.
One sour note was Einer Rubio leaving the race after the UAE team car slammed on the brakes going up Alpe d’Huez, seemingly when a spectator was in front of the vehicle and the Colombian crashed into the back, sustaining heavy facial injuries and, unable to continue, needing 20 stitches. The upper part of the Col de Sarenne for the next stage is due to be closed to the crowds.
The Route: 170km and 5,450m of vertical gain, a huge day in the mountains. The profiles speak for themselves.
The Finish: the Col de Sarenne is a backroad that leads to Alpe d’Huez and very different from the famous main climb. It’s irregular along the way with an early descent and a flat section through Clavans. The upper part in black on the profile has a series of hairpins that come in quick succession.
From the top there’s still 14.4km to go, first across a plateau-like section that’s awkward as anyone dropped before can flounder by themselves here.
Once in Alpe d’Huez there’s a descent out of the ski resort and then the route picks up the final part of the traditional climb with 3.5km to go, some last ramps before crossing the resort to the same finish line as the previous stage.
The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) has his Alpe d’Huez stage now, does he want another? Speaking after Stage 19 he hinted at this but also said he wants to help Isaac del Toro secure the white jersey and the podium.
Richard Carapaz (EF) has been on the rampage two days in a row which makes a third time hard especially given all the efforts he’s been making but by virtue of being in the polka-dot jersey he’s got to be among the movers from the start.
Valetin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep) sat up on Stage 19. Did he fade from the efforts of pushing a big gear, or was it a case of reculer pour mieux sauter knowing how many points are on offer in this stage?
Lenny Martinez (Bahrain) was almost carried to the foot of Alpe d’Huez on a Sedan chair but stuffed up the finish. However his time gains have propelled him up the GC and so if he moves both Lidl-Trek and Decathlon-CMA CGM will want to chase. Still he is moving well.
Sepp Kuss (Visma-LAB) gets even more climbing to suit and no GC menace.
Netcompany-Ineos can still try, is Thymen Arensman the best bet or did Egan Bernal sit up yesterday to save energy. Both are climbing well but how to win against others look livelier.
Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) is 9th on GC and at 21 minutes and he could take eight minutes and not worry Lidl-Trek or Decathlon but he’s just been struggling on the climbs in recent days.
| | Kuss, Carapaz | | | Pogačar, VP-P, Martinez | | | Pidcock, Arensman, Bernal, Del Toro |
Weather: sunshine at times and 27°C in the valleys but with clouds building and a good chance of rain at times.
TV: KM0 is at 11.30am and the finish is forecast for 4.10pm CEST. The start of the Télégraphe comes around 1.40pm and the top of the Galibier will be around 3.00pm and the Sarenne begins around 3.35pm.
The post Tour de France Stage 20 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Alpe d’Huez awaits, the classic climb but this time with a more gentle approach. Can UAE keep a lid on things so that Tadej Pogačar gets a prestige win for his palmarès?
Festival des Cannes: one of the enjoyable aspects of stage races is seeing multiple races happening at the same time. One saw Mads Pedersen going in the breakaway he managed to make moves all the way to the intermediate sprint in Corps after 129km to take a valuable 25 points.
Early on Richard Carapaz and Valentin Paret-Peintre were in a different contest as they battled for the mountains points, the Frenchman picking off each sprint with a sprint that belied his waif-like build.
Later a solid move got clear but Carapaz missed it. His EF team mates Alex Baudin and Ben Healy set about correcting this and helped tow a willing counter move across to the front.
After Pedersen won the intermediate sprint Felix Engelhardt and Matteo Jorgenson floated away and then Tobias Halland Johannessen got across. Once they’d got a few metres things changed and you could see their backs hunched and elbows going in as they accelerated. Raul Garcia Pierna moved taking Mauro Schmid with him. This allowed Engelhardt to pull harder for his team mate Schmid, prising open the gap before he could do no more. Netcompany-Ineos had missed the move but while Thymen Arensman tried to chase Richard Carapaz darted past with a big counter-attack, taking Paret-Peintre with him. This left six clear with 45km to go and Ineos chasing.
Coming to the finish Garcia Pierna had been dropped but got back and looked like the weakest of the six. At times they were spread across the road to Orcières-Merlette, nobody wanting to lead, looking at each other like poker players around a table trying to second-guess who held which cards and scrutinising rivals for the slightest tell in body language.
Jorgenson looked the most likely to attack and was the first to move. He prompted a counter-attack from Richard Carapaz and Paret-Peintre dived on the Ecuadorian’s wheel. Carapaz went again and this time nobody could follow. Paret-Peintre cracked in finishing fourth missed on the points to take the polka-dot jersey for real rather than leasing it.
It’s a victory for a rider with an artistic and rebellious streak. He attacked on the Puy Mary in an attempt to slip the UAE yoke on Stage 10. And he’s not done yet.
Elsewhere Brandon McNulty abandoned the stage, another UAE rider to fall ill after Adam Yates and Tim Wellens was among those dropped early. Any team talk of Yates’s illness being an isolated affair looked questionable. Tadej Pogačar seems fine but no rivals tried a move on the final climb to test. Also a final plotline in that UAE were spared some duties when the likes of Pinarello-Q36.5, Tudor and Total chased to protect the GC standings of Tom Pidcock, Yannis Voisard and Jordan Jegat.
The Route: 128km and 3,500m of vertical gain. It’s uphill from the start out of Gap on the Col Bayard. This road’s often featured for arrivals in Gap as the climb to take before the white knuckle “Rochette” descent back into Gap. The Bayard is a big wide road.
The Col du Noyer is not, a start amid fields and woodland and then a wild feel. It’s 7.5km at 8.5% with the final 2km with 10% sections between the hairpins.
The route then crosses back across the landscapes taken on the previous stage via the Route Napoleon.
The Col d’Ornon is a quiet backroad and a gentle climb. The descent is more remarkable, rarely steep either but with more hairpins and some moments where the road is cut into the cliff. It’s “technical”, cycling’s euphemism for a dangerous descent.
The Finish: Alpe d’Huez is a tough climb, over 13km at over 8% is hard by any measures and an amphitheatre with its raucous crowds. The start is the hardest part, the ramps have double-digit gradients. It’s famous for the 21 hairpins and they count, a rider can pick their line through these bends to suit and allow someone with energy to spare to accelerate. The slope kicks up for the ramp that leads into the ski resort and from there after the slope eases. There’s a left turn onto the finish line on the Avenue du Rif Nel.
The Contenders: having given Richard Carapaz (EF) three chainrings for the previous stage and writing that even if he won he’d be tipped again, he is. Watching him race to the finish he didn’t ease up when he’ll need plenty to be be able to go again today. Ben Healy helped set him up and isn’t the same force as last year but has a chance too.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) will want the stage win but given several team mates are ill this poses questions above his team’s ability to control the stage, and that’s before we ponder if he’s immune to this. So he’s not the shoe-in he ought to have been for this stage. It’ll be hard to engineer a stage win for team mate Isaac del Toro as this could let in Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) again.
Netcompany-Ineos missed the winning move yesterday and later shut down the chase but does Thymen Arensman have anything to spare? Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep) faded on the previous stage but if he can recover this stage will be less intense for him, especially if he gets a colleague in the breakaway with him.
Riders who fit the bill and were not riding as hard on the previous stage include Sepp Kuss and Davide Piganzoli (Visma-LAB), Ilan Van Wilder (Soudal-Quickstep), Harald Tejada (XDS-Astana) and Einer Rubio (Movistar).
Finally Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) sits eighth overall but has still been making moves and he won the last time the race came to the Alpe in 2022.
| | – | | | Carapaz, Arensman, Pogačar, VP-P, Kuss | | | Evenpoel, Jorgenson, Rubio, Healy, Tejada, Piganzoli, Pidcock |
Weather: sunny and 29°C.
TV: KM0 is at 2.15pm and the finish is forecast for 5.35pm CEST. The intermediate sprint at the foot of the Col d’Ornon should be reached around 4.25pm and the climb to Alpe d’Huez begins around 5.00pm.
The post Tour de France Stage 19 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Alps or Pyrenees? The two mountain ranges are often juxtaposed by the Tour de France. Do you prefer one over the other?
If you do, chances are it’s the Pyrenees. Many cyclists cite the wilder feel, the older buildings, the roads that feel more irregular to climb, while the Alps have big ski resorts, crowded valleys and busy roads. It’s true in the sense yes the Alps have have big ski resorts, crowded valleys and busy roads but so do the Pyrenees. I’ll see your Maurienne ski resorts and raise you with Andorra.
Just like the Pyrenees, the Alps have plenty of wilder corners with roads that weren’t built by bulldozers to pave access to a ski resort in the 1970s too. Only the Tour is often a poor prism to refract this back to TV audiences and this televisual psychogeography can distort the views.
This weekend’s stage to Alpe d’Huez is interesting as the main climb has As-Seen-On-TV celebrity but the Col de Sarenne gets some limelight, in part to persuade visiting cyclists to stay and try more roads in the area. If the Sarenne is rewarding for the scenery and solitude it still begins on the busy Col du Lautaret main road by the industrial Chambon dam.
There are plenty of quiet valleys in the Alps that offer tourists plenty of rural charm, cyclists get empty, irregular climbs… and residents struggle to access public services just like the Pyrenean clichés too. But these parts don’t host the race often, if at all. As a result they don’t seem to exist among the mythology of cycling locations.
Today’s stage passes many of these quieter corners. It rides into the Vercors, a spectacular part of the Alps, or pre-Alps if you’re a stickler for geology but only via a main road up and then back down rather than any of the spectacular cliff-hugging roads but it could still look good on TV. The Vercors has at least featured in the Tour but rarely. It is a quiet place, no mass tourism ski resorts and plenty of roads that started out as smuggling trails or forestry paths and then gradually got tarmacked. Once the race quits the Vercors it’ll take the training roads of Paul Magnier.
Nearby is another corner of the Alps called the Trièves which offers wide open spaces in the mountains and little in the way of mass tourism nor industry although it does now have a relatively new autoroute. Motorists have to pay but they get their money’s worth with the views along the way.
Later in the stage is the Champsaur, another corner of the Alps often passed by in the Tour. But illustrative as the race finishes in Orcières-Merlette, the name of the ski resort. Merlette, with its apartment tower blocks, is the aberration. But because the Tour visits it’s easy to remember this rather than all the side roads and smaller passes and nearby wilderness not seen on TV.
Indeed rather than juxtapose, if the Tour doesn’t show off all the Alps, it doesn’t do the Pyrenees justice either. It sticks to familiar haunts like the Tourmalet, Aspin and Soulor passes. Gavarnie was a novelty this year it’s just a turning away at the foot of the Tourmalet. So a similar selection bias is evident as the wilder parts of the Pyrenees don’t and even can’t host the race very often. This year’s stage to Les Angles touched on a relatively unexplored part of the eastern Pyrenees for the Tour but the race did not stay to range more. Similarly western parts in the Basque Country are even more unknown to the Tour despite having some of the hardest climbs in France, something that ought to be a draw for the organisers. But these areas are relatively remote.
Logistics play a big part. Alpe d’Huez can host 23 teams with their 28 bed allocation and supply parking to the fleet of vehicles every team brings. So can the city of Pau but it means the Tour struggles to reach smaller places.
One nerdy point on how Tour stages are hosted these days is that increasingly it’s a regional effort. Rather than one host town taking on all the costs, departments and regions are sharing the burden. This means a small and relatively poor town could get to host the race if there’s something to gain for the wider region. So the Col de Méhatché, aka Artazamundi, could feature one day if the Pyrenees-Atlantiques council wanted to promote what many forums say is hardest tarmacked road pass in France.
And yes there’s more beyond France for the Alps and Pyrenees alike but that’s beyond a postcard from the Tour de France. But it does speak to the relative size of these mountain ranges, the Alps by virtue of being bigger in France alone offer a lot that goes unseen.
Today’s intermediate sprint in Corps comes a relatively flat part of the stage. But turn left and there’s the Col de l’Homme and beyond to the Notre Dame de la Salette sanctuary, perhaps too sacred for the profanity of sports event and never seen on TV at the Tour… but rewarding for travellers.
The post Postcard from the Champsaur first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The Tour heads into the Alps for a ski station summit finish. Tadej Pogačar got beaten the last time the race came here and he remembers it but this should be for the breakaways given the bigger Alpine stages to come.
Classique du Dauphiné: the Tour de France is many things and among them a game of musical chairs. Come the third week and the music plays louder as riders and teams get desperate for a seat and this is not limited to small teams and unheralded riders. If anything they’re the ones already beaten down and struggling to find an opening. So a humdrum transition stage comes alive with plenty of big names making moves. The top-10 to come was worthy of a classic but the race was even better as everyone had to make their moves from the start and keep going.
With the Col des Près and the Alpine part of the stage done the moves kept going against a backdrop of scenic lakes and mountains on the roads of the ancient Dauphiné region.
We got an early split in the field with Pogačar, Evenepoel and Seixas in a front group with Del Toro and others on the wrong side but it came to nothing, UAE behind were willing chasers only they did not have to as more waves of riders tried to get clear.
With groups of riders spread like confetti over the course a group of six went clear with Jasper Stuyven, Ben Healy, Mads Pedersen, Felix Engelgardt, Michał Kwiatkowski and Edward Planckaert. Pedersen won the intermediate sprint and but with Planckaert playing policeman for Mathieu van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen, Stuyven attacked with 25km to go and he was looking good for the stage win but behind a larger group swept up the quintet he’d distance which in turn was caught by more and so a 50 rider group was bearing down on Stuyven and crucially with several helpers working for their sprinters.
The moves kept going, the group was hard to control and the last one saw Josh Tarling try a flyer in the streets of Voiron. He was closed down and we got a sprint with Mathieu van der Poel able to lead-out Jasper Philipsen and he pulled his team mate clear of the rest to leave Philipsen well clear of Mauro Schmid and Olav Kooij.
For Adam Yates the stage in the Isère rhymed with misère, thanks to illness. He was dropped and at times seemed to struggle to turn the pedals but made the time cut. The big question is whether he can recover.
Someone more happy was Jordan Jegat, 9th in the morning at over 22 minutes with several riders not far behind on time. He infiltrated the breakaway and thanks the time gain of almost nine minutes finished the day still 9th overall but now 14 minutes while other top-10 contenders were behind.
The points competition comes alive with Pedersen in green but now only seven points ahead of Jasper Philipsen who narrowed the gap with 50 points for the stage win; Lidl-Trek will be ruing how things turned out as Pedersen at one point looked like he was a contender to win the stage and Philipsen was out of the picture; although he was never distanced and Pedersen was sapped. There’s a contest and Pedersen is forced to go raiding for fear of losing out in Paris where the finish is a 50-pointer and the intermediate sprint on the Champs-Elysées could be crucial too.
The Route: 185km and 3,900m of climbing. There’s 20km on the flat until the race first goes up the road up to Lans via Engins, it’s not the most scenic road into the Vercors and 11.4km at 5.4% sounds gentle for a first category climb, it is especially as it’s an even climb up, but it’s a big prize for the mountains competition, a carrot to move early.
Once out of the Vercors and past the town of Vif there’s barely a flat road as the race heads for the Champsaur area of the Alps and then onto Orcières.
The Finish: a ski station summit finish that was long heralded thanks to the Tour stage in 1971 where Luis Ocaña got the better of Eddy Merckx for once, and by eight minutes. However the race came back in 2020 and a headwind saw the lead contenders huddle between the hairpins and it turned out that the history books and magazine articles supplied more thrill than the day’s sport. It’s still a summit finish but a gradual and even one, all on a wide road.
The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) came here in 2020 and was beaten in the finish by his senior Primož Roglič, something he evoked on TV after Stage 17 so he may wish to correct the record but at the same time in his interview he said the focus is on Alpe d’Huez. Still he gets a chainring because if the breakaway can’t get clear, then why not gobble up another stage?
Otherwise the breakaway has a great chance, the GC contenders and their teams will want to save energy ahead of the two stages to Alpe d’Huez. The summit finish means the stage is almost reserved for a climber, or someone capable of a 20 minute effort uphill.
Richard Carapaz (EF) will get tipped for the next three stages and even if he wins here he’ll be a pick again and he’s after the mountains competition too. Ditto Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep). Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) and Einer Rubio (Movistar) were on the move in the Vosges and should feature again but don’t have the same finishing kick to deliver a win.
Two new names for the breakaway are Sep Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-LAB) now they don’t have a leader to work for. Thymen Arensman (Netcompany-Ineos) is better suited to the bigger mountains to come but has been trying already, if he can make the winning move his challenge is find a way to win from it.
Finally Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) keeps making the breakaway and if this poses a problem for both the GC contenders and the breakaway he’s likely to keep trying.
| | Carapaz | | | VP-P, Kuss, Arensman, Pidcock | | | Pogačar, Jorgenson, THJ, Tejada, Healy, Rubio |
Weather: 27°C and sunny. A light 10km/h NW breeze means a tailwind for much of the stage.
TV: KM0 is at 12.50 and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
The post Tour de France Stage 18 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Eight teams have a stage win, 14 don’t and this should make for a lively start as this is the last stage open to half the peloton.
Contre la montre: the stage win for Remco Evenepoel who blitzed the course, only Tadej Pogačar was within a minute of him and he seemed untouchable from the first time check that he was against the clock rather than his rivals, a quest to find the biggest winning margin.
Yes this is his speciality but the margin of victory was big. With Switzerland on the horizon with its watchmakers he looked as precise as some of the timepieces made nearby. His confidence is growing and we’ll see where he takes this in the mountains, moments of being dropped at Le Lioran and on the Col du Haag feel distant but they occurred after multiple, sustained climbs and there’s plenty of that to come.
Any cheer for Red Bull was muted by Florian Lipowitz crashing, washing out on a bend in the streets of Thonon and sliding into the kerb first, then some padded barriers. He is out of the Tour now with a broken collarbone. That’s two GC contenders out in two days of racing.
Mattias Skjelmose was the surprise of the day. He’s always been handy a hilly time trial but he beat expectations, including his own but more so as his team mate Juan Ayuso was 15th and this puts the Dane within a minute on GC now of his colleague but he says the plan is still to ride for Ayuso.
Paul Seixas was fourth, easy to bank as unsurprising but astonishing for a teenager. He pipped Isaac Del Toro by five seconds whose strong ride reinforces his stage racing credentials, a potential weakness overcome. The battle ahead for the third podium spot and the white jersey should be something to watch.
The Route: 175km and 2,200m of vertical gain. A scenic start after KM0 to past the Bourget lake and then the road climbs to the Massif des Bauges, part of the Alps. It looks the part with jagged peaks below which dairy cows sport clanging bells, only just no steep Alpine passes here, this is a gentle and more approach into the mountains, climbing up alongside a white river to get into the mountains. The descent is steeper and trickier, via a small rise, and takes the race back to the start in Chambéry.
The rest of the course is on rolling roads. The Col de Couz is a mountain pass inside a valley but a gentle one. Approaching Voiron there’s a final climb of 1.6km at 4% on a wide road.
The Finish: big boulevards in town and in the final kilometre there’s a 90° right bend, 90° to the left and then a 90° to the right. It’s the same as the 2019 Dauphiné where Wout van Aert took his first World Tour level road race win.
The Contenders: a big day for the breakaway. If this was the first week it could be for the sprinters but desperation means too many riders and teams will fight to get something from this Tour. The Tour is so important this kind of attitude ought to be the default from Day 1 but it’s human nature to start with plans and then if these fail try anything. Also a lot of riders are tired which makes things harder to control, plus with Tim Merlier out of the race, one of the two prime teams that chased won’t do so either.
If Wout van Aert has won in Voiron before, so can Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-PremierTech). Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) is another obvious pick, able to make moves at the start and then at the finish, while also able to win from any kind of sprint and he is also boosted by a very strong team that can shape the race, Quinn Simmons and Mathias Vacek are candidates too but can set up their leader for the win.
When Mauro Schmid (Jayco) won the stage he brought down the average number of pro wins for a stage winner as he’d “only” won 13 races before compared to 72 wins but the quality came from having Luke Plapp, Ben O’Connor and Michael Matthews assist him. He can do the same again and Matthews is a contender too.
Visma-LAB are stage hunting now and Victor Campenaerts has won Tour stages in the third week.
Breakaway specialists Kasper Asgreen (EF) and Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X) should be in the mix but making the move and winning from it is a big ask.
Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) seems ideal for the stage but has been trying to recover after suffering on the early stages so a harder pick. Likewise Dorian Godon (Netcompany-Ineos) was suited to this on paper but he has been struggling from injuries after being caught up in the crash among sprinters in Chalon-sur-Saône which he probably shouldn’t have been contesting and if he’s on the mend he’s a harder pick now but team mate Filippo Ganna can try.
A sprint can still happen, in part because so many teams could ride each other down and any gruppetto forming early has a chance to get back. So Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-PremierTech), Biniam Girmay (NSN) and Olav Kooij (Decathlon-CMA CGM) have a chance with Philipsen in the best place given Merlier is out.
| | Van der Poel, Pedersen | | | Simmons, Philipsen | | | Ganna, Campenaerts, Asgreen, Kanter, Matthews |
Weather: sunny and 29°C. A 10km/h breeze from the north could gust to 35km/h.
TV: KM0 is at 1.35pm and the finish is forecast for 5.20pm CEST. The start should frantic.
The post Tour de France Stage 17 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Any good at design and engineering? If so then here are some problems you might be able to help solve. There might even be a prize from a team or two if you can make it happen.
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Race radios
Love them or loathe them, race radios are in use. But they’re literally a pain to wear, a hard block. They can make a crash worse if a rider lands on it too. So why not design a radio unit that fits inside a bike frame and with a charging port? All a rider needs is a bluetooth earpiece.
One advantage would be the bike weight now includes the radio so some models that require ballast to meet the UCI’s 6.8kg rule may no longer need this. A custom radio would be lighter as most devices used are marketed as rugged devices and come with features like displays and buttons that aren’t needed. There’s even the chance for a longer aerial to help improve the signal.
One disadvantage is it would be harder to change during a race in case of a problem but if a rider drops back to the team car to change their radio well they can drop back for a bike change too.
Sticky bottles
Talking of dropping back to the team car, once upon a time a rider would go back to fetch bottles. It still happens, but increasingly teams post staff on the race route to hand up food and drink. Only how many times have you seen a rider try to get a bottle from a soigneur only to drop it? In quieter moments of a race it’s a brief moment of excitement: catch or fumble?
This matters because riders are taking on a lot of calories and so a missed bottle can mean dehydration and a missed fuelling. Teams with big resources can post staff all along the route and even then a missed drink can be a penalty. But imagine the problem for a small team, their disadvantages can compound if one opportunity missed.
It’s not easy taking a bidon at speed. They’re made to slide in and out of a bottle cage, not to grab at speed. But as they’re so important in a race could this change? How about a bottle that has some grip on the outside like dimples or a shaped like a decagon, ie with 10 sides. What about gloves with more rubber or silicone grip on them to help rather than just the faux-suede finish?
Fork steerer tubes
Once upon a time you had to spend a while aligning your saddle to ensure it pointed forwards, that it was straight. Now many bikes have D-shaped seatposts, supposedly more aero but they are aligned to start with. Why not extend this to fork steerer columns so the stem is straight from the get-go, either D-shaped, square, octagonal or whatever?
Now before you rush to the comments to say the bars can twist in a crash, a round steerer tube helps slide rather than snap, sure. But cynically this hasn’t prevented other “innovation” and there is a trade-off, instant fitting versus durability. A stumbling block could be a common system across the industry.
Adjustable vents
Once upon a time bike helmets had to be as vented as possible, that was the selling point. Now plenty are vaunted for aerodynamics but this can come at the cost of cooling. But what if you could have a helmet where you can slide the vents closed just in time for the final kilometres of a race, especially one ending in a sprint? This way you can stay cool for 95% of the race and then get any tiny gains for when the pace is high. There are regulations about casings and coverings but they’re typically about parts that are added to the helmet rather than built-in.
Bearing size
Got some fancy climbing wheels? You can have a pair that weighs under 1,200g, or 950g if you use rim brakes. Lightweight hubs can help here, and smaller bearings are a part of this. But as any skater knows, bigger bearings are crucial for lower rolling resistance.
It’s an open question but without naming names hubs on regular wheels can have surprisingly tiny bearings on the axles, often way smaller than the bottom bracket and they might be specced once the rest of the hub has been designed, so flange size comes first. The torsional force is not the same as the BB but still the hub bearings are expected to spin even more so there might be some watts to be saved here at the expense of weight.
Safety pins
These work when it comes to pinning on a number, but it’s a chore. Plus they’ve worked in the jersey era but are less useful for today’s stretchy speedsuits where a pin in the wrong place can tear the number, the kit… or both. A crash or just a sudden movement can result in annoying acupuncture mid-race too.
There’s already the use of pockets made by the likes of Nopinz of course but the point is they’re OK for UCI time trials but not allowed in road races. So short of the rules changing, invent another system. The Tour de France had adhesive dossards but no longer.
Of course having a jersey with a permanent number printed on it would be better. But that’s less a design and engineering topic and more one of economics and politics. Organisers like to attribute the numbers and sometimes the numbers are sponsored so they’d be reluctant here. While, say, U1 could be Pogačar’s number for UAE and V1 for Vingegaard at Visma, with Alpecin, Arkéa and Astana it’s not so obvious to have the [letter]-[number] system.
Smaller rear disc brakes
Do rotors and calipers need to be as powerful at the back as the front? Arguably not, so the design brief here is a system to help balance the braking and help save weight. You can have different rotor diameters today, but instead why not go further with a redesign with lighter calipers too.
Magnetic thru-axles
A quick-release skewer was just that. Borrowing from Tulio Campagnolo who invented the quick-release lever in response to needing to swap over his backwheel each time he needed the lower or higher sprocket on each side, “something’s got to change” today too.
Pro mechanics can change a disc-brake wheel with a thru-axle reasonably but one risk is fumbling with the axle. They use impact wrenches to unscrew the axle like a motorsport pit mechanic and then pull the thru-axle out of the way to put the spare wheel in before putting the axle back and then tightening. If there was a way to ensure the thru-axle says on the end of the impact wrench until it’s torqued back in place and the wrench is pulled away this could save time and stop the axle rolling around in the dirt.
Conclusion
Things are still used because they always have been, like safety pins. And readers with actual engineering specialisms might have views on hub bearings. Some suggestions are more pro-cycling only rather than every day consumers so less of a commercial imperative. But among the pro-issue only there probably is a design prize and even an order book for an inbuilt race radio, at least one team has explored this. Feel free to add your suggestions for problems that need solving.
The post Engineering Ideas first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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Tadej Pogačar attacks with over 100km. The winning moment? Yes, but this time with hindsight as for some time the result was uncertain. It made for a gripping race especially with the chase behind and the battle for the lower steps of the podium.
The men’s road race is the final event of what is now a week-long event, something that was testing the patience of locals before it had even started. Zurich’s bid to become a “Velostadt”, a cycling city was certainly not a unanimous goal. It then rained for most of the week.
The death of Muriel Furrer during the women’s junior road race was a tragedy, then compounded. She was 18 years old, and on home roads as she lived just minutes from the course. Watching Swiss TV it seemed particularly sore as Furrer was also a mountain biker so it touched the wider Swiss cycling community; the death of Gino Mäder last year seems raw too and at times it overwhelmed the SRF commentators. Furrer’s family made it known they wished for the competitions to continue.
Sunday morning started with a tribute ride to Furrer. The sun came out. For the men’s race Tadej Pogačar started as the favourite, but with competition. Remco Evenepoel was going to have to ride away and having just won the time trial he threatened to demolish the field just like he did in Paris. Mathieu van der Poel could take Pogačar in a sprint but his challenge was gravity, how to cope with such a hilly course? Come in a kilo or more lighter was the approach; plus Lotte Kopecky’s win on Saturday showed a result was possible to. A dense field with plenty of other challengers, including semi-local Marc Hirschi added to the challenge.
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The race started faster than expected with a battle to get the breakaway. The early part of course from Winterthur was no parade and included a proportionate share of the day’s climbing. Strong riders went up the road, legwarmers were rolled down. An early crash had Julian Alaphilippe out with a dislocated shoulder and Pello Bilbao out, two contenders gone. Meanwhile Slovenian team were very visible, their lime green jerseys so visible on the front.
Vuelta revelation Pablo Castrillo made a move in the streets of Zürich and if he got countered, the move seemed like a defibrillator on the peloton and a group of riders charged clear of the peloton, among them was Slovenia’s Jan Tratnik and Pavel Sivakov of France, plus outsiders for the win like Jay Vine (Australia) and Stevie Williams (GB)
Up the Zürichberg climb again and a couple of moves by Kasper Asgreen and Quinn Simmons were neutralised. Then a burst of green and none other than Tadej Pogačar attacked. There was still over 100km to go.
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A big what-if of the day is if another rider could have gone with Pogačar here? Only Andrea Bagioli and Quinn Simmons tried but didn’t last long. But what if, say, Evenepoel could have shut down the move? Only Pogačar was away and riding in his familiar busy style, perched forward on the saddle, hands on the brake hoods, elbows in, bobbing on the bike as he rode away.
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Tratnik’s presence up the road suddenly seemed crucial but apparently this was not planned. He got a roadside tip to sit up and await his leader.
The Belgian team was chasing hard but this looked panicky. Rather than let Pogačar stew slowly like a stoofvlees up ahead they were burning up their own riders all too quickly. Clearly they sensed the danger but their collective effort seemed to deter other teams from joining in. In a regular pro race with team managers and race radios team managers might have phoned around for help. Because nobody else helped the Belgian team were left to themselves but soon out of riders.
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Remco Evenepoel surged with Mathieu van der Poel in pursuit. This could have been the most intense moment of the day but the pair were quickly closed down and that was it. It then felt like Evenepoel went because he had no support left and Van der Poel was marking him.
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Up ahead and Pogačar quickly shattered the lead group. With Tratnik done, only Pavel Sivakov was able to follow. A colleague at UAE for the rest of the year meant the clear incentive to work for his boss. But sans Alaphilippe he could salvage a silver medal for France so sharing the work made sense. Only on the lower slopes of the Zürichberg with 50km to go any intrigue vanished as Sivakov was just dropped. With 50km to go Pogačar was now solo.
With most teams down to one rider and little more than 15 riders in contention for a medal Toms Skujiņš and Ben Healy formed a tandem, the Irishman instantly recognisable for the way he rides as if his handlebars need straightening. To chase Pogačar, or to just stay clear of the rest? Probably the latter but Pogačar could hardly let the mind wander into thoughts of pair “his” rainbow jersey with white or black shorts. When he rode away in the Strade Bianche or the Giro this year you could get up and go and do something else, maybe leave the TV on in the background but there was little need to pay close attention. Here he barely had a minute’s lead and there was a sustained chase behind. At one point the gap began to fall and he seemed to be stressing about a missed bidon at the pit stops. He was even grimacing at one point, a rare if not a novel sight.
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In the final several riders traded attacks, their best bet for a medal being not to sprint against Van der Poel. Ben Healy seemed acutely aware of this and it livened up the end of the race. It was another Ben in O’Connor who got the right blend of timing and force as he rode away for silver and Van der Poel won the sprint for bronze.
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The Verdict
Tadej Pogačar’s masterpiece and a great race, a little sunshine after a tough week.
He’s mixed blessings for the publishing business as books on bicycle race tactics look redundant; while a thesaurus is required to garland his exploits with new superlatives. In a city better known for themes like precision, timing and risk-management, Pogačar took a massive gamble with 100km to go. If this hadn’t paid off then he’d be lamenting a Giro-Tour double without the rainbow ending. He’s winning close to 40% of his race days, a ratio nobody else enjoys, and rated accordingly and to miss today would have been a loss. Evenepoel and the Belgian team did not lose the race today but their decision to chase so hard alone does invite questions of what could have been other nations had joined.
In his own words going with over 100km to go was “maybe a stupid move”, it seems he knows he has limits. This was the Pogačar show and soon it won’t be remembered for the sport on the day, even if there was was a good contest. Pogačar didn’t enjoy victory laps of Zürich and the others chased and raced hard. O’Connor finishes a season that he started out with a win and then a series of expectation-topping results. Mathieu van der Poel probably won’t care much for bronze but his presence as the tormentor of Pogačar in Glasgow last year adds more sparkle to this year’s podium.
Earlier this spring he went public with the goal of winning all three and now he goes into autumn having delivered, and each time by a crushing margin. Comparisons with Merckx won’t stop even if it’s difficult to compare eras but when Merckx won his “triple crown” at the 1974 Worlds in Montréal he was only two seconds ahead of Raymond Poulidor.
Indeed rather than look back and recite statistics or anecdotes, what comes next? Lombardia if you look at Pogačar’s race calendar, presumably the Vélo d’Or prize very soon too. But beyond, what goals for 2025 and beyond? And what can his rivals do about it?
The post World Championships Review first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Wout van Aert has signed a contract with Visma-Lease A Bike “for eternity”. He’s not alone as Chris Froome and Michael Woods are said to have “retirement contracts” meaning they can ride for their team as long as they wish. These are just some examples among several of long term contracts and they’re becoming increasingly common.
As a concept it’s great to see longer deals for the stability and security they can signify. But, and there’s always a but, the longer the contract, the more it it is at risk of being broken. Soon we could see a new transfer market as teams trade talent.
To start with all neo-pros have to get two year contracts, the idea being that they need time to settle into the job and two seasons to prove their worth. Plenty start with longer deals with teams keen to attract and retain them. Here a smaller but relevant story out today is that of 17 year old Paul Seixas signing going from Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale’s junior team to the World Tour, skipping their U23 squad. Yes Seixas is very talented and has impressed but there’s possibly a defensive component here. The team may quietly prefer to see him do a year in the U23s but they don’t want to lose him to another pro squad who could dangle a big salary (remember they lost Matteo Jorgenson this way as he preferred to sign with Movistar rather than wait). Seixas is one of many neo-pros starting on a three year deal, longer than the regulatory minimum. It’s been part of a trend towards longer contracts, anecdotally at least as duration isn’t always published.
One year deals, the minimum possible, are becoming rarer. One reason is if a rider moves teams then a single season probably isn’t enough to show what they’ve got. Teams sign riders earlier and earlier these days, gone are the days when the Tour de France rest day was a jobs fair. A lot of contracts for next year are written between March and May, plenty before. Yes there’s a UCI rule about not signing before August 1 but pre-contracts are the way around. A rider on a one-year contract, or another with one year remaining, needs results early in the season to bump their value and capitalise on it; they’ll lose bargaining power if not signed by the summer.
Indeed core riders, the kind who are expected to start World Tour classics and do the Tour de France are signed up earlier and earlier. It’s been common to field riders at the Tour de France who are staying with the team the following year. Some have been known to say to riders “sign this renewal or you won’t ride the Tour”. In way this has turned a one year deal into a de facto 18 month deal, a two year into 30 months and so on.
In the last few years we’ve had de jure longer contracts. Think of Egan Bernal at Ineos with a five year deal in January 2022 (weeks before his horror cash), more recently Carlos Rodriguez there on a four year deal. Many key riders are signed up until the end of 2028, think Jonas Vingegaard, Juan Ayuso or Mathieu van der Poel (not coincidentally the end of the three year World Tour cycle when big changes could be due; but that’s another story). See the Women’s World Tour too with Lotte Kopecky and Lorena Wiebes. It’s usually star riders, but not always as stalwarts like Luke Rowe for Ineos or Rudy Molard chez Groupama-FDJ have been locked-in too. At IPT Sylvan Adams has been excited about Derek Gee to the point of signing him up until 2028.
The Big Contract is Tadej Pogačar, the announcement of his renewal/extension with UAE is due. His existing one is interesting alone for the reported break clause of €100 million, as in if a team wants to hire him they’d have to pay UAE this sum. But if for some reason he had become really unhappy on the team, or even if he just wanted to move, it would probably go to arbitration. Clause, schmlause.
Forever?
Van Aert’s news has a bit of spin given it is touted to be for eternity, which is long a time. Particularly for a team that was trying an emergency merger this time last year. A contract is as good as the house. Yes pro cycling teams are increasingly becoming durable franchises; but they are remain brittle. As said here before there’s still no news on Lotto finding a replacement for Dstny; and if Evenepoel departs Soudal-Quickstep do the sponsors stay and pay? Inevitably for “career contracts” Van Aert was beaten by Mathieu van der Poel, the Dutchman’s 10 year deal with Canyon bikes was announced earlier this spring.
Chop n’ change
Arguably the time to lock a rider into a long term contract is when they’re young and on the up. However Visma-LAB have several examples to show a contract isn’t cast in concrete. See Cian Uijtdebroeks who changed teams over the winter after a brief saga, quitting Bora with a year left on his contract. Meanwhile in the opposite direction went Primož Roglič who was also under contract, until suddenly he wasn’t. Staying with Visma-LAB we should see Johannes Staune-Mittet unveiled as a Decathlon-Ag2r rider in the coming days despite the Norwegian having signed a contract with the Dutch squad until the end of 2026. You probably get the picture by now, a contract isn’t always what the headline says and having cited Visma, they’re not unique. Think of DSM and all the riders who have suddenly left before the end of their contract. Releases happen, especially if money greases the wheels.
Small print + T&Cs
We only see the headlines of duration and maybe the salary or an estimate appears in the media too. But contracts worth millions a year run to many pages and there can be all sorts of terms, conditions and more. That long deal could be conditional on achieving results, at least payments and bonuses can be.
Duration risk
It might sound obvious that the longer the deal the more likely it is go in the shredder. A one year deal that turns sour probably only has a few months left to run and both sides can put it down to experience; a five year deal that becomes toxic needs to be confronted.
It’s this duration that allows for divergence. At the time of signing employer and employee are by definition satisfied with each other. The further things get from the day, the greater the chance of one side being frustrated with the other. A rider whose performance goes up a level might ask for more in return; by contrast if the same rider sustains result-altering injuries do the team keep on paying at the old rate or try to agree a settlement? And so on for many more scenarios, think of the criticism dished out to Julian Alaphilippe by his own employer at times.
Conclusion
The longer the contract, the more likely it is to be modified or even broken. What we’ll see next is the knock-on effect with a larger secondary market of contracts where teams can trade riders, for a fee of course. A contract may only be valid for as long as both sides want it to be so.
The UCI’s regulation of this is only just beginning, some rules were tightened after Uijtdebroeks’s case but this was just a tidy-up exercise rather than defining the market rules like we see in other sports, notably soccer. Plus as much as the UCI sets the rules for the sport, it can’t get too far into employment regulation as this is a matter for the civil courts. For now it can only rely on joint agreements… which like long term contracts can always be torn up.
The post The Paradox of Long Contracts first appeared on The Inner Ring.
With the Vuelta done plenty of UCI ranking points have been added. To save you a click the story though remains the same with Lotto-Dstny and IPT set for promotion back to the World Tour in 2026, and Astana and Arkéa-B&B Hotels facing the drop.
If you want more details and some speculation and the sound of an alarm bell or two, read on.
Promotion-relegation? A reminder teams are ranked on the basis of their points haul from 2023, 2024 and 2025 and the top-18 teams make the cut for the World Tour in 2026 and beyond, at least in sporting terms as they have to prove they’ve got their finances and admin in order too.
You can see Cofidis in 18th place but note the gap as they’re 1,723 points ahead of rivals Arkéa. That’s no guarantee for Cofidis though as they’re having a terrible season this year and will lose two of their top-three points scorers in Axel Zingle and Guillaume Martin, the pair have scored almost a third of the team’s points this season. Still they’ve made new signings like Alex Aranburu, Emanuel Buchmann and Simon Carr but they’ll be required to score from the spring onwards. To reprise the old joke about the two hikers worried about encountering a bear, one turns to the other and says “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to out run you”. For now Cofidis just need to keep clear of Arkéa who so far haven’t announced any signings.
DSM Firmenich-Post NL have had a good Vuelta and Tour of Britain to get 726 points clear of Cofidis. Intermarché-Wanty though are having a bad season and having recently highlighted their financial woes, it is only speculation but these might have persisted as the team is still not making any big signings. Now they’ve got a star in Girmay and got it all right at the Tour de France… but that’s the point, he’s scored a third of their points and injury or illness at the wrong time year could be costly. Bahrain are the surprise flop of the season – Uno-X have scored more than them this year – but insulated from relegation worries thanks to a strong 2023 score.
Meanwhile Astana are so behind that relegation looks like a formality but they’ve responded by going on a shopping spree. The big question is whether the likes of Wout Poels, Sergio Higuita, Aaron Gate and Diego Ulissi can pull it off next year. In crude terms Astana are over 4,000 points behind Cofidis today so they need these new signings to deliver 1,000 points each just pull level. It’ll be a story to watch next year. All this assumes the new sponsor and investor XDS is on board and the licence renewal goes smoothly…
Talking of which it’s mid-September and has anyone heard any news about a replacement sponsor for Dstny? As well as the three year promotion and relegation cycle, all teams are vetted annually for their finances and admin and the short version is that Lotto-Your Name Here need to supply the UCI’s Licence Commission with their 2025 budget plans in the coming weeks, normally something you’d work once a new sponsor is on board. Only there’s no news, Belgian state lottery Lotto has said it can’t afford to carry the whole team. There’s a soft October deadline for tidy admin but things can go to December, as we’ve seen with other teams before. The problem here is that riders on the team don’t want to wait until December to find out they’re free to sign elsewhere. Hopefully everything’s in place as this is a decent team with good prospects… but we’ve all seen this story before.
Not to push the Lotto worries too far, but to pre-empt the inevitable question: if the team did vanish then only IPT would be promoted and Arkéa go from 19th place to 18th and safety, but just based on today’s numbers as the French team is 334 points above Uno-X and the Norwegian team seem to keep improving.
Back to things as they look today and Uno-X might not make the World Tour by 2025 but look good for regular invitations to the grand tours. Likewise Tudor Pro Cycling which has been big in the transfer market signing Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi. Both are great signings but will require clever management not to tread on each other’s toes as they’re both very similar riders. With Tudor scoring more and more points it’s increasingly looking likely that Total Energies are in a bind when it comes to invitations, especially for the Tour de France and if they’re not visible at the Tour then don’t expect the sponsor to stay for long.
Finally it’s worth putting away the magnifying glass and calculator just to look at the haul of UAE so far this season as they’ve already beaten their tally from last year and Tadej Pogačar is about to resume racing. He’s their top scorer with 9105 points, more than several teams have managed but this kind of thing happens in a winner-takes-all domain like sport. The team’s next best scorer is Marc Hirschi.
The post UCI WorldTour Promotion and Relegation first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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The Vuelta is firmly the third grand tour. Few target it at the start of the season, even those that elect to ride rarely do route reconds. In a sport where so much is measured and calculated, the Vuelta is the odd one out among grand tours with its mañana vibe. This is what makes it so good, the grand tour version of Snakes and Ladders after two versions of Monopoly in May and July.
Ben O’Connor took time early in the race but even while five minutes behind Primož Roglič seemed to ride his own race. If there was a defining moment then the Puerto de Ancares saw him drop the field and more than halve O’Connor’s lead but the story was probably more one of gradual pressure with Roglič slowly cracking O’Connor and keeping the rest at bay.
Primož Roglič broke his spine in the Tour de France, although it turned out to be a transverse process fracture, so he was left with traumatic muscle pain but able to train in the build-up. His start in the Vuelta was almost last minute announcement and he came in form unknown.
UAE threatened to dominate and had a promising start with Brandon McNulty winning the time trial in Lisbon. João Almeida would be the only UAE rider to leave but illness seemed to derail the GC bids of several team mates with Adam Yates and Marc Soler taking consolatory stage wins and Jay Vine the mountains jersey and they won the team prize. Not what management would have signed for but they fared better than most.
Almeida had finished fourth in the Tour and was going to be the big rival but Covid spoilt his plans. Pro cycling has its pre and post Covid eras. To labour the obvious point this is not the public health crisis of 2020 but the virus remains contagious, see how it spreads in a peloton and the wider population alike even in summer. Crucially for sport it’s virulent enough to dampen or even destroy athletic performances. The combination means more ruined results and DNFs than before and we’ve probably got to get used to this; especially smaller teams compelled to placing their bets on one rider in one race.
Covid though wasn’t the only culprit the Vuelta was snakes and ladders there were a lot more serpents than steps. Among the others to leave the race, Antonio Tiberi got off to a strong start but was out because of the wilting heat in the opening days and if “Spain hot in August” isn’t a newsline it was still roasting beyond what we’ve had this year. Giulio Ciccone had a course that suited but quit after a freak crash after a mob deer ran across the road. Thymen Arensman, Lennert Van Eeetvelt and Cian Uijtdebroeks were among more GC contenders to leave too.
The chart shows the GC standings relative to Primož Roglič across the 21 stages. It’s the top-10 for the race and deliberately so as it shows just how few riders apart from Roglič were able to take time, Richard Carapaz’s gains to Granada just reversed the losses from earlier in the week.
Roglic’s red line on the chart is just ahead of the rest from the Lisbon opener but as we see the defining move happened on Stage 6. It was a promo day for French retail with a start inside a Carrefour supermarket and a finish to delight Decathlon. It put the village of Yunquera on the map too and Ben O’Connor in red after he took over six minutes on the peloton. There was a tactical stand-off with teams hoping others would chase; while Red Bull had Florian Lipowitz in the move up the road. But O’Connor wasn’t gifted the win nor time, he grabbed it and once the teams got going they found the Perth powerhouse unstoppable. It put him almost five minutes ahead on GC.
Exclude Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard and the margins in grand tours can be tight among the rest so O’Connor was sitting on a plump red cushion, L’Equipe called it a mattress although that’s more down to French than metaphors. Either way Roglič’s winning way has been matching his rivals in the mountains until late into the final kilometre where he surges for the stage win and time bonus. Only now instead of sniping at rivals suddenly he to go and reclaim five minutes.
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A snarky write-up could claim Roglič kindly loaned out the race lead to O’Connor. Certainly Roglič could have given the lead away. But not to O’Connor, and not five minutes. But the kernel of truth that makes sarcasm work is that this did have the effect of recruiting Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale to the GC cause in a race that was proving hard to contain.
O’Connor’s challenge became apparent at the next summit finish where he lost 46 seconds to Roglič on the line, and a further ten because the Slovenian won the stage and its time bonus. Almost a minute in the space of two kilometres meant his red cushion was ripped, and part of its stuffing blowing around the Sierra de Cazorla.
O’Connor kept things together on the stage in the Sierra Nevada where the long, Alpine-style climbs suited. This day saw Adam Yates win the stage and Richard Carapaz reclaim two minutes on GC, the ladder for both to climb back the GC, even if Yates would soon find a snake to poison his overall bid for good.
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O’Connor was losing seconds here and there with time bonuses and gaps but the Puerto de Ancares was arguably the decisive stage for the GC. Over ten minutes after Michael Woods had won from the breakaway Roglič was the first of the GC contenders with 30 seconds on Mikel Landa and getting on for two minutes on O’Connor. On the chart above you can see everyone’s lines bending downwards, this was the day Roglič feathered his own nest at the expense of the rest.
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Two days later at the Cuitu Negru summit finish Enric Mas and Roglič finished together but Roglič got a 20 second time penalty. You can download the rulebook for yourself and read Rule 2.12.007-4.7 that pacing behind a team car is never allowed; you can watch racing and see it is often tolerated. The explanation here is surely that Red Bull messed up twice, the bike change was an elective decision rather than a mishap, so no blind eye to mend a mishap; but importantly the commissaires were giving instructions to the convoy at the time which the team car ignored (or charitably didn’t hear on the radio). As time penalties go in the same rulebook the team got the lightest levy and given the final result, probably no consequence.
The next day to the Lagos de Covadonga saw O’Connor valiant but his lead down to just five seconds, less a cushion and just the cover and threadbare too. With hindsight the 20 second penalty for Roglič just kept O’Connor doing the media duties, including having to go back up the climb again by car after he rode away at the foggy finish instead of going to the podium.
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Stage 19 and the Alto de Moncalvillo saw the coup de grace delivered. Roglič won the stage, took back the red jersey and left the other GC contenders scattered over the mountain. O’Connor lost close to two minutes but was able to hold onto second place.
The Picón Blanco summit finish topped a tough stage but by now it just cemented the hierarchy. Rumours, since founded, spread that illness struck the Red Bull teambut Roglič was spared, twice over as he seemed fine and nobody tried to test him either. The final time trial widened the gaps for most but allowed Mattias Skjelmose climb to fifth, passing David Gaudu.
The Verdict
After one of the top pre-race picks left the race, the big contender who’d won it three times already collected a fourth victory. This doesn’t tell the full story and much of this race belonged to Ben O’Connor thanks to his winning raid in the first week and his defence added breadth to the race.
Roglič applied pressure each day and if O’Connor was valiant, he was too brittle on the double-digit gradients. But so were all the others who fell away, Roglič didn’t just take time back from O’Connor, he regularly distanced the rest. O’Connor’s big gain added a thrill and suspense to the race, at first even whether he go all the way in red? Alas it soon looked like he wouldn’t but there was more too watch and count throughout.
Weeks after crashing out of the Tour Roglič was back in red. He collects his fourth win in the Vuelta, the race he started for the first time in 2019 when he was just shy of being 30 years old but arguably triumphing each time after a setback before in the Giro or Tour so continuity again. The difference here was changing teams on the back of last year’s Vuelta, whether the leadership issues or the financial woes behind the scenes courtesy of Jumbo. Red Bull looked like novices in moments – in with the likes of impressive debutant Lipowitz they literally were – but potent elsewhere, notably with Aleksandr Vlasov and Dani Martinez applying themselves at times.
A career high for O’Connor? Surely as even if he keeps improving, the rate suggests topping second place in a grand tour is a tall order for a durable diesel. Ideally we should see this result alongside his Giro where he was fourth, results he and his team would sign for in January “with both hands” as the French saying goes.
Enric Mas was third, his fourth time podium but of course never the top step. It’s an excellent result for Mas and Movistar and this time he was on the attack, even out-sprinting Roglič on some climbs.
Richard Carapaz gets the chocolate medal of fourth place and a result his team might be happier about than him as he was back to the “GC rider” role his team had hired him for rather than picking off stages, as good as stage wins are this was a reset, a prod out of the comfort zone.
Mattias Skjelmose climbed up to fifth on the last day and was the odd one out as the rider who actually targetted the Vuelta since the winter, a rarity among riders who usually take to the start having tried a bigger goal earlier in the year. The Dane won the white jersey in a good competition and is improving, almost this time two years ago he caught the eye in the Tour of Luxembourg.
David Gaudu in sixth is a sign of consistency again but after so many other top-10 candidates were out isn’t a huge result compared to his fourth in the Tour but it’s something he can rebuild from. Florian Lipowitz finishes seventh in a breakout season and having worked for Roglič at times.
So far, so overall. Half the stages went to breakaways with wins from riders not among the overall contenders, a lot compared to the Giro and Tour. The only frustration here was Vuelta saw a degree of separation between the GC contenders and the breakaways, Pavel Sivakov ended up in the top-10 overall because of his moves but only just, it would have been fun to see more riders going up and down the GC via breakaways. The big winners from the breakaways were Kern Pharma, with two stages for Pablo Castrillo and a third with Ukro Berrade marking a remarkable month for los farmacéuticos and their Finisher range of energy products. Eddie Dunbar is also making up for lost years with two stage wins.
Kaden Groves proved the best sprinter and alas the points competition took a knock when Wout van Aert crashed out on Stage 16. Called “Grooves” by Spanish TV, he’s certainly likely to stay in the Vuelta’s groove given team mates Jasper Philipsen and Mathieu van der Poel but it means he’s got a squad drilled at leadouts and he’s picking up wins that other sprinters crave.
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Among the other winners, Pavel Bittner seized his chance in the sprint. He says he’s not really a sprinter but still, he was winning bunch sprints. For a mental exercise, try ranking DSM Firmenich’s sprinters and see where you put Fabio Jakobsen among them: it’s just not been his season so far. Also no revelation, but a delivery as Stefan Küng took a satisfying win, aggressive during the road stages he finally won his first grand tour stage in the Madrid time trial.
Structurally the course design was interesting with 60,000 metres of vertical gain. The Giro and Tour have had 55km in recent years, comparable but only as a headline number. Because they have plenty of flat stages and then giant days in the mountains. This Vuelta by contrast was hilly to mountainous almost every day, 3,000m in a day could be a summit finish or a sprint stage of sorts. It’s a template for the other races were consecutive sprint finishes get decried as boring. We could say the Vuelta is a laboratory for other races but it’s something Tour boss Christian Prudhomme has said years ago already. We can see the influence on other races, even the Giro is going for shorter stages and fewer sprints.
Was the Vuelta the best grand tour of the year? Luckily we rarely have to chose between them as they’re spaced apart and each can be enjoyed. The Giro’s “fight for pink” quickly turned into a foregone conclusion but the stage contests were often lively. The Tour also turned into the Pogačar show, but only later into the race and many days had high quality racing. The Vuelta was lively, especially after the first week but if wasn’t for O’Connor the Vuelta’s red jersey contest could have been another Slovenian certainty too as Roglič never had another challenger. Just like the other grand tours this year the best sport came from the breakaway with the racing to get in it and the contest to win from it.
Roglič’s coach Marc Lamberts tells Belgian newspaper HLN his palmarés is only missing two big races: Tour de Suisse and the Tour de France so we can imagine what he is doing next summer. But if these don’t work out then don’t be surprised if he makes an announcement in mid-August again.
The post Vuelta a España Review first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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Many of today’s pro teams were founded in the 1990s by ex-pros. These founders have become part of the landscape and the teams almost institutions.
Because of time and retirement plans some of these founders are on their way out. In the case of Vincent Lavenu at Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale in recent days, brutally so and his forced exit tells us something about recent changes in the sport.
Ex-pro Vincent Lavenu founded the Chazal-Vanille et Mûre team in 1992, backed by improbable combo of a meat distributor and a company selling children’s perfume. It had just 12 riders but took on a stagiaire from Estonia called Jaan Kirsipuu who won a race for them in the late season and in the following years became a prolific winner.
In 1996 in came a new sponsor in “Petit Casino”, no gambling but a chain of mini-supermarkets belonging to major French retailer Casino. In 1997 Casino itself became the sponsor, joined in 1998 by Ag2r, an insurance company.
Ag2r the company grew with the team over the years, merging with La Mondiale to become one of France’s biggest savings and insurance companies. It’s a safe business, people subscribe to pension plans; the company invests in real estate. It’s gained plenty from the Tour de France, brand recognition has soared.
The Tour de France goes a long way to explaining the longevity and ubiquity of the French teams in the peloton today, they’re a quarter of a century old and almost institutions who have been able to continue in part because of likely start in the Tour de France.
Another figurehead closer to retirement than the start of his career is Marc Madiot, age 65. He founded the Française des Jeux team which is Groupama-FDJ today. He told the Face à Face podcast his team has gone from a family shop to a multinational business. Certainly budgets have soared in recent years, €20 million or more. Back in the day these founders started out doing everything chasing sponsors, recruiting riders, handling the media and all while driving the team car too. Today this is very different with teams having many departments from communications to performance, logistics to admin and payroll and often more than one team some have women’s squads and many have in-house junior and U23 development outfits too.
Being a business can mean risk-taking which brings us to Vincent Lavenu’s downfall. According to reports in L’Equipe and local paper Le Dauphiné he decided to modernise the team HQ in 2020 and took on debts for this. Then Citroën decided to exercise the right in a five year deal to pull out early, leaving the team with a sudden funding shortfall. Loyal readers will also remember the team has had issues with bike suppliers too.
Ag2r La Mondiale told Lavenu they’d buy the team off him for €8,000: not eight million, just eight thousand Euros but with this they’d keep sponsoring the team. Faced with this ultimatum Lavenu had no options.
The transaction went through in June 2022 and the new owners have appointed a general manager in Dominique Serieys who has a sports management background, having run the Paris Défense stadium and worked in motorsport. There’s also Béatrice Willems who also runs the Ag2r La Mondiale chief executive’s office, a clear sign of reporting lines going to Paris.
Reduced to an employee, this week L’Equipe noticed that Lavenu had vanished from the organigram on the team website and reported he was given notice of his dismissal at the end of July, which caused him to fall ill, even requiring paramedics being sent to the team HQ although fortunately they write he didn’t need to get in the ambulance. A brutal end, certainly not the exit he would have liked.
Marc Madiot doesn’t own any shares as the team has belonged to its sponsors from the start but he’s become more a totem figure over the years rather than the boss. Meanwhile Jean-René Bernaudeau at Total Energies is 68 years old and the search of a successor is on; apparently Julian Alaphilippe was almost in tears when he called to say he was going to join Tudor instead of Bernaudeau’s outfit, some of the sorrow may have come from knowing that without a star rider the team is going to keep struggling for invites and could run out of road soon. Meanwhile chez Cofidis the sponsor is the owner and facing relegation and poor results they’re considering changes too in the management.
So far so French but another team with a long history is Lotto-Dstny, it can be traced back to 1985. It’s in trouble because Dstny is leaving and there’s been a quarrel with the co-sponsor frustrated because they wanted the team to race abroad more while Lotto as the Belgian state lottery clearly wanted more presence in their home market, a clear tension. But if there’s no sponsor there’s a significant financial shortfall to close and all this needs to be resolved now, or even two weeks ago for some UCI deadlines, by autumn for other regulatory matters. If this is not not resolved quickly never mind promotion back to the World Tour and the bright prospects of Arnaud De Lie, Lennert van Eeetvelt, Maxim Van Gils, Alec Segaert and Jarno Widar to name some, they might not make it to 2025.
Meanwhile Movistar goes back to 1980 and the Unzue family still rule the roost. If Italy has lost its World Tour teams, Spanish fans must be concerned for their last team which is not the force it used to be, in part because financially it has struggled with the inflation in team budgets of late. It’s openly looking for a co-sponsor and Movistar itself is on-board with this because if the performance improves then Movistar will see its name mentioned more often, even if it is shared with another backer.
Behind a lot of this is a return of sponsor power. They don’t just provide the funding, increasingly they own the teams. This used to be the norm until the late 1980s when Cyrille Guimard and Laurent Fignon and others launched their own team which “sold” sponsorship to third parties and this model became widely copied. This still exists today with teams like Visma-LAB and UAE Emirates belonging to team management; but Ineos the company owns Ineos the team to the point where the senior figure behind the team is discreet; and EF Education-Easypost is no longer Slipstream as it belongs to the EF and the Hult family behind it. Likewise Red Bull don’t just sponsor their team, they’ve acquired it and so on.
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The days of teams being led by one man are over, they probably ended a decade ago. We might still think of Soudal-Quickstep as Patrick Lefevere’s team but when the Jumbo merger was on a year ago he was in the dark at times as the real power and ownership is with Zdenek Bakala. A similar situation applies to plenty of other teams, although to varying degrees.
Conclusion
Nothing is eternal. Several team managers are contemplating retirement but those that can get out on their terms are going to be the lucky ones. Few can cash in their equity as without sponsorship there’s little value in a team, even if they have built up a kind of franchise.
Guiding a team through the 1990s to today is a feat, a tale of survivorship and probably luck too. During this time all teams have changed. While some still have their founders around, increasingly they’re figureheads for the media rather than the controlling power. Being able to delegate is itself a form of power. As budgets continue to increase and teams take on more and more the practices and customs of established businesses it’ll be interesting to see if they can also retain their identity, so often shaped by their founder.
The post Exit The Founding Fathers first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A look at the contenders and pretenders for the 2024 Vuelta a España. As ever there’s a mix of riders with stories of rehab, redemption and revenge. There’s even someone who is targetting this race.
Without Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard the Vuelta is the most open and accessible grand tour of the season and possibly beyond. Who is up for it?
Route summary
One for the climbers? The Vuelta feels vertical every year but it really stands out this time with over 60,000m of vertical gain. For comparison the Giro had 44km and the Tour 52km. There are two flat time trials, 12km to start and 25km on the last day.
There are nine “summit” finishes of varying difficulty, ranging from accessible big-ring finishes to ski stations, and the infamous Cuitu Negru. Plus there are two days which end after a descent so half the stages are mountain stages of some kind. This leaves little for the sprinters, three to four sprint stages look likely but they’re hilly and with few sprinters and their teams, the breakaway has a better chance.
There are time bonuses of 10-6-4 seconds at the finish line each day and some stages have intermediate sprints denoted with a (B) for 6-4-2 seconds.
The Contenders
A team packed with leaders causing a drama? That was last year but UAE come with a top-heavy team where the opening time trial can count for plenty as it’ll set an initial hierarchy. João Almeida is the local pick given the Portuguese start but can he become a grand tour winner who can strike out on his own on a mountain stage? He’s just turned 26 and seems to have started as a punchy rider with limits in the high mountains to become a top climber who has lost a bit of that kick but he’ll need to combine both to take stage wins and time bonuses.
Adam Yates seems very reliable these days, both in terms of performance and personality as he can climb with the very best and also seems settled at UAE, he’s not after a contract and leadership on another team.
UAE have riders who could lead other teams. Brandon McNulty is an outsider but probably likely to find too much climbing and too many leaders ahead of him; likewise Pavel Sivakov. Jay Vine though is interesting as a wildcard for the team to play. And there’s Isaac del Toro who starts a grand tour in his first season and while he’s been tipped for the top he’s arguably beaten expectations so far so one to look for. All together they make for a tough team for rival squads to match but keep an eye on the internal competition too as this is a rare chance without Pogačar.
What a difference a year makes. A year ago Visma-Lease A Bike looked on top of the world, 69 wins and winning all three grand tours, including all three podium places in the Vuelta. Yet behind the scenes they were trying to salvage sponsorship and since then replicating results at the highest level has proved impossible, in part thanks to a plenty of “unluck”. Still Sep Kuss is now back to form and health with a win in the Vuelta a Burgos and there are no leadership quarrels. He won’t get the same space to attack this year but can count on leadership from the start with solid support on the team, including Wout van Aert and he’s experienced at leadership now too.
Apprentice Cian Uijtdebroeks will prove a tongue-twister for Spanish media and returns to the Vuelta where he was top-10 last year will look to improve on that after season that’s arguably been more discreet than his winter transfer saga but that’s fine, he’s still just 21. He’s one of several contenders who’d love to take the white jersey as the best young rider along the way. There should be a good contest for this.
Is Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) here to win or just to bank a grand tour in the legs? Of course there’s room in-between for stage wins. He’s a surprise late entry after his Tour de France crash left him with sustained back injuries and rehab. A three time winner, he’s seemed made for the race with his ability to pick off summit finishes and their time bonuses, and thrive in the time trials. But his 35th birthday is approaching and he’d be the second oldest Vuelta winner. Triumph is within reach but far from the certainty, all year he’s not been the winning machine we’ve been used to.
Aleksandr Vlasov has been a loyal helper so far this season but does he get to play his own cards? Dani Martinez was second in the Giro, of course far behind Pogačar but better than the rest and his consistency is valuable but . Florian Lipowitz was revelation in Romandie, can he show more of the same here?
Enric Mas leads Movistar. As ever he’s reliable in the Vuelta, three second placed finishes but how to win? He’ll rely on regularidad and hope to finish on the podium for a result that Movistar would surely sign for today. Previous winner Nairo Quintana starts but even a stage looks elusive, but Giro stage winner Pelayo Sanchez can surprise.
Mattias Skjelmose has made the Vuelta his target for the season which is remarkable. “Rider targets big race” isn’t normally a headline but it does tell us something about the Vuelta which often sees riders taking to the start because of accident or injury. Lively on the climbs, surprisingly quick in the time trials but form unknown, the 23 year old leads a very solid Lidl-Trek team with Tao Geoghegan Hart and Giulio Ciccone as other cards to play.
Thymen Arensman leads Ineos but he’d surely want a course with more time trials. A year ago Carlos Rodriguez (pictured) was on the up and a project to become a Tour de France podium contender; now having finish seventh he’s in the shadows which shows how fickle our impressions can be; here is a chance to be back in the limelight in his home race. As ever we’ll see how the team races, the allure of multiple options but the habit of playing it safe.
Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost) is back to winning ways but is this stage hunting or GC? It’s said he’s more comfortable with the former even if his team might prefer the latter; they certainly hired him as a Tour contender. He’s at his best when the race comes down to a test of stamina so some stages suit more than others and form unknown after the Tour.
There’s a long list of wider contenders who are harder to see winning but can hope for a strong result overall. Mikel Landa (T Rex-Quickstep, the temporary new name for the squad) was back to climbing with the best in the Tour and finds a route to suit, team mate William Junior Lecerf could be interesting for some climbs too. Ben O’Connor and Felix Gall (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) are talented but we’ll see with O’Connor for the motivation as he’s changing teams while Gall must be keener for a result after injury in the summer hampered his Tour prep, and Valentin Paret-Peintre and Victor Lafay give the team more options for a stage win on the climbs. Bahrain bring some strong riders but how to win as Antonio Tiberi, Jack Haig and Damiano Caruso are all steady riders but unlikely to just ride away on a climb.
Max Poole (DSM Firmenich-Post NL) returns to the Vuelta as a form pick having finished second in Burgos, he’s an elegant rider in search of a result. Is David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) a grand tour contender, well he was eighth here in the autumnal 2020 edition, now he’s on a salvage mission for his season. A similar rider but younger and more carefree is Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto-Dstny) and while may not be making the headlines but the UAE Tour winner is handy on short climbs and probably faces the dilemma of high GC or stage wins as doing both would be a big result and as ever the racing will inform his decisions. Jayco’s Eddie Dunbar, Filippo Zana and Chris Harper are here for stage wins. Similarly IPT come with George Bennett, Michael Woods and Matthew Riccitello for stages more than GC.
| | – | | | Roglič, Almeida | | | Yates, Kuss | | | Carlos Rodriguez, Carapaz | | | Skjelmose, Mas, Landa, Arensman, Vine, Del Toro |
TV: RTVE and EITB for locals and VPN users, Eurosport/Max/HBO/Discovery+ or whatever it is called in your country for subscribers in Europe and beyond. Stages typically finish around 5.20pm CEST each day.
The post Vuelta a España Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The women’s road race is this Sunday and promises a duel between Belgium and the Netherlands but plenty of other riders will fancy their chances, especially after Anna Kiesenhofer’s surprise win the last time.
The Course
157km and 1,700m of vertical gain. It’s out to Versailles but before the famous palace, a left turn and straight to the Chevreuse valley to pick up much of the same course as the men but skipping the climbs of Senlisse and Herbouvilliers on the run back to Paris.
Then it’s three laps of the by-now familiar 18km Paris circuit with the Butte Montmartre as the obvious climb with the narrow road and cobbles but the other boulevard ramps and drags along the way.
The Finish: after the third time up the Montmartre climb a left turn and then back down past the Louvre to the banks of the Seine and a run alongside the river to the Eiffel tower where there’s the right turn for the finish on the Pont d’Iena by the Trocadéro.
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The Contenders
Having picked the world champion for the men’s race, Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) is the obvious pick here too because the course suits. She’ll be much more wary of a sprint from a group given the rivalry and having written up a duel above between Belgium and the Netherlands it’s Kopecky vs. the Dutch which makes it much harder for here.
The sprint scenario winner is Lorena Wiebes (Netherlands) but being there for the final right turn is a tough ask. Not Inly if she can get over the climbs but so many rival teams will base a part of their tactics to avoid a sprint against her. Team mate Demi Vollering is their card to play on the climbs and there’s also Marianne Vos too.
The Italian team can play similar tactics with Elisa Longo Borghini for the attacks and Elisa Balsamo in condition for the sprint.
Home hopes find in-form Juliette Labous (France) but she’d want more climbing and if the team can play the sprint card with Victoire Berteau they’d surely sign now for a bronze given the competition.
Australia’s Grace Brown stormed the time trial and she can and does win road races too so has to be a contender with Ruby Roseman-Gannon able to play off this too.
Denmark have similar options with Emma Norsgaard for a sprint and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig for an attack but form this season makes then a harder pick.
The British team can cover and make more moves with TT medalist Anna Henderson , Lizzie Deignan and Pfeiffer Georgi.
Arlenis Sierra (Cuba) is an outside chance for the sprint. Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Poland) is a rare winner but can hope to pick her moment so can Alison Jackson (Canada).
| | – | | | Lotte Kopecky | | | Vollering, Longo Borghini, Vos, Wiebes | | | – | | | Niewiadoma, Brown, Balsamo, Georgi |
Weather: cloudy and 24°C.
TV: KM0 is at 2.10pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 6.00pm. The race returns to Paris around 4.30pm.
The post Women’s Olympic Road Race Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The men’s road race is this Saturday and it is the longest single event in the Olympics, at least six hours on the road. The format of just 90 starters and small teams promises a lively race with many riders left to fend for themselves by the time the climbs of Montmartre begin.
Mathieu van der Poel wants to add the Olympic rings to his rainbow bands but plenty can strike gold on this prestigious picture postcard circuit.
The Course
272.1km and 2,800m of vertical gain. It’s out to the south-west of Paris and the first climb, labelled the Côte des Gardes is the steepest of the day, 16% at one point. Then it’s via Versailles and roads of the Yvelines familiar to the opening stage of Paris-Nice each year, but with few copycat sections. After passing the Saint Quentin velodrome the race visits the Chevreuse valley, well known to Parisian cyclists as these are some of the best roads within reach of the capital thanks to the small hills and woodland.
None of the climbs in the first 200km are tricky or have traps, instead it’s the accumulation and twists and turns that will gradually fatigue. The last climb of the Pavé des Gardes is the widest of all the climbs but the road tips up enough and goes on sufficiently to make things start to feel tough. Then it’s back downhill into Paris for a guided tour of many tourist landmarks from the Eiffel Tour, the Louvre, the Canal St. Martin to the Place du Tertre and going via many smaller places such as the Café des Deux Moulins, famous for a scene in the Amélie film of 2001, and now on the main climb of the Paris circuit.
There are three laps of an 18km urban course. It’s got comparisons to the Glasgow worlds last year but that was more condensed in terms of climbing and cornering, in terms of worlds courses this feels a bit more like Leuven in 2021.
The climb of the Butte Montmartre is the tactical focus point but it’s just over 1km with an average gradient of 6.5% which tops out at 9%, no Mount Olympus. It’s cobbled with a mix of old stones and modern urban paving and it’s not wide, being at the front counts double as riders can chose the best line. It’s got a narrow descent.
Montmartre gets all the attention as the marked climb but the circuit has two other climbs, the Boulevard Sérurier is as the name suggests, a big wide road and the Avenue Gambetta has another climb, but wide again.
The Finish
After the third time up the climb the race takes a different descent off Montmartre with wider roads and down to the river Seine to cross the Pont du Carousel, hook a right to follow the river, it’s flat from here on.
With 400m to go a right hand bend and across the Pont d’Iena in front of the Eiffel tower. While some bridges have a hump this is flat leading to the line.
The Scenario
90 starters and no team has more than four riders. Why? Because it’s the Olympics where there’s pressure to cap the number of competitors overall so having 180 for just one day is too much, and no big teams in order to accommodate riders from other countries. But this means roughly 20 riders who don’t compete at the highest level and while it’s nice to see them taking to the start, the hard part for them will be featuring later. It means even fewer riders by the time the race reaches Paris and it’ll be harder to contain moves throughout.
The Montmartre climb isn’t hard by itself but with 250km done it’ll be a lot harder. The rest of the Paris circuit counts for plenty too, the big boulevards look easy with our reference points of large teams who can pull breaks back but think instead of Sanremo after the Poggio with tired riders without much support hesitant to follow each move. The large roads can almost make it easier to escape giving width to launch.
The Contenders
Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) is the obvious pick, after a discreet Tour de France with some team work he won the Worlds last year, he’s hoping for the same. Indeed the only concern is form after a quiet July. The smaller one is he hasn’t reconned the Paris circuit and the last time he didn’t study the Olympic details led to issues in Izu. At his best he can shape the race, picking the moment to make his move but he can also win a sprint from a group too. He’s only got two team mates, Dylan van Baarle as outsider but more likely a precious helper.
If this course resembles the Leuven Worlds then Julian Alaphilippe (France) won there. He did ride the field off his wheel in the Czech Tour recently but repeating this in the Olympics is a much tougher ask and he’s clearly less explosive these days. Christophe Laporte is the obvious counter as if Alaphilippe moves he can bide his time and if Alaphilippe can’t get away then Laporte can cover moves and win from a small group.
Fresh from winning the time trial, if we can say that after doing the Tour as well, Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) can take a flyer, it’s easy to see him carving a corner on the descent off Montmartre and riding away solo for the win like he did in for the worlds in Wollongong and he’s a better sprinter these days, as in more crafty. Wout van Aert gives more depth to the team, especially after his revival result in the time trial but if he’s coming to the finish can he win the sprint, he’s got a great chance. Jasper Stuyven is also another card to play but the difficulty here is being able to make his own moves when he could be precious for his team mates.
Mads Pedersen (Denmark) had to quit the Tour de France with a cracked shoulder, hardly the preparation he’d choose and he’d like an uphill sprint but a contender all the same.
Marc Hirschi (Switzerland) is a late call up and a form pick after winning the Czech Tour. He’s adept at racking up non-World Tour wins but is this, to coin a phrase, non-selection bias as he wins when he’s not having to race for others on the stacked UAE team? Or does going beyond 200km pose problems?
Ben Healy (Ireland) is the breakaway pick in a race where teams are small to start with and will be reduced by the time the race returns to Paris. His EF team mate Alberto Bettiol (Italy) is a similar rider in method as a one-shot rider who likes to go solo. If someone does take a flyer who will be left to bring them back?
Spain have a fun team with long shot sprinter Alex Aranburu, the cosmopolitan Juan Ayuso and classics contender Oier Lazkano but… how to win? The same for the USA with Brandon McNulty, Matteo Jorgenson and Magnus Sheffield.
Biniam Girmay (Eritrea) is more than a sprinter and can cope with the climbs today but he’s racing alone which makes things harder. Jhonathan Narvaez (Ecuador) isn’t a sprinter at all but can clean up from a small group
Michael Matthews (Australia) isn’t winning so often these days but came so close in Sanremo so he’s another shot at a long race. Talking of Sanremo, Matej Mohorič (Slovenia) is an outsider for his ability to float away just when others are tired and watching each other. Corbin Strong (New Zealand) is a punchy sprinter who can handle the hills. Tom Pidcock (Great Britain) doubles up after the mountain bike title and with nothing to lose and plenty to gain as teams compete for his services.
| | Van der Poel | | | Evenepoel | | | Van Aert, Laporte | | | Stuyven, Girmay, Mohorič | | | Matthews, Narvaez, Pidcock, Hirschi, Alaphilippe |
Weather: sunny and 26°C. A 15km/h breeze from the west means a headwind for the final kilometres along the banks of the Seine.
TV: KM0 is 11.10am CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.40pm. The race reaches Paris around 4.00pm.
It’s live from start to finish but coverage depends on your local broadcaster, they might just have a livestream on their website. Once you’ve found it the concern is the production and direction as the IOC has its in-house unit to supply the video and road cycling coverage at the Olympics has often lacked the basics like the “KM to go” caption or good direction.
The post Men’s Olympic Road Race Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
With the Tour de France done a look at the UCI World Tour promotion and relegation standings. If you want to save a click then stage wins for Astana and Arkéa-B&B didn’t make a difference. In fact they lost ground in July
We’re now approaching the opening of the transfer season when new hires for next year can be announced and this is all the more crucial with 2025 as the last of the three year cycle.
Promotion, relegation?
A quick reminder that teams will be ranked by the sum total of their points from each of 2023, 2024 and 2025 and the top-18 teams qualify on sporting terms for a WorldTeam licence and this gives them automatic entry to the Tour de France, the golden ticket.
First just look at the top. UAE keep pushing the x-axis out. With over 26,000 points for 2024 they’re on more than double the next team. Tadej Pogačar has over 9,000 points to his name but two thirds are down to the rest. Seven, including neo-pro Isaac del Toro, have more than 1,000 points each. Even without Pogačar they’d still have more points than Visma-LAB.
Going up
Promotion candidates IPT and Lotto-Dstny are on course to get back in the World Tour, the former is buying in more talent for the future while the latter has an excellent pipeline from its U23 team just as long as it can fend off rival squads but it’s done with this with Flemish climber Jarno Widnar who is just one year out of the junior ranks and has won almost every major U23 stage race going so far this year except the mighty Ronde de l’Isard… where he finished second.
Going down
Meanwhile the standings still show Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Astana languishing below the red line. They enjoyed a successful Tour thanks to a stage win each. These triumphs are huge and mentioning the points is borderline petty as the 210 point reward isn’t commensurate.
Arkéa’s Vauquelin got the stage win they craved for so long and had a great time trial in the Beaujolais but was missing in action in the mountains while Arnaud Démare was only once in the mix for a sprint win and duly got relegated, forfeiting the points. So they’re now over 1,500 points adrift, further away than after the Giro.
Astana pulled off a memorable win for Mark Cavendish but “Project 35” has been the equivalent of painting a masterpiece fresco on a wall at risk of collapse. After the Giro they were 2,500 points away from safety, they’re now 3,300 points adrift. Chinese bike brand XDS is investing in the team and this could help them sign riders who can score for them next year. This short term plan is a way out but they’ve signed riders like Lorenzo Fortunato, Ide Schelling and Anthon Charmig to do this job in 2024 and this trio have 376 points between them… Schelling and Charmig haven’t scored. Hiring riders is one thing but having coaching staff, training camps and resources to support the delivery of results counts too.
18th place = safety
In the absence of a relegation battle DSM Firmenich-PostNL remain 18th. Star signing Fabio Jakobsen is more than a contender, alas, for flop of the season. This isn’t meant as a swipe, rather he’s just been such a solid sprinter but now has challenges just getting to the final kilometre.
Cofidis are been good at scoring before but they’re stalling so far this year and it’s possible the Dutch team leapfrogs them. The French team is in an interesting position because it has no development team to supply talent and its two best scorers Axel Zingle and Guillaume Martin are leaving. It needs to recruit well.
Both teams though still have a cushion above the relegation red line, there’s yet to be the drama of the 2020-2022 relegation battle.
This chart shows the difference in the rankings for 2024 between 16 July and 23 July, effectively the Tour de France points haul. You can see Astana and Arkéa’s problems where a stage win was good but they struggled for more. It also illustrates the phantom Tours of Red Bull, Decathlon-Ag2r and Groupama-FDJ.
2025 is crucial
The best two ProTeams on the UCI rankings at the end of year get automatic invites to the Tour de France and other major races next year. This means IPT and Lotto-Dstny now but imagine today’s points situation transposed into 2026. IPT and Lotto would be back in the World Tour, Arkéa and Astana relegated. Automatic invitations would go to Arkéa and Uno-X.
With relegation looking increasingly likely for Arkéa and Astana, this secondary contest to top the rankings in 2025 matters as it sets up a soft relegation, out of the World Tour but still qualifying although year to year rather than automatically.
If they are going to get relegated because of weak 2023 and 2024 seasons then can they get enough points during the course of 2025 to become automatic picks? If not then the corollary is then whether they can sign star riders or have some unique selling point to win wild card invites ahead of squads like Tudor and Q36.5. Tudor especially are playing a clever long game here.
The post World Tour Promotion-Relegation Update first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The winning moment? If Tadej Pogačar took the yellow jersey after just Stage 4, hopes of a contest were rekindled on Stage 11 Le Lioran when Jonas Vingegaard won. They were calmed on the first day in the Pyrenees to the Pla d’Adet, then extinguished the next day on the climb the Plateau de Beille. If not the winning moment this second day in the Pyrenees set up a dominant victory.
Pogačar’s imperious results will wow some and bore others and that’s fine, there are different ways to enjoy the sport. If the final result lacked suspense the daily battles to slip the UAE team’s stranglehold were gripping and many stages offered some of the best racing so far this season.
We can’t start the review in Rimini, we’ll go to Nice instead. Because in March both Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel were both caught out by Matteo Jorgenson, two “invincibles” undone in Paris-Nice.
Weeks later came disaster in the collective crashes in the Basque Country and Dwars Door Vlaanderen that left many injured and in rehab, but not Pogačar because he preparing for the Giro. Crashes like this make you wonder if teams only satisfied by major wins will retain stars for the grand tours and monuments even more.
It was in spring that the sounds from Pogačar’s entourage changed, the Giro was no longer the prime mission with anything in July as a bonus. Instead Giro-Tour double talk got loud, and long before the Trofeo Senza Fine was raised. Pogačar breezed the Giro, the route was eased and nobody apart from Antonio Tiberi could or would attack him. The result was six stages and almost ten minutes on the next rider.
With hindsight June counted too. Roglič won the Critérium du Dauphiné, just. We didn’t see it but Covid was back in bunch. Pogačar mentioned he caught it in June. Evenepoel didn’t mention it but apparently he was in his pre-Tour camp hotel room for days after the Dauphiné. Perhaps this gave them added immunity for July, or just meant their Covid karma was used up in June rather than July?
Here’s the chart of the GC standings over the 21 stages. Sometimes this can look like tangled wiring but 2024’s version has just four lines because the others in the top-10 were racing hard yet never weighing on the race. The lines hardly overlap and fall away from Pogačar at every big rendez-vous, Remco Evenepoel’s Beaujolais time trial win a rare inflection.
Roglič is included if only to show that finishes where he might have hoped to pick up bonuses saw him lose out so we can only speculate as to what might have been if it wasn’t for Alexey Lutsenko and that traffic divider in La Sauvetat-sur-Lede. A contest for the third place perhaps but to ask for more feels greedy.
Le Lioran saw the “tipping point theory” gain traction: Pogačar would start to fade and Vingegaard was on the up. Pogačar’s attack on the Puy Mary saw him away although never alone given the crowds. Only Vingegaard floated across on the next climb and then won the stage. The turning point? Pogačar looked pale and it seemed less a reversal of fortunes and more a quirk to see him lose a sprint. Vingegaard needed more than the four second time bonus advantage.
The hypothesis took a hit on the first day in the Pyrenees when Pogačar took 39 seconds on the climb to Pla d’Adet. Still subscribers could claim the upper slopes were not so steep and that Vingegaard maybe just had a bad day.
The Plateau de Beille settled things. Visma-LAB worked hard all day and you could tell a Vingegaard attack was coming. Once Matteo Jorgenson could do no more the Dane went with 10km to go, standing on the pedals for 18 strokes. Pogačar followed, seated. The others were gone, as if written out of the script. Vingegaard hardly asked Pogačar for a turn and this had the effect of keeping Evenepoel at bay. With 5km to to Pogačar made a quick acceleration and was gone, taking a minute by the finish line. Goodbye and goodnight.
The hierarchy established it was then entrenched. Superdévoluy was the exception that proved the rule, a judder as here Evenepoel took time on Pogačar and Vingegaard but just ten seconds. This was no roller coaster contest of ups and downs.
The dominance continued. Visma’s plans for Vingegaard over the Bonette pivoted to a Jorgenson stage win but they were caught trying to ride two horses and Pogačar rode down a four minute lead on the climb to Isola 2000. The next day to La Couillole saw Pogačar broadcast UAE would take it easier, only for Soudal-Quickstep to chase and so what else could Pogačar do but out-sprint Vingegaard? The gaps only widened in the final time trial where the 1-2-3 results on the day reflected the podium, a sixth stage win for Pogačar and a six minute winning margin.
The Verdict
A dominant performance where Pogačar has improved after his sacking in Combloux and the Col de la Loze last year, such that even a fully fit Vingegaard must find it hard to plot a path to victory next July. He’s bound to try and Evenepoel is keen to return too but all the rest must be wondering what to do.
Fourth place went to João Almeida, the first of four sherpas in the top-10 and he was 10 minutes behind Evenepoel. The best challenger was Carlos Rodriguez, six minutes down on Almeida and 7th overall.
This edition doesn’t pass the “DVD test” where once upon a time you’d buy the video highlights – and even a DVD player – to soak it up again and again over winter. This time things worked out so one way and there was little contest on the GC. The podium order was settled and the rest of the top-10 felt incidental.
Yet it was full of blockbuster moments and for hours at a time. This was a rewarding race to watch live in full rather than the evening highlights because the action came in the duration, hours of relentless battle to get into the breakaways.
The daily battle for many of the stages was great. Who had Agen-Pau down as a barnstormer when the route came out? We got romance and pathos, Romain Bardet taking the yellow jersey in his last Tour, Biniam Girmay’s first Tour win, Vingegaard in tears at his come-back stage win, and Mark Cavendish of course. The Tour is obviously the biggest bike race going, it’s what this brings that makes it the best. Most of the top riders are there, they’re in peak shape and racing hard just to get in the breakaway.
Not every day was a barnstormer. The sprint stages are becoming a structural problem if nobody attacks. The race can still satisfy roadside crowds and these off-days allow riders to regenerate, reculer pour mieux sauter but an active recovery ride does not make for great viewing. This blog’s daily previews gently steer readers to tune in late but that’s hardly something the organisers and participants can suggest.
It’s not easy to remedy, France’s geography means everything to the left of the line traced from from Biarritz to Strasbourg is more or less flat. The Troyes gravel worked, the GC contenders taking part in the action only to leave the win to the break. France has plenty of other off-road options if the organisers need them.
The 2025 Tour de France starts in the North and should visit Brittany meaning they might employ pavés or ribins, and maybe a team time trial with “Paris-Nice” rules with an uphill finish at, say, Mûr-de-Bretagne.
Reprising the DVD test again, to rewatch is to know Pogačar keeps winning but each day this wasn’t a given. Four minutes starting the climb to Isola 2000? It was only well into the climb that the result started to feel inevitable with Pogačar harvesting riders up the road like some demented threshing machine. Still most mountain stages often lacked the “two for the price of one” contests with the breakaway reeled in. UAE went in looking very strong, a podium clean sweep was possible but instead they finished fourth and sixth, in part because Adam Yates and João Almeida were always riding for their leader and not themselves.
The Tour had its annual doping hearings. Each July the best rider has to account for their performances as parts of the the media evoke “doubts” and “questions”, but little else. The questions are formulaic, seem to happen every July and come in particular once the GC hierarchy is established. They are invariably directed at the race leader, anyone else with a transformational performance during the race seems spared. As such it feels like ritual rather than enquiry. Yes record performances and 7W/kg for 40 minutes ought to invite questions and debate but it’s almost a Rorschach test where what people see can inform us more about their state than the sport. Your blogger is left guessing rather than sitting in fist-clenched certainty.
Talking of spoilsports and uncertainty, Covid. To labour the point made before, it’s no longer a health emergency but it is contagious and can be ruinous for athletes, a Damoclean protein spike waiting to fall at random. In the end it didn’t reshape the race but it did contribute to Ineos and others having a discreet time.
The mountains competition was the opposite of recent years where we’d seen a lively contest between riders quashed late in the third week by a GC rider taking the jersey on their way to the overall win. This time Richard Carapaz took the jersey off Tadej Pogačar, no mean feat and he ends up as a worthy winner who thrived this Tour and aided by clever team work. Jonas Abrahamsen needs to be mentioned too for his indefatigable antics in the first half of the race, Uno-X are still the only team in the race without a stage win but they brought plenty by trying.
Carapaz makes for an instructive exemplar, a grand tour contender now almost in a cameo role. Bardet pulled this off too. Simon Yates, Enric Mas and Jai Hindley are similar but without a result which shows even this class of rider can’t guarantee results.
For all the dominance by UAE there was still room for surprise and the little guys. Anthony Turgis won a stage, Arkéa-B&B Hotels got their first ever too thanks to Kévin Vauquelin. Biniam Girmay was no revelation but he himself said he started out as Gerben Thijssen’s leadout but a mix-up in the approach to Turin saw him grab the opportunity to win. He took two more and with it the green jersey in a contest that was validated by Jasper Philipsen’s late challenge and given a scare by Girmay’s crash in Nîmes. The sprint shock was Mark Cavendish in Saint-Vulbas but the result was convincing, if it was hard to see him doing it suddenly with 200m to it seemed irresistible.
For Pogačar what next? The Worlds and no Vuelta, no Olympics either. He and his team are in search of new challenges, winning Milan-Sanremo is one but famously elusive and Paris-Roubaix features too but not yet as his team will want him back at the Tour and without too many extra kilos please. Peter Sagan’s career is interesting, the thrill of fresh challenges soon gave way to delivering for sponsors, with each passing year you could see him turn from thrill seeker to corporate mannequin as sponsors expected a cobbled classic and the green jersey. Monday’s Le Monde suggests Pogačar has 12 million reasons a year not to retire yet but even that may not retain him if the fun fades.
Was Vingegaard missing form? He said he was producing some of his best numbers although this was at the finish line, informed by saccadic glances from his bike computer rather than poring over power files. His team said he was lacking some muscle which made him less explosive when he needed to jump. He is bound to want to come back and with a stronger team in support too given all their bad luck must be used up soon.
Can Evenepoel improve on his third place? To ask this is to set a new question no sooner after he answered the one about being able to handle multiple mountain stages in the third week. Beating both Pogačar and Vingegaard looks out of reach today but he’s now able to look ahead and imagine what a perfect preparation would look like. No crash in April, no crash-diet in June, no Covid, stronger team mates and he can hope for more.
Finally while it’s all done and dusted, the sense of wanting it all to start again. The 2025 Tour de France route presentation is on Tuesday 29 October but before then the Olympics and the Tour de France Femmes. A long summer in France will do instead.
The post The Moment The Tour de France Was Won first appeared on The Inner Ring.
No time for post-Tour blues, the Olympics are coming. Need to know what day and what time all the cycling events in the Olympics are on? Want to have this on your phone or diary? You’ve come to the right place.
You can revert to this post or visit the Paris 2024 page via the menu at the top of the page.
As you can see there’s the calendar has all kinds of cycling from road races to BMX freestyle and track racing. You can use the calendar above for reference. Or if you want it free for your phone, diary, organiser, read on.
All times are Paris times but if you use the calendar it should sync with your local time. As ever you can download this for your phone or office organiser.
Road race and time trial course info
Download to your phone or diary – iCal
An iCal is a calendar file that you can store on your phone or electronic diary like Outlook or Calendar. There are several ways to get this on to your computer or phone.
Subscribe and get automatic updates including the timing for the women’s stages: The recommended option is to subscribe by copying the iCal URL:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/1c7acd93e68eb10f8b9ba3e026516320e72667774302b40164d75e9056ba74b7%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
The descriptions below should help but with device and software updates they might not always be the exact path.
- If you use MacOS copy the URL… and open the Calendar app. Then got to File > New Calendar Subscription…) and paste in the link and you’re done
- iPhone/iPad users should push and hold down a finger here, wait for the pop up message and select “Copy Link”. Then on your device go to settings > calendar > accounts > add account > other > add subscribed calendar > paste in the URL in the server field
- If you use Microsoft Outlook on the web copy the URL and then go to Calendar/Calendar icon > Open Calendar > From Internet > and paste the URL to subscribe > OK > Yes
Google Calendar: - If you use Google Calendar then click on the icon on the bottom-right of the calendar up at the top of the page. Note this method can work with Android phones when the iCal file might not although you might need the Google Sync calendar app
- You can also download the tiny iCal file and import this, right-click here and save.
Hopefully you can figure it out. In case anyone worries about downloading files from a sports blog, rest assured all these files are generated and hosted by Google.
A reminder that if you’d like something similar for the whole cycling season then you’ll find this at inrng.com/calendar.
The post Paris 2024 Cycling Calendar and iCal first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The suspense has gone out the window for the yellow jersey but it should be close for the stage win.
High Five: Tadej Pogačar tried not to win, or at least his UAE team didn’t mow down the breakaway. Soudal-Quickstep did this instead, the idea was try and soften up Jonas Vingegaard. It was a rare move that couldn’t fail because if he toppled Vingegaard then second place overall awaited, if not then he was still in third place given nobody threatens his podium spot; João Almeida is eight minutes behind. He tried two moves and got caught and countered.
Jonas Vingegaard was still keen to keep Evenepoel at bay and so he towed Tadej Pogačar across to the day’s breakaway survivors Enric Mas and Richard Carapaz, the former starting to look ready for the Vuelta and the latter now 30 points ahead in the mountains competition so no need to worry about today’s second category climb. Pogačar finished it off with a sprint in the final metres and dropped Vingegaard for his fifth stage win.
The Route: 33km and hard work with an uphill start out of Monaco to Beausoleil where Ineos have their local service course. It’s via a series of hairpins to La Turbie and if it’s not steep it’s eight kilometres uphill, plenty can be done in the TT tuck.
Then across to the Col d’Eze before tackling the steep road that climbs up to the Haute Corniche road.
Next comes the corniche descent, later the same as used by Paris-Nice for the now classic final Nice-Nice stage but in a time trial some stress as it’s fast and how much to use the TT position or brake? The difference is that instead of dropping down into the finish there’s still three kilometres to go, it’s out along the sea front Promenade des Anglais before turning back towards the line.
The Contenders: six stage wins for Tadej Pogačar (UAE)? He’s been talking up this stage and there’s local bragging rights for it. But what if he’s not ahead by the Col d’Eze or just has a slim lead, is it worth risking it?
Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) won the Beaujolais TT but only by 12 seconds and today has more climbing. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) is a contender if he can have a good day because he might climb faster than Evenepoel to establish a lead.
It’s not easy looking beyond the three podium players. This isn’t a course for specialist rouleurs, besides Stefan Küng has gone home. Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B) did a good ride in the previous TT and is handy on short climbs but a win would be a shock. Victor Campenaerts (Lotto-Dstny) would like a much flatter course. Matteo Sobrero (Red Bull) is a specialist but also seems tired. Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB) could be a contender but hasn’t looked like the force of recent years.
| | Evenepoel, Pogačar | | | Vingegaard | | | WVA, Almeida, Vauquelin |
Weather: cloudy and 28°C with an on-shore wind.
TV: reverse GC order so lanterne rouge Davide Ballerini is off at 2.40pm and Tadej Pogačar goes at 6.45pm.
Postcard from 1989
The last time the Tour de France ended with a time trial was 1989. Instead of the usual parade turning into a sprint, a time trial was held between the old royal palace of Versailles and the capital. It made perfect sense as this was the 200th anniversary of the French revolution. It was even better on the day as Greg LeMond beat Laurent Fignon by 58 seconds to take back the yellow jersey by eight seconds, the closest winning margin.
But if the race is famous for the narrow margin, this was only the end, the coda, the conclusion of three weeks of action. Many cite 1989 as the best edition of the race and it’s a subjective claim, feel free to pick 1964 or 1987 or others. It was all that happened before that was thrilling. There’s a book to be written rather than a postcard but both LeMond and Fignon were on the comeback from injury, both kept swapping the race lead throughout and if it ended in a duel third the previous year’s winner Pedro Delgado was closing in after a disastrous start. The revolutionary theme mattered too, it gave the race and festivities added depth.
1989 was the year when “tri bars” made their debut. Imported from the new sport of triathlon, these handlebar extensions became famous because of LeMond who won the Rennes time trial and then the Paris final stage with them but for the record he wasn’t the first to use them, the 7-Eleven team started the prologue with them with British rider Sean Yates. Fignon was beaten in part by these bars but adopted them later in the season…
The post Tour de France Stage 21 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Paris-Nice? Familiar roads from March’s race but this will be hotter twice over, the temperature and the ferocity for the stage win.
Isolated 2000: the high point of the Tour didn’t supply the height of drama. The stage started with Visma-LAB sending their best two helpers up the road in Matteo Jorgenson and Wilco Kelderman. A relay plan for Jonas Vingegaard who could leapfrog them to victory? If it was a plan, the challenge came in the execution as Vingegaard sat tight on the Bonette. Thoughts started to turn, will Vingegaard race the Vuelta, could he do the Giro next year instead of the Tour? Because based on all we’ve seen so far what could he do, Pogačar has the measure of him raised to the power of two.
Perspective counts here because Vingegaard was still sitting second overall with a stage win to this name, as defeats go things can be worse. But rather than turn the tables he ended up “saving the furniture” as the French saying goes, protecting second place overall. Once Tadej Pogačar attacked Vingegaard was fixated on marking Remco Evenepoel and covered the Belgian’s attack on the final climb.
In the breakaway all day and first over the Bonette Richard Carapaz is now in the polka-dot jersey with 14 points on Pogačar and 10-8-6-4-2-1 points for the first category climbs and 5-3-2-1 points for the Braus.
The Route: a Paris-Nice stage but run in July this means two things, heat and form. It’ll be a hot day and more riders are on a better level, expect more attacks from the start.
The Braus as an opener is defined by the hairpin bends which help line out any group. There’s a small false flat over the top before dropping down to Sospel.
Next is the Turini, a 20km climb where the upper 10km are 7%-10% for most of the way and then a twisty descent on open roads. The Colmiane is similar, an even climb but steeper in the second half and another descent full of corners to negotiate.
The Finish: a long and steady climb. There’s nothing particularly technical to describe, the early parts have a wide road and the slope is so even all the way up although in the final two kilometres it just tightens up towards 8%.
The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) has proclaimed today is for the breakaway… so maybe he goes in the breakaway? He might be content to take it easier in order to win tomorrow’s time trial. Both he and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) will be happy to see a team mate win and can cope without them today. Still if no move can get clear then Pogačar can tidy up.
Ben Healy (EF) sat up yesterday so should be fresher. Romain Bardet (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) started so well, has been tired but looked sharper yesterday. Richard Carapaz (EF) and Simon Yates (Jayco) out to be tired but can be in the mix.
Clément Champoussin (Arkéa-B&B) is the local rider and normally this doesn’t make anyone faster but he’s got an impulsive side although just being in the break is a big ask. If it’s a Paris-Nice course then Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-LAB) gets a second go.
| | – | | | Carapaz, Healy, Bardet, Pogačar, S Yates | | | Williams, A Yates, Almeida, Jorgenson |
Weather: 30°C and sunny.
TV: KM0 is at 1.55pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.30pm CEST.
Postcard from the Col de Braus
Why is Nice hosting the Tour de France finish? Officially because of the Olympics, the capital is spared a major sports even just before the Olympics and it’s right. But the secondary reason is because Nice hosted the start of the race in 2020 and it was a disaster on three fronts. First the pandemic and the restrictions turned a party into private event, not just barriers but hoardings fenced off the start, you might not get it on TV but the Tour is a very public open event. Second it rained and and all the expected images of the “Bay of Angels” and literal “azure coast” imagery were washed away. Plus a giant crash caused in part by the rain marred the finish. So returning to fix all of this makes sense. Plus where else to finish? Nice has plenty going for it.
So much so that it’s become a big hub for pro cyclists. Monaco lures some for the tax but plenty stay for the sunshine, while Americans and French riders alike who can’t dodge the taxes but can afford to rent or even buy a spacious home for a fraction of the cost of a Monaco apartment. Indeed it’s notable how many French riders are quitting their home regions these days to move here in order to train in better weather year round.
Many new residents on the Côte d’Azur with start their first ride via the Col de Braus, just because it’s there, to ride in land is to end up here. The postcard view above must be in thousands of social media posts today as it’s hardly changed since. Come around the corner and the view of the hairpins is still there, now combined with the urge to whip out your phone to record it.
The post Tour de France Stage 20 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
This year’s Tour reaches new heights with the mighty Bonette, altitude and attitude combined. Don’t miss the early finish.
A Man With A Plan: 28 riders went up the road, the first breakaway to get more than ten minutes this Tour. This gave them the luxury of being able to trade attacks for the next few hours, each trying to reshape too large a group. It was splendid to watch, sunshine, tactics and hours of helicopter shots of the Alpine landscapes, just the melancholy of knowing next week it’ll all be over.
At times riders were dropped but came back, notably Matteo Vercher. Victor Campenaerts sat tight for a long time, as if measuring his efforts.
Michał Kwiatkowski took off on the final marked climb of the day, the Demoiselles Coiffées, with over 30km to go. He was soon joined by Vercher and Campenaerts and the trio gradually built a lead, the chase behind suffering from the classic stand-off where if some wanted to chase, others got a free ride and so the chasers didn’t want to take them to the finish.
Vercher launched a move with 800m to go, the move not to make but what else could he do? It made Kwiatkowski chase. With less than 200m left Campenaerts launched but it was like watching a muscle car accelerate on a green light, all while Kwiatkowski wilted in the heat.
Campenaerts said he’d picked this stage since last winter, knowing he’d be working for Arnaud De Lie for much of the race. He went to altitude for nine weeks, when three is plenty for many. Come the day he asked for time trial tires on his bike to get every aero advantage and the confidence boost, even if he said he was on the limit on the descents. All the investment and thought paid off.
The Route: today’s plat du jour certainly isn’t flat. 144km and 4,400m of vertical gain, a lot for a stage where the first 20km look flat… but actually the course uses a side road and it’s got some slopes and even a hairpin, the sprinters won’t like it at all, this could even be a place for Girmay to aim for as he climbs better than Philipsen but it’ll be hard to set up a sprint amid the attacks.
The mighty Col de Vars, an unsung climb that is challenging and scenic but reduced to the entrée today. It is harder than the 5.7% average suggests, you can spot the flat middle section and even the descent. The opening part to the Col de la Viste is more like 10%.
Then comes the mighty Cime de Bonette at 2,802m which is over an hour of climbing and a good part of this above 2,000m, daunting for the length and altitude. The descent is regular down to Saint-Etienne where there’s 15km of valley roads familiar from Paris-Nice.
The Finish: Isola 2000 is the most of the Col de la Lombarde and a ski station access road where corners have been widened and ramps levelled. It’s steep to start but steady to the ski station used by plenty of Nice and Monaco pro cyclists for altitude training.
The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is the obvious pick, he can mark his rivals and the Isola climb suits him with the way the slope levels out, he can pick his point to attack or even wait for the sprint. He’ll need his team, or Visma as well, to work to contain the breakaway. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) still has a chance at the win but he’d surely need to turn the tables with his team throwing everything they’ve got… only they sent riders up the road yesterday stage hunting, so we’ll see the long climbs can suit. As we saw in Dévoluy Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) is aggressive too for a late move.
Among the breakaway picks Richard Carapaz (EF) is suited to the climbing, indeed with 40 points on the Bonette today he can get close to Pogačar’s polka dot jersey, and overhaul him if he can score elsewhere. Simon Yates (Jayco) sat out yesterday’s moves so could be fresher. Wout Poels (Bahrain) and Laurens De Plus (Ineos) are making the breakaways but out-climbing everyone is a tough ask. Jai Hindley (Red Bull), Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) and Enric Mas (Movistar) are the same too.
| | Pogačar, Carapaz | | | S Yates, Evenepoel | | | Vingegaard, De Plus, Hindley, Gall, Buitrago, Ciccone |
Weather: sunshine and 28°C with the heat making the wind blow at times in the valleys.
TV: KM0 is at 12.30pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 4.45pm CEST.
Postcard from La Bonette
Even the postcard industry struggles with the Col de la Bonette. The mountain pass that sits at 2,715m, only the Agnel and Iseran are higher paved roads in France. But reach the pass and you can ride a short loop that reaches 2,802m as it circles around the Cime de la Bonette, the mountain peak above which tops out at 2,862m. This causes a lot of confusion as people refer to the col when they mean the cime road. There are worse mistakes to make but read on if you want to be a Bonette boss.
As you can see on the map above there’s the Col de la Bonette and then just to the south of this the a small road that climbs to 2,802m as it rides around the peak, this is the road we label the Cime de la Bonette but it’s not a pass. If confused just casually refer to La Bonette.
The confusion doesn’t end here though. Sometimes it is called the Bonette-Restefonds on signs, the Restefonds is a nearby pass at 2,680m. Tackle the route and you’ll large signs at the start and top that boast “the highest road in Europe” but the Pico Veleta in Spain’s Sierra Nevada goes beyond 3,000m and it’s not the highest road in the Alps either as the Austria’s Ötztaler Gletscherstraße is 30 metres taller. Maybe the altitude gets to people’s heads?
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Another breakaway world championships day, the last chance for many riders and teams to take an elusive win.
Superlatives: a super stage with a super battle for the win and a super surprise battle behind among the GC contenders, all on the roads to Super Dévoluy. It’s easy to use up the superlatives but it this was a fantastic day’s sport.
The stage started with a bang as crosswinds split a nervous peloton and then wave after wave of attacks. Eventually quartet got clear with Tiesj Benoot, Romain Grégoire, Bob Jungels and Magnus Cort and they never had much more than a minute’s lead. The intermediate sprint saw Biniam Girmay beat Jasper Philipsen for some points.
With 55km to go a move initiated by Georg Zimmerman grew to 43 riders. This split on the Col Bayard out of Gap with Guillaume Martin and Valentin Madouas bridging across to the leaders in time for the Col du Noyer.
Behind Simon Yates attacked and closed the gap in no time. Look in the picture above and Richard Carapaz is closing in too. Both flew past the break and soon Carapaz got across to Yates. It takes a lot to compete for a Tour stage but two were two grand tour winners at it. The Ecuadorian attacked on the steepest part of the pass and prised out a small lead. Once you give Carapaz five seconds good luck getting it back.
EF have tried so many smart team moves in the race but this time Carapaz just floated clear in the big move and then rode everyone off his wheel on the main climb, even if the team had been busy earlier with Healy and Rui Costa. So a deserved win for him and the team and when he’s this strong there’s a chance of a repeat tomorrow or Saturday.
We got two races for the price of one with Tadej Pogačar bullying Jonas Vingegaard on the Col du Noyer. Both had team mates all over the place. Pogačar attacked but later said he didn’t really know why. Presumably he spotted Matteo Jorgenson was dropped, Vingegaard was isolated and just pounced on instinct?
The surprise was seeing Evenepoel jump Vingegaard in pursuit. It came back together again on the descent with Vingegaard picking up team mate Christophe Laporte who had been up the road. Evenepoel attacked and got away. For all the moves he only earned ten seconds but confidence while Vingegaard only lost two seconds to Pogačar. It shows they’re all willing to attack each other… and if Visma had sent several riders up the road they perhaps had plans too.
The Route: 179km and 3,100m of vertical gain. The race goes the “wrong” way out of Gap, west when the finish is over to the east but this means it can take the Col du Festre, a long climb that’s often got gentle 3-4% slopes but with 2km at over 7% before easing at the top. The race then tours the Champsaur region before heading back towards Gap.
The Col de Manse is a gentle road up and… no it’s not the descent of La Rochette but the main road down, more gentle. It’s down to Chorges and instead of taking the quickest route to the Serre-Ponçon lake there’s the climb to Saint-Appolinaire, a regular road up but a technical descent.
The lake is often windy and then it’s over to the the Demoiselles Coiffées climb, named after local rock formations. It’s up the Ubaye valley, a drag alongside a white water river.
The Finish: rather than the main road into town there’s a turning with 5km to go and an unmarked climb, 1km at 5%, not much but sufficient for some to exploit if they’re not confident about out-sprinting rivals. Then the road levels out and it’s flat through town.
The Contenders: today’s stage is too much for the sprinters but open to almost everyone else. it’s the last chance for Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) but the question is whether he wants to push things that hard before the Olympics. His team mate Axel Laurance is quick in a sprint from a group too.
A stage winner in the third week? Matej Mohorič is an expert at this but his condition so far hasn’t looked convincing. Similarly Michał Kwiatkowski (Ineos) has the race craft but is the form there? Likewise Michael Matthews (Jayco).
Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB) is stage hunting and very suited to the course. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) is a longer shot. Movistar’s Alex Aranburu and Oier Lazkano fit too. Paul Lapeira (Decathlon-Ag2r) told Le Monde he broke his power records on the Troyes gravel stage… but had nothing to show for it. That’s the Tour where everyone is at their best but he might be his team’s best chance, along with Dorian Godon and both sprint well. Lidl-Trek have options with Jasper Stuyven, Carlos Verona and Toms Skujiņš.
Some riders went in the move yesterday could be tired but by the third week riders who make the break one day can repeat as they’re the ones still with something left. Magnus Cort (Uno-X) was out for a long time but sprints well, Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) wasn’t out for as long but doesn’t finish so fast.
| | – | | | WvA, MvdP, Healy | | | Lazkano, TJH, Aranburu, Matthews, Kwiatkowski, Stuyven |
Weather: sunshine and 30°C in the valleys.
TV: KM0 is at 1.20pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.45pm CEST. Tune in to watch the battles rage from the start.
Postcard from Gap
That’s the lower slopes of the Col Bayard. Cycling has hundreds of famous climbs but descents? There are not many. Some come as a package, the climb of the Poggio can be as decisive as the descent. Perhaps we ought to label notable descents “infamous” as often their reputation is not because of the delightful bends nor the views but because of race incidents.
Just across from the Bayard is the Col de Manse. This must be more famous for the racing down it than up although the real name for the descent ought to be La Rochette as the Tour hasn’t always tacked the Manse before. It’s where Joseba Beloki had his horror crash in 2003, a day with one of those TV-moments when Lance Armstrong avoided danger by riding through a field. In recent years the likes of Thor Hushovd and Peter Sagan have given masterclasses in what the French call pilotage. Andy and Franck Schleck were distanced here in 2011 by Cadel Evans, the Australian climbing up to second place that day and not just taking time but gaining a psychological advantage. In 2013 Chris Froome came a cropper. Geraint Thomas crashed in 2015 unscathed but he lost his trademark Oakleys.
It’s been thrilling but is it that dangerous? The tension and risk-taking has come because the finish has often been in Gap just after the descent. At 4km with an average of 7.5% it’s no black ski piste but the difficulty is in in irregularity, a small backroad with an uneven surface and a mix of hairpins and some bends where you don’t have to brake but might do just to be safe.
Today everyone is spared the descent because after the Col de Manse the road continues down the larger road and won’t take the Rochette ramp down to Gap, plus it’s mid-stage so the stress is reduce. It does beg the question of whether La Rochette will feature again given the more safety-conscious themes today.
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Having looked at why there are no attacks on some of the sprint stages, a trend rather than a quirk, there’s still value in the good old doomed breakaway according to Le Télégramme. The newspaper cites Cofidis public relations staff have said that having Anthony Perez up the road in a long breakaway got them more media value than Victor Lafay’s stage win last year because Lafay only attacked in the final kilometre.
Arkéa also claim they’re a well-known brand in France now thanks to the publicity from the Tour in recent years from all the breakaways. You can reach this calculation if you measure how much it would cost to buy Cofidis or Arkéa TV adverts for hours at a time. That’s a shallow way of measuring things. As ever teams prefer wins and Cofidis do say this out loud as well in the piece.
It also depends what teams want from it all, UAE’s backers won’t settle for anything less than the Tour de France. Tadej Pogačar is presumably block booked for July for some time to come unless Isaac del Toro is ready. Similarly a lot of EF staff around the world won’t be watching the Tour live so the efforts of Healy and Carapaz backed by the team tactics are fascinating for us to watch but they really want a result. The big question has to be Ineos, budget now unknown but possibly the biggest spender but discreet in terms of both visibility and results so far.
Talking of budgets, Biniam Girmay’s been one of this year’s Tour heroes and hopefully he’s ok for today’s stage. Whatever happens his team have hit the jackpot. Intermarché-Wanty like to say they’re the lowest budget team in the Tour de France. Impossible to verify as few teams publish their accounts. But the UCI does give all World Tour teams a pack every year that includes a scale to show the scale of team budgets – no numbers, just a line – and each team is shown where they sit so presumably they know what they’re on about. However the team does publish accounts which are filed with the Belgian central bank…
The accounts for 2022 are the latest available so we’re looking in the rear view mirror. They showed income of €7.852 million and expenditure of €8.7 million. That’s a big gap and the team ran at a substantial loss that year, over a million Euros.
A note in the accounts (screengrab above) says the team pledged to balance the books and would do this in part by racing less and not hiring more riders. Plenty of riders did join for 2023 like Rui Costa, Mike Teunissen and Lilian Calmejane but presumably they would have been signed before the accounts went south and subsequent signings have been modest. It means cutbacks in a time when teams are spending more and more but luckily for them Girmay does not need an altitude camp as he just returns home to Asmara.
TotalEnergies have the weakest team on paper but a budget for 2022 of €13.629 million. This could be hard to compare if money was flowing through the team to pay for Peter Sagan and his entourage, it’ll be interesting to see the numbers without him. But French teams also have to meet social security and payroll taxes which add a lot to the budget, a financial headwind if you like. While Intermarché are among those who don’t take on riders as full-time house employees but hire them as contractors.
It’s official, Chinese bike company XDS will invest in the Astana team. It’s not clear what form this will take from new bikes and a budget top-up, or naming rights and a change of ownership. XDS is 喜德盛 “Xi-de-sheng” and plenty of questions remain, one big one is does the company really have enough money to underwrite a World Tour budget for several years? Intermarché moved up the World Tour after buying the old CCC licence for next to nothing. A relegated Astana licence is not worth a lot but there is still value in the World Tour spot as long as they can sign new riders. The knock-on effect will also see other teams have to try and sign riders if they want to avoid relegation.
It’s interesting to see China come into the World Tour. Watch the Jayco-Al Ula team to see if they fly under a Saudi flag soon. If you’re running a lavish tourist project in the desert why not pay a little bit more so you don’t have to share naming rights with an Australian caravan maker?
Transfer rumours? There are not that many big moves. First it’s not big budget but symbolic and reprising Astana where Alexey Lutsenko is linked to IPT which really evokes the end of the Kazakh chapter because he’s been their totem. Similarly Cofidis look set to lose their two best riders, Guillaume Martin to GFDJ and Axel Zingle to Visma-LAB so they’ll be recruiting too.
At the big budget end Remco Evenepoel is the central component and whether he’ll see out his deal at Quick-Step until the end of 2026. An early departure could require a cash payout making him even more expensive to acquire early but how much is he worth? A lot but clearly behind Pogačar and Vingegaard when it comes to making a down-payment on trying to win the Tour.
Loyal readers will remember that Ag2r the company has bought the Ag2r cycling team, now Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale. L’Equipe explained some of the background here, that the team started work on new HQ and this proved costly and time-consuming and then Citroën exercised its option to pull out of a five year deal after three. Team owner Vincent Lavenu was given an ultimatum to sell up for €8,000 (eight thousand) or Ag2r would leave too, effectively the team would end. Some riders even asked if they could buy the team but Ag2r’s offer also came with millions of funding. It shows the brittle nature, Ag2r are owners and on board but new corporate management had considered leaving. Now with Decathlon and managerial changes including some of the factors that have helped the team improve things look more stable.
Ag2r are not having a great Tour but the reasons for this are probably easier to explain that the factors behind their success earlier this season. They sent a better team to the Giro and GC hope Felix Gall had injury issues in the build-up. Gall is capable of a stage win in the Alps but there are rivals on the margins of the top-10 overall who can do this too, think Santiago Buitrago and Giulio Ciccone.
Mark Cavendish was memorably nicknamed le Mozart du 11-dents, “the Mozart of the 11 tooth sprocket”. He’s now composing his victories with 11 speed gearing. Having had Shimano’s 12 speed Dura-Ace last year and seen his chain fall off during the sprint in Bordeaux he reverted to 11 speed. The 12 speed chain is more narrow and for want of a better word, “whippy” in the lateral sense. Plus 11 gears is plenty for a flat sprint stage. His chain came off anyway in Saint-Vulbas but only after sitting up and back-pedalling. It’s a small example of freedom to chose being the ultimate luxury.
Prudhomme… Président? No, with the French government in limbo new ministerial appointments will be made at some point. But don’t ask Tour boss Christian Prudhomme to be sports minister. While he keeps evoking his exit from the job, he told RTL radio on Monday he’s too old now to start a new career in politics. Of course if he changes jobs that was the politician’s answer.
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The race returns to the Alps with an intriguing stage that’s open to many, assuming UAE agrees to them stay away.
Denim in Nîmes: not much action to write home about, the wind didn’t get up and so a brief solo flurry from Thomas Gachignard was enough to get him the day’s combativity prize, beating the Uno-X driver who almost drove his the other team car in the convoy after a Mario Kart mix-up on a roundabout.
The sprint was textbook copy from Alpecin-Deceuninck, lining out the field. Mathieu van der Poel accelerated with 400m to go, seeing the world champ working like this is like spotting a Lamborghini in a building supplies yard with timber being tied to the roof rack. By the time Jasper Philipsen launched he was ahead of the rest and stayed clear. Job done.
The day’s drama came with a crash for Biniam Girmay, he made it to the finish but the improbable “Philipsen has to win and Girmay not to score” scenario for the points competition became reality. Girmay stays in green but now leads by just 32 points with 20 points available at each of the intermediate sprints. The pair have been inseparable, three stage wins each and the gap in part by Girmay’s win at the intermediate sprint on Stage 15 after the Peyresourde.
The Route: 178km and 2,850m of vertical gain. It’s out of Saint-Paul on the road to Nyons and then a long valley road to Verclause. The Col de la Saulce starts here, unmarked but 16km uphill with some 5-6% sections. After Serres another valley road to Gap. The Col Bayard is a big main road but hard going at over 7%.
The Finish: déjà vu? This combo of climbs is identical to the finish used in the 2016 Critérium du Dauphiné. The Col du Noyer (“Walnut Tree Pass”) is hard with irregular gradients and a series of hairpin bends with stunning views of the valley below. The upper slopes are particularly steep. They’re followed a fast, technical 6km descent and then it’s straight to the finish, 4km at 5.9% on a bigger “ski station” road but the first kilometre is steeper.
The Contenders: some hard climbing and a finish that isn’t so steep? Tadej Pogačar (UAE) of course fits the bill. Today ought to suit the breakaway though, UAE are ahead and might as well defend although Nils Politt riding down the breakaway and Pogačar taking the stage and time bonus is a form of defence, no?
Today’s stage comes just before bigger Alpine stages so some pure climbers might prefer to wait but it’s risky to turn down a stage. The route with the long gradual approach and the flatter finish suits someone with a bit of a punch, think Stephen Williams (IPT) or Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) but former’s form isn’t obvious and the latter has to get over the Noyer. Carlos Verona (Lidl-Trek) fits too. Ben Healy (EF) is a pick if he can go solo, team mate Richard Carapaz is better suited to upcoming days but can try too. The real fit is Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) but to get in the break, to see off the others and get a first big win, a big ask.
| | – | | | Pogačar, Healy, TJH | | | Grégoire, Verona, Carapaz, Williams, Gaudu |
Weather: 32°C and sunshine. Watch out for the Mistral howling down the Rhone valley at the start but it’ll calm down quickly once in the hills.
TV: KM0 is at 12.45pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.10pm CEST. Tune in early for the scenery and the breakaway action. Gap and the Col Bayard are at 3.50pm, the start of the Col du Noyer 4.30pm.
Postcard from the Buëch valley
It’s common to see the Alps and Pyrenees juxtaposed every July. The Pyrenees are retro rural charm, the Alps are concrete ski stations and industry. Caricatures, but viewed via the prism of the Tour there’s logic given the race does visit some of the big ski stations in the Alps and takes major valley roads; even if it does visit the Tourmalet and often goes to Andorra too. Still there’s selection bias here because the Alpine resorts bid for the race so that’s what most people see of the Alps if viewed by the Tour.
Today’s stage visits some of the quieter parts of the French Alps, although before any geologists leap to the comments, yes the Prealps as well. Gap is a big town and the Col de Bayard a big traffic artery but turn off for the Col du Noyer and on a sunny day the view from the climb is spectacular. The Dévoluy and nearby Champsaur Alps are underrated for cycling and in large part because the Tour visits rarely. In short if you want to visit the French Alps and have some quiet roads to yourself, with nature galore and breathtaking scenery then there’s plenty just off today’s route. The kind of place you can send your own postcards from or post to Instagram.
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The last chance for the sprinters. When the route came out last year this one had the “watch out if there are crosswinds” label. It still applies in the conditional because the weather forecast looks uncertain.
The Route: 188km and 1,200m of vertical gain as the race rides through arid countryside. A passage through Pézenas to evoke gonzo singer Boby Lapointe and past plenty of rosé wine vineyards.
Look at the profile and there’s a climb to the intermediate sprint but it’s just a long drag up. The categorised climb is not just a côte but a col, a real mountain pass but tiny and on a regular road.
The Finish: the same finishing straight as 2021 when Nils Politt won solo but a different approach, it’s on big big boulevards for the most part but KM5 to KM4 is narrower.
The Contenders: it’s easy to write there’s no hierarchy for sprint previews early in the race then to pivot by the third week into talk of fatigue messing up the order. Still Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is the obvious pick, fast and he copes fine with the hills and mountains. Likewise Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty).
Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) has a good chance and Mark Cavendish (Astana) just needs an opening again. Jayco rode their socks off on the road to Pau only for Dylan Groenewegen to get ejected on the climbs before the finish, this should suit better. Germans Pascal Ackermann (IPT) and Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain) keep running close but how to get ahead of the riders named already?
| | Philipsen, Van Aert | | | Girmay, Groenewegen | | | Cavendish, De Lie |
Weather: sunshine and 30°C. All the write-ups for this stage come with the “sprint stage but watch out for the wind” and the forecast looks as a tricky as picking the winner, one or two outlets say it could gust to 40km/h and from the NW meaning a three quarters tailwind which can shred the race; most say a gentle breeze of 10-15km/h.
TV: KM0 is at 1.30pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.40pm CEST. Check for crosswinds during the stage, otherwise tune in for the finish.
Postcard from Gruissan
Do sport and politics mix? The essay answer is frequently, even if participants and spectators alike may prefer otherwise. Today’s stage starts in Gruissan where the mayor is Didier Codorniou, also known as Le Petit Prince for his days as one of the best rugby players in France despite his small stature. He’s proof of sport and politics combined, his notoriety must have helped his early campaigns. He’s not done with rugby either as he wants to become the next president of the French Rugby Federation.
The Tour is now crossing a part of France that has been a stronghold of the National Rally (RN), the rebranded far-right political party that used to be called the Front National until 2018. It’s turned support here into mayoralties, winning cities like Perpignan, Béziers, Beaucaire and Fréjus. Yet, unless keen readers can point otherwise, the Tour de France has yet to have a start or finish in any town or city run by the RN. They don’t run too many places but it’s an oddity.
With the RN gaining more votes than ever, the next round of mayoral elections should mean more mayors. This could impact the race. The rise of environmental politics and Green Party mayors has led ASO to adopt “ecological” policies in order to meet demands of their clients in town halls, with more emphasis on public transport and reducing carbon emissions. What might RN mayors want from the race? A flippant idea would be a “best French rider” competition but that might not be very flattering on current trends. More seriously we can see Italy where the RN’s Italian cousins are in power and the Giro is attracting more interest from politicians, the race features a “Made in Italy” campaign and ministers are showing up at the race and embracing . On second thoughts let’s just look forward to today’s stage…
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A big day in the Pyrenees and a big day in France as it’s le 14 Juillet, France’s national day.
Adet at a time: it looked like plan, UAE rode tempo all day with Nils Politt almost doing an hour on the front to keep the breakaway in range, Tim Wellens toiled too. On the final climb Ben Healy dropped David Gaudu to go solo and the last survivor from the breakaway but behind UAE accelerated. Adam Yates attacked and this had Visma chasing and then Tadej Pogačar himself attacked with 4.5km to go.
This was a trenchant attack, nobody tried to follow. Jonas Vingegaard seemed to compose himself and then set off in chase, distancing Evenepoel. Yates worked briefly as a relay. It all looked like textbook stuff but was apparently invented in the moment.
For a moment it looked as if the gap had stabilised and Vingegaard was going to float across. Then Pogačar began to pull away. At the finish Pogačar had 39 seconds on Vingegaard, add the time bonus for the win and he’s now almost two minutes up overall. This gap is wide now, Vingegaard can’t hope for a perfect time trial to turn the tables. Now has to find a way to take time in the mountains just to close the gap. Starting today? Not easy.
The Route: 198km and 4,800m of vertical gain. It starts straight up the Peyresourde and on the steeper side, plenty of riders can be dropped here. One the characteristics of today’s is the long valley roads in between climbs and the first flat section concludes with the intermediate sprint.
The Col de Menté goes up the side famous for Luis Ocaña crashing. It’s steep with long ramps at first and then a series of hairpins at the top. The descent is regular and on a wide road.
The Portet d’Aspet is steeper still, over 9% average but with long moments at 12%. The descent is more regular and as it eases there’s over 50km to the next climb.
The Col d’Agnes opens with two kilometres at 10% and then eases. There’s no big descent at the top, the passage across to the uncategorised Port de Lers, 3.5km at 6.5% and then downhill to the valley and 20km of valley roads.
The Finish: there’s a flat approach on the valley, the race turns onto a side road and, just like Alpe d’Huez, the road rears up right from the start. Unlike the other climbs of the day with their narrow roads and varying gradient the road to the Plateau de Beille is a much more regular climb with a wide road. It’s still hard though, relentlessly at times as it climbs through woodland and only eases just before the line by which time the race is above the tree line.
The Contenders: once the race is well-established you can start to see the same names in the breakaway but it’s not easy to pick Ben Healy (EF) again as he must be rinsed, he can try but might prefer to wait. DSM missed the move and Romain Bardet is the obvious contender, especially as he likes longer raids.
Plenty of talented names are now well down on GC. Jai Hindley (Red Bull), Enric Mas (Movistar), Simon Yates (Jayco), Richard Carapaz (EF) come to mind, grand tour contenders but looking for a result here.
Pavel Sivakov is the local but bound to be on team duties for UAE although could this include going up the road. Indeed he could help set up a 14th stage win for Tadej Pogačar but Adam Yates has a chance as he can ride away, get a bonus win and haunt Visma who seem to be chasing him like he’s close on GC to their leader. It’s hard to see Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) getting the advantage but it’s possible if he has a better day and the heat and distance made his rival fade.
| | – | | | Pogačar, Carapaz, Vingegaard | | | Bardet, S Yates, A Yates, Buitrago, Healy, Hindley, Mas, Buitrago |
Weather: heating up, 30°C in the valleys.
TV: KM0 is at 12.05pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.40pm CEST. Tune in for the start to see how many riders are ejected on the Peyresourde and to see how long it takes for the breakaway to form.
Postcard from Saint-Girons
The Tour heads east into the Ariège. How many mountain passes are there on today’s stage? A glance at the profile shows the Col de Peyresourde, the Col de Menté, the Col de Portet d’Aspet, the Col d’Agnes and the Port de Lers, the latter has no mountains points but port is a local dialect for a mountain pass. So five right?
We wouldn’t be exploring the topic if it was so simple. There are ten passes today: the Peyresourde, Menté, Clin, Couret, Portet d’Aspet, Latrape, Agnes, Lers, Pas de Portet and the Pas de Rolland. However this isn’t because the Tour de France is hiding secret mountain passes to confound the riders. Instead it’s just that while going up or down the flank of a mountain it’s not uncommon for the road to go via other passes along the way.
However it is notable how the Tour de France imposes its psychogeography. The race’s cartography is selective. The profile above accurately displays the elevation of the route but excludes the terrain around it, we see the Plateau de Beille as the peak of the today’s stage when it’s dwarfed by the surrounding mountains of course.
Stage profiles are quick to list almost every village going, like Argein and its 192 people, or Niaux which is home to 153 but other features miss out, whether mountain passes or more. It seems to be written with mayors and other local politicians in mind; no wonder as they are among the clients of the Tour.
There are no road names. The feed zones are not mentioned to discourage souvenir-seeking crowds from getting in the way. The Port de Lers is mapped but downgraded because it has no mountains points on offer despite being 3.5km at 6.5%, not big for the day but there are other climbs in the race that are shorter and not as steep which get third category status.
It doesn’t happen today but during the race the mountains point might be placed at a different point to the actual mountain pass and it’s common for the race to have a marked climb named with the formula of {Côte de [nearest village name]} when often the place in question has its own name; Tuesday has the Côte de Fambetou but this is actually the Col de Fambetou to locals and on everyone else’s maps. In short ASO redraws the map France in subtle ways, the race route is not always the same as territory.
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The Tour heads into the Pyrenees for the weekend. Today is the sprint version, tomorrow the marathon.
TGV (Tour à Grande Vitesse): a morning tour of the paddock and masks were back in fashion. First the Bahrain team on Wednesday, now more. It’s contagious. Spanish media said Juan Ayuso had Covid but with light symptoms, only he was quickly dropped and quit.
A crosswind provoked the bunch like a stick jammed into a wasps’ nest. Victor Campenaerts launched the move and Mathieu van der Poel joined in. The race never stopped buzzing. The average speed was hovering around 50km/h for two hours. A break of 23 riders coalesced and in it was Adam Yates, 7th overall at seven minutes. He probably learned plenty of foreign swear words as his presence condemned the move. Visma, Soudal-Quickstep and Ineos could not afford to let the group take time.
It was a crafty move as Pogačar’s rivals were burning up energy on the eve of a weekend in the mountains. And they had to work for it, at one point Visma formed their own echelon in an attempt to close the gap but it didn’t work. They got help from the sprinters’ teams, while up front the move was too big and some riders started to sit on. Then Magnus Cort attacked to form a quartet but this was too small to elude the chasing bunch, or what was left of it with less than 80 riders, the bunch shredded by the effort and some hills in the final. Dylan Groenewegen was among many dropped which was notable given how hard Jayco had worked earlier.
No teams have managed to get a train to line out the sprints this Tour and coming into Pau it was a hectic and hesitant, Jonas “Abracadabra” Abrahamsen even took a flyer with 3km to go. Maxim Van Gils tried to go past Amaury Capiot in his bid to lead out Arnaud De Lie but took him out instead. Up ahead Christophe Laporte led Wout van Aert but ended up dropping him off with still 300m to go, too early? Van Aert thought so and held back but by now Jasper Philipsen had launched his sprint and came past to stay away for his second stage win.
A paradox of the predicted outcome but only after a demented day’s racing. In the mix for the sprint Pogačar said, with a cough, he might race more defensively which would be a turn up for the books. It was the eighth fastest road stage in Tour history, and no tailwind.
The Route: 152km and 4,000m of vertical gain, most of which is crammed into 75km. A passage by Lourdes, a place that puts the grotty in Grotto (Emile Zola’s “Lourdes” sees the main character Marie de Guersaint horrified at the amount of junk sold and that was 1894). Then it’s into the Pyrenees, a place where nothing changes and everything feels a bit dated but comfortable, like visiting your grandparents’ house when you were a kid.
The Tourmalet needs little introduction. Climbed from Luz meaning the easier side, just, it’s atypical of the Pyrenees with its length and regular slope and is followed by a familiar descent.
The Hourquette is not hors-catégorie, just a nice backroad alternative to the Col d’Aspin as it’s more irregular. So is the descent, probably the most technical part of the course today. There’s a brief valley road approach, five kilometres for those last caffeinated gels.
The Finish: the Pla d’Adet climb is a tough one. 10.6km at 7.9% is plenty but there’s a steep start to help prompt a selection from the start and later by Espiaube it flattens out which the profile doesn’t show but it means that when the road is rising it’s often steep.
The Contenders: can the breakaway make it? We could see UAE more hesitant today as they gauge Visma’s form and both teams go head to head tomorrow.
It’ll be hard for the breakaway to form, one way is for a climber capable of winning to go with a team mate who can help tow them clear; the other is to hope the battle rages and instead they can make their move on the Tourmalet.
Jai Hindley is a breakaway pick now Red Bull are without Primož Roglič. David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) is stage-hunting. Richard Carapaz tried hard yesterday but should be ok today, while Ben Healy is the other candidate from EF. DSM trio Romain Bardet, Oscar Onley and Warren Barguil have a chance here. Tom Pidcock (Ineos) pointed out he was very light for the gravel stage so this suits more and he can play his own cards, Laurens De Plus might be reserved as a sherpa. Chris Harper (Jayco) is climbing well but yet to win big.
If it’s a GC battle then who to pick between Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE)? The Dane seems to be in the ascendant but Pogačar normally has the punch for the finish. So if anything Vingegaard needs to move early on the final climb where it is steepest, easier said than done and he might prefer to pester Pogačar by staying with him.
| | – | | | Vingegaard, Pogačar | | | Hindley, Pidcock, Carapaz, Healy, Harper, Gaudu, Bardet |
Weather: sunshine and clouds, just 21°C in the valleys and much cooler at altitude.
TV: KM0 is at 1.20pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.30pm CEST. The Tourmalet starts at 2.50pm.
Postcard from Saint-Lary-Soulan
Many places want to establish themselves as a cycling destinations, particularly ski areas keen to enjoy a lucrative summer season. Saint-Lary-Soulan is one such place and hosting the Tour de France helps.
The Pla d’Adet ski area dates from 1965 and it shows, both in a good way with retro architecture that vibes Barbara Moore soundtracks and a needs-a-new-coat-of-paint way. It probably looked sparkling when the Tour first came in 1974. The race is revisiting on the 50th anniversary of the stage win by Raymond Poulidor. The 38 year old surged on the final climb and even Eddy Merckx could not respond. Merckx would win the 1974 Tour overall and Poulidor finished second, of course.
The same day saw “voice of cycling” Daniel Mangeas comment the stage over the PA system at the finish after the lead speaker’s car broke down, 50 years later and Mangeas is still going, he was the speaker at the recent French championships… in his own village of Saint-Martin-de-Landelles.
More recently Saint-Lary-Soulan has paved the Col de Portet in 2018, creating a new climb for road cyclists and got the Tour de France to christen it with a summit finish in 2018 and 2021. As the pass is only paved on one side it’s a cul-de-sac for road cyclists and so maybe not a big draw, you can visit to do it but that’s it. If you’re in the area the Hourquette d’Ancizan and the Col d’Azet are nearby. So is the 22km climb to the Lac de Cap Long which has yet to feature in the Tour de France but probably ought to as this offers so much with scenery. It would really put Saint-Lary-Soulan on the map.
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If you want to go and see the Tour de France here are some tips and suggestions.
If you are hesitating, go. It is really different from what you see on TV, there are so many details to observe and remember. And France is glorious in July.
Plan
The route is unveiled every October. Detailed maps get published on the letour.fr website in May. This can frustrate if you want to book a place right on the route.
You can guess the roads for the mountain stages when it’s obvious there’s only one road. But the whole route has to be approved by the layers of local government in France and sometimes the decision whether the race passes through this village or that one can take months so the route isn’t signed off until March and the graphic design for the maps starts.
Which stage to see?
If you’ve got free choice then the mountain stages are tempting as they offer a longer show with up to 40 minutes between the first and last rider and things you don’t see on TV such as the dropped riders and the gruppetto. You can see the riders up close as they go past at 15-20km/h rather than 50km/h. So far so good but it can be a big logistical challenge as the roads are closed early and you have to invest the whole day or more, more on this in a moment.
A time trial stage means there’s a lot to see as the riders come past every couple of minutes for the whole afternoon and you can feel things build as the big names approach. But helmets and visors make it hard to see the expressions, it’s as if you’re standing further away.
The easy option is a plain flat stage in the middle of nowhere. Time it right and you can approach the route from the side, park close then get into position for the publicity caravan and then see the race go by in the space of two hours.
The Start
The Tour de France segregates riders from the public more than any other race. But we’re talking waist-high barriers, not walls so there’s still plenty to see.
The start offers access and visibility as riders mill about between their buses and the signing-on podium. The start line and the road behind for a couple of kilometres is lined with barriers. With about an hour go to this space is full with team buses, show up before and you get some caravan goodies and see the logistics at work, the scale of the event.
If you pick the right spot and are enthusiastic about it you might get an autograph or a selfie. If you’re going tomorrow well Tadej Pogačar is in demand so try another rider, shouting their name or waving the right country flag seems to help.
You can see the team cars as well and all the bikes on the roof if you like the tech up close, including small details like how so many UAE riders have their saddles perched forward or which team has scuffed chainsets and derailleurs rather than sparkling models. The start line has the signing-on podium and is surrounded by some other things like stalls handing out freebies and official souvenir boutiques.
The Finish
You’ll get to see something decisive but this requires patience, show up with an hour to go and you’ll be lucky to see anything except for the back of someone else’s head unless you’re tall enough to play in the NBA. You might need to be in place by lunchtime, so think if the wait is worth it although the longer it takes the more the thrill of seeing the riders approach.
Pick wisely and you can stand near the line and within sight of a giant TV screen so you can watch the race otherwise you risk standing for hours only to see the publicity caravan and the riders flash by.
Once the race is over don’t leave. Because beyond the finish line is a cordoned off zone but keep going a couple of hundred metres and you’ll find team buses and vehicles – the configuration varies, they could be down in the valley for a mountain stage – and you can spot the riders and staff, some giving post stage interviews.
VIP pass
You need to have some connection to the race, to know a race sponsor or someone linked to the start or finish for your lanyard sesame… or you can buy one from a Tour travel operator, expect to pay a few hundred euros. It doesn’t give much more access and almost no riders enter this zone.
Roadside
Outside is free and perhaps the best way to see the race is to find a scenic spot and enjoy a picnic, assuming the weather is nice. Thinking of it as a day outdoors rather than being a sports spectator is probably the secret to a successful day.
However it’s no picnic for the planning. The race route will be closed to traffic in the morning, if it’s a big mountain pass then at sunrise. You can approach by car on a side road, park and walk to your spot, probably following many others too, the side road might have cars parked along it for a kilometre or more. This is not possible for many mountain passes, there’s no side road joining the top of the Tourmalet so you’ll have to park near the foot and make your way up: be prepared for a long walk.
You can ride up too, the police will tolerate people walking and riding into position but with about three hours to go the gendarmes won’t let anyone cycle. If you take your bike think about where to stash your bike, there are crowds around and it can get knocked over or trampled. It’s unlikely to get stolen but you may want to lock it to something.
Take a backpack with clothes appropriate for the day’s weather. Pack food, drink and some shoes so you’re not click-clacking in your cleats. A bike lock is handy too and think of finding a place to park your machine where it won’t get knocked over or trampled on.
Pick your spot helps, a small hill won’t slow the bunch much but if it’s on a straight bit of road it can allow you to see more. Also try to imagine the racing line taken by riders when picking your spot.
If the weather is good set up camp with food, drink and sit back. Whatever you bring, you’ll spot Tour pros with parasols, BBQs, perhaps even a TV and a portable fridge for cold drinks. If the weather is bad then a local café is a good idea as it will probably have warm drinks and TV and all the locals will dash out in time for the action.
Waiting game
The publicity caravan comes two hours before the riders, it’s a must-see. The sight of the giant floats going past in the countryside is absurd and joyous. It’s fascinating anthropology to watch the way people buy in to the marketing in a festive way, donning freebie polka-dot t-shirts, diving into a ditch to grab a keyring, adults duelling for a Haribo minipack.
Things go quiet apart from vehicles driving past, soigneurs on their way to hand up drinks and so on. The whack of helicopter rotors announces the race is coming. This is the point of the picnic, aim for a day in the countryside rather than thinking you’re going to see the race unfold.
When the riders come past you’ll want to take photos to record the day but then invariably turn out bad, so take photos if you want by pointing your camera and shooting but don’t look at the screen, see the riders with your own eyes.
The crowds can overwhelm the phone network, draining bandwidth to the point where it’s impossible to refresh a page; in some places like the finish they even add extra telecoms masts to cope but not in the countryside. A pocket radio can work here, with RMC probably having the most live coverage but there’s also RTL, France Info and Europe 1.
Tips
- It’s worth seeing for real rather than on TV, you’ll see lots of details you don’t notice on TV from decorations to the scale of the Tour and the logistics behind it
- Maps appear online in May
- The stage start and finish are obvious destinations, sections are cordoned-off for VIPs but it’s still reasonably open even if riders prefer to relax on their bus
- Treat a roadside visit as a long picnic rather than the chance to see the race unfold
- Plan the visit, don’t just hope to turn up in time but think of access, timing, parking, clothing
- The roads are closed several hours ahead of the race, mountain passes can be closed to traffic at dawn
The post Tour de France Roadside Tips first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Pau again and a sprint stage but with some hills in the finish.
Gros Lot: some attacks at the start and four strong riders got away. But only four and they were not allowed space. Alpecin’s Silvan Dillier seemed to be towing for hours, Movistar helped too but it meant two of Dillier’s team mates missed the time cut.
On the approach to the finish Alexey Lutsenko tangled with a central divider and fell, prompting a big crash that included Mathieu van der Poel who was not able to be on lead out duty. Primož Roglič fared badly, he seemed to slam to the ground. He soon back chasing but somehow without urgency, as if Roglič couldn’t ride hard and he lost over two minutes.
In the sprint Dan McLay dropped off Arnaud Démare for a long sprint and it looked like his good old days were back with a trademark long sprint but he faded right at the end, and got relegated for drifting right. This move wasn’t diabolical but ended Wout van Aert’s chances of revival as once again he was up against the barriers. Mark Cavendish was also relegated but it’s doubtful he lost sleep. Both moves were questionable but there’s no doctrinal understanding here, the verdict is published without reasoning.
Biniam Girmay didn’t get a leadout but he was ferried into position Mike Teunissen as if the pair were late arrivals at a theatre, hurriedly squeezing past seated patrons to reach their reserved seats before the show started. Girmay timed it right again and took a third win.
Girmay leads the points competition by over 100 points and, for illustration, Philipsen would need to win today and once again without Girmay scoring at all in the finish just to close the gap.
The Route: 165km and 2000m of vertical gain. The final picks up the same roads as used in 2012 for the stage to Pau won by Pierrick Fedrigo, that year the climb near Monassut-Audiracq was categorised, 1.5km at 5.5%. It’s these hills that could suit a breakaway if enough riders collaborate and try to spice up the finish.
The Finish: flat boulevards in Pau.
The Contenders: sprint or breakaway? The same question as opportunities for both are fading. We did see stronger riders and more teams trying to go clear yesterday but the sprinters won again.
The hillier approach can tire some riders so Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB) and Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) seem best suited.
Wheel-of-fortune picks for the breakaway win are Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek), Oier Lazkano (Movistar) and Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ)
| | – | | | Philipsen, WvA, Girmay | | | Cavendish |
Weather: 21°C and sunshine. A westerly wind will blow at about 20km/h and crucially it could gust more meaning the potential for crosswinds but not the certainty.
TV: KM0 is at 1.50pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.30pm CEST. Tune in for the final hour to see the hills and if the wind has got up.
Postcard from Pau
Pau again. With 76 visits it’s the third most regular haunt of the Tour de France after Paris (145) and Bordeaux (82). Paris is obvious as the finish and it has hosted a stage start 35 times too. Bordeaux makes sense as a big city that is an obvious stopping point for all the years when the race lapped around the outside of France but it’s arguably a 20th century venue as it’s only hosted two stage starts and one finish this century. On current trends Pau will soon become the second most visited stop.
Why Pau? It’s almost at the foot of the Pyrenees. Almost is worth stating in case anyone visits with expectations of the Tourmalet being a short spin away. But it is a large city, sits on the A64 autoroute and has plenty of hotels. This last factor is important as the Tour requires at least 4,500 hotel beds a night, one third of this is booked by ASO for the teams and all the organisation from the UCI commissaires to the publicity caravan staff; the rest are media and others working on the race who make their own bookings.
For years the Tour used makeshift dormitories, the likes of Eddy Merckx sometimes had to spend the night on a camp bed in a school gymnasium. Even parsimonious Raymond Poulidor said sometimes he felt like paying for a hotel after a hard day’s racing but would be disqualified. It’s still a rule today that teams must use the accommodation supplied by the race.
Every year when the route is unveiled the sight of Pau might be met with mentions of “encore” and “again” but it a nice place to send a postcard. A student town with its castle, the view of the Pyrenees, a paved square. Pau it has its charms and beats Tarbes, the other large place to the east. But if you are not tasked with block-booking thousands of rooms and plan to ride in the Pyrenees take your pick from many of the smaller towns and villages closer to the mountains.
The post Tour de France Stage 13 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A day to calm frayed nerves after yesterday’s mania but tension between the breakaway and the sprinters.
Massif day: a raucous start to the stage with moves flying and almost 50km covered in the first hour, boocoo on hilly roads. It took longer still for the breakaway to form with Richard Carapaz among the most persistent until finally after 90km the move went clear, but sans Romain Bardet who had a mechanical. He didn’t have long be wistful about missing the break though. UAE kept the gap tight and other teams joined in on the approach to the big climbs and the breakaway was crushed and the script ripped up, this was going to be a GC stage.
A Tadej Pogačar attack was on the cards and at the rate he was using up team mates (UAE have no Plan B), you could tell it was coming on the Pas de Peyrol with over 30km to go. He launched and nobody could, or would, follow. Yet if he got 30 seconds Jonas Vingegaard took this back on the next climb, the Perthus.
The pair would ride together to the finish and this must have been playing on Pogačar’s mind. Worse for him, Pogačar lost the sprint, rare. He seemed to have a low gear, and to borrow from Stendhal, as if “his legs felt to him like cotton, he had no more strength”.
There’s a lot of tea leaf reading, how much to extrapolate? The word is Visma were hoping to make the difference in the third week. So coming out on top is a triumph. But the GC changed by one second in the Dane’s advantage: a morale boost. Ask the bookmakers and things have switched, Vingegaard is now the market pick.
If Pogačar can’t convert the steep climbs to his advantages he might be worried, it’s his speciality. But with the Giro in his legs he’s surely bound to have less zip, was this really the place to try? It’s all deliciously uncertain.
Behind Primož Roglič crashed on the last bend dowhill but the three kilometre rule applies to all stages except summit finishes, as it has for ages. Plenty seemed surprised by this, but the same rule existed in 2016 on the same roads only nobody stacked it like Roglič. Still he and Remco Evenepoel lost 25 seconds, more time conceded but close. Evenepoel joins Vingegaard in being over a minute down, the Belgian’s gains in the grand cru time trial now conceded in double. Never say never for Roglič but his speciality has been steep climbs and time bonuses rather than arbitraging the rulebook.
Earlier Romain Bardet rode through the “Virage Bardet”, something to record because if he is retiring perhaps his popularity is growing, or just it was worth paying tribute.
One last note and we go back to the start. Pello Bilbao losing 40 minutes and Fred Wright outside of the time limit. Your blogger was in the village départ and instead of slamming pâté on toast noticed some Bahrain riders arrived in a separate vehicle, wearing wearing masks, and stayed away from the bus as if quarantined. Cofidis lost two riders. Fingers crossed.
The Route: 203km and 2,100m of vertical gain. The start town of Aurillac is half-famous in France for being the coldest place in the country. When TV bulletins show tomorrow’s weather Aurillac seems to be have the lowest temperature. Yet often does not equal reality, it’s nowhere near the coldest, whether the average or the record. Instead things can heat up with the big road at the start, a wide route nationale artery.
The goes through Rocamadour and then climbs away from the hilltop village for the marked climb. From here on it’s sunflower country. The intermediate sprint is in Gourdon where Eurosport pundit Jacky Durand won a stage almost a third of a century ago.
The Finish: around town and across the Lot and back out for a big wide finish, easy on the logistics but less so for the charm.
The Contenders: breakaway or sprint? 2,100m of V+ suggests a breakaway as it’s a hard day with some hilly roads but several teams have house sprinters who can still win or even thrive after this distance. But for many other riders and plenty of teams today could be worth trying the early break, it’s not a long shot.
The finish is flat so Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is the first pick, we’ll see his team can control the day. Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) would like an uphill finish but could be fresher by the end.
If there’s a breakaway it helps to be able to sprint well or barge clear late so Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek), Dorion Godon (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale), Alex Aranburu (Movistar), Marijn van dern Berg (EF), Michael Matthews (Jayco) are all contenders, so is Anthony Turgis (Total) and Luca Mozzato (Arkéa-B&B Hotels)
| | – | | | Philipsen, Girmay | | | Groenewegen, Cavendish, Stuyven, Matthews, Aranburu, Gaviria, MvdB, MvdB, Turgis |
Weather: sunshine and rain, 26°C and the chance of a thunderstorm or three.
TV: KM0 is at 12.50pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.30pm CEST. Tune in early to see the contest for the breakaway and if it’s sport or siesta.
Postcard from Villeneuve-sur-Lot
Jean-Théodore Joyeux or Carl Naïbo as the local cycling celebrity? Joyeyux wins the coin toss. A hairdresser by trade from nearby Castillonnès, he was a keen cyclist at the end of the 19th century. After results in what we could call the amateur ranks he hit on a commercial collaboration with Métropole to undertake “un tour de France” to prove their bike was up to it. Métropole’s bike was the Acatène, a play on “without a chain” because it used a shaft drive to connect the cranks to the back wheel.
Starting in Paris in May 1895 he rode clockwise around France, reportedly doing 19 stages and averaging 289km to complete a 5,500km lap of France for which he went into the French cycling record books. He finished “in perfect health, not at all tired and ready to go again in the coming days“. This can make Joyeux the original pioneer of the Tour de France, before of Henri Desgrange and his colleagues at L’Auto newspaper who launched their Tour de France in 1903 and ahead of the inaugural winner Maurice Garin.
Some reports say Joyeux’s ride didn’t get the recognition it deserved because it was overshadowed by the Dreyfus affair. This was a huge political scandal that divided France, the splits it provoked were even a factor to the founding of the Tour de France. Such claims persist online but are hard to stand up, the Dreyfus news wasn’t boiling in May 1895, there ought to have been room for a cycling endeavour in the newspapers too. Rather it seems Joyeux was on a solo jaunt and promoting a brand, so no race to write up and didn’t have a house newspaper to publicise him either. He does feature in the press who praised the notion of doing 250km a day but it feels like they can’t write up 19 versions of this for each stage.
Continuing with the debunking other articles say Desgrange wrote in his L’Auto column that “the idea of organising the great cycling race as we know it comes from the record of Théodore Joyeux” but who can find a mention in the archives; instead he seems to have said this in passing during a visit to nearby Agen in 1920.
Still, to paraphrase Desgranges, it seems the Tour de France was a Joyeux idea. Or maybe not? As a Breton called Jean-Marie Le Corre also had the same idea in 1895 and presented it to the media to drum up interest. Joyeux might have read this and got going before Le Corre so if not the idea, the first tour of France on a bike in stages was down to Joyeux.
Perhaps the lesson is you don’t always have to be first with an invention, coming along later with improvements, a bolder story and better backing counts for plenty too.
The post Tour de France Stage 12 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The world championships of breakaway racing today, expect a lively day’s racing.
L’ennui: a boring stage. All over France chores that had been postponed were being tackled, piles of washing were being loaded into machines, dishwashers emptied, floors swept and surfaces dusted with the TV on in the background. Kobe Goossens managed to go up the road at one point and collected the day’s combativity prize, if he hadn’t who would have got it, the rider with most bandages?
The sprint finish was almost boring too but that’s no bad thing, no controversy, no accidents. Instead Alpecin-Deceunink put on a performance like last year including an acceleration from Mathieu van der Poel that even Jasper Philipsen struggled with, but he was ahead and got the win.
The Route: 211km and 4,350m of vertical gain. The profile almost makes the first 150km look flat but we don’t get over 4,000m of climbing this way. Instead the route is rising and falling all the time and on twisting roads. This has two effects: first terrain for the breakaway to go clear but expect waves of moves; second it’ll sap riders for later.
The Pas de Peyrol is the big climb, it starts steady then rears up and the final 2.5km are consistently between 11-13%, a big change of rhythm, look out for the Virage Bardet here. There’s a flat section across the top that the profile doesn’t show and then a long descent with one or two dangers – Alexandr Vinokourov broke his leg in 2011 here – but otherwise fast.
The Col du Perthus is listed as 4.4km at 7.9% which would be hard if it was like this. Instead it’s much steeper for most of the way. The profile says it starts with 7% but the 10-12% slopes arrive immediately and it stays this way for the next two kilometres with only a brief flat section in between before rising up all the way to the top. It’s harder than expected and the place where teams can ratchet up the pace to eliminate or test rivals who’ve survived the Pas de Peyrol. The descent is in two parts, the first part is easy and gentle, then there’s a bump uphill and then the second part is steeper and more dangerous part with some sharp turns, the kind where it’s easy to overcook things.
The Finish: the Col de Font de Cère begins on the big Route Nationale and then with 6km to go they turn onto a small road which climbs to the KoM point among the chalets and ski slopes above Le Lioran on a steady road. The descent is much smaller and has some bumps and tight bends on the way down before they drop back into the ski resort and pick up the main road which gradually bends to the finish. The last 600m rise at 6-7%.
The Contenders: today’s stage shares many of the roads from 2016 when Greg Van Avermaet won the stage to Le Lioran, this was “golden Greg” in Olympic form who took the stage and the yellow jersey. For an Olympian pick why not Tom Pidcock (Ineos) who will find the climbs and descents suit him although has he done any recon here to profit from the descents?
Ben Healy (EF) is looking for a breakaway win and this really suits. His team are racing to set up moves and he’s the obvious spear tip although he almost has to go solo for the win; Alberto Bettiol and Neilson Powless are contenders and Richard Carapaz sat up in the finish yesterday, reculer pour mieux sauter?
Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) is racing well and suited to the hilly finish, he’s got a good sprint out of a small group too. Likewise Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny).
David Gaudu and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) probably have their best shot at a stage but so many others today share this too. Cofidis are without a win, Jesus Herrada has won in this region before but the odds are getting longer now. Staying with French teams Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) finds terrain to suit too.
The local pick is Romain Bardet (DSM), at least he is from the region but he’s got a stage already and says he’d be as happy to help others win, so Oscar Onley and Frank Van den Broek fit the bill too.
Oh and Tadej Pogačar (UAE) too because if the breakaway battle goes on for too long then the GC contenders can exploit the terrain later and he’s the obvious pick among them.
| | Healy, Ciccone | | | Vauquelin, Van Gils, Pidcock, Grégoire | | | Pogačar, Carapaz, Onley, Gaudu, Mohorič, Gee, Bardet |
Weather: early rain clearing to leave sunshine and 23°C.
TV: KM0 is at 11.30am CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the start to see the battle for the breakaway.
Postcard from Evaux-les-Bains
Today’s start is in the small town of Evaux-les-Bains where since Roman times the thermal spring has been enjoyed. Thermalisme is a big deal in France. While many countries celebrate hot spring waters, France institutionalises this with spas offering medical treatment paid for by the state. Last year 450,000 people went for medical treatment in France’s 88 regulated spas.
The original idea was that drinking or bathing in particular kinds of warm waters – 20°C or more – could be beneficial to the body, waters rich in certain minerals were paired to a pathology. Some of this might be quack medicine, or just the placebo effect after a warm soak or a course of drinks but there is some justification today. Think of osteoporosis benefitting from drinking calcium-rich waters, or skin lesions from eczema being washed in acidic, disinfecting sulphur-rich waters.
Le thermalisme gets prescribed for a range of treatments, including obesity and depression and the cost can be reimbursed from the French healthcare system. You can imagine it might be cheaper to stay at home and tweak the diet, or for a doctor to prescribe, say, calcium supplements. A French parliamentary report said out loud that the actual medical benefits are doubtful.
However it’s not a great expense to the French system, typically only the “medical” part relating to the spa waters are billed to the system, with travel, accommodation and food paid by the ~~customer~~ patient. Thermalisme is implicitly backed for the wider benefits. Stays last a regulation three weeks with 18 days of treatment, a grand tour for health. The person is away from their home and placed in a controlled environment where as well as waters, the days are regimented, the food rationed and regular exercise is encouraged. Plenty are bound to leave feeling better than they started.
So if you’re wondering why little Evaux-les-Bains is on the map today, remember that mid-week a large chunk of the race’s audience consists of seniors who may be eligible for some thermalisme if their joints aches and now have a new place to consider. Indeed with its lithium-rich waters (2.09 mg/l) Evaux is said to help promote relaxation and sleep…
The post Tour de France Stage 11 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
We’re seeing several stages in the Tour de France when nobody attacks. In the past there was always a move hoping for some publicity and the chance of beating the odds. No more…
Normally we’ve seen an early breakaway go. The flag drops and a handful of plucky riders take a flier. Race director Thierry Gouvenou has branded them “4×4” moves, as in four riders go up the road and get four minutes. This blog has labelled them 4x4x4 as four riders get four minutes in a forlorn move. These moves almost never work.
Embed from Getty Images
Hope dies last goes the saying and a breakaway can make it. But here the Tour is a victim of its success. The early break can sometimes make it but it’s rare any time in the season. At the Tour though the sprinters’ teams can’t afford a mistake and the chances of the early break making it are to the right of the decimal place. It can depend on definitions but the last time the early breakaway survived on a sprint stage from the first half of the Tour was Thomas Voeckler’s triumph in Perpignan from 2009.
If they don’t bring victory they’ve been labelled an échappée publicitaire, literally a “commercial break” because riders go up the road and get exposure for their sponsors. Whether this is worth it is debatable, hours of logo on screen but signalling your brand rhymes with doomed moves is not great. It’d be cheaper to buy TV ad slots in the afternoon and craft a more targetted message than fund a pro team.
Riders though can make a name for themselves. As Yoann Offredo (pictured), a stalwart of the long breakaway, once quipped “there are some riders who only their mothers know are taking part in the Tour de France“. Jonas Abrahamsen has made a name for himself although he’s done more than the doomed moves but Offredo’s TV career today might owe itself in part to notoriety from all those moves.
“the stage slumped into the most dreary lethargy”
Antoine Blondin, L’Equipe 1968
Not every stage have action from start to finish, the glory of the Tour is its length. Surely no other sport can see a siesta guide published. Still a doomed move going up the road feels almost essential. There’s a story to follow as riders attack, we see the gap go up, we can see which team is chasing, we can see how the gap moves up and down. Even if the conclusion to the story seems more obvious.
This the illusion of suspense beats the lack of it. For television viewers the spectators get more shots as the producer can alternate between the breakaway and the peloton. Indeed the lack of sport is probably frustrating for TV viewers although if you are watching when nothing happens you can blame yourself as much as the riders or anyone else. In the past TV only started for the final hours (or less if you back further) so it’s a modern concern.
Today all teams all have their plans. Wildcard invitees like Uno-X, Lotto-Dstny and Israel all have house sprinters and want to back them so there’s no point going up the road, this was less the case in the past. This year Total Energies don’t have a house sprinter as much but they supply the other example, they are waiting for the right moment. Indeed this is the same for many other teams, just as we wouldn’t expect Visma, Ineos or Soudal-Quickstep to try a breakaway on the flat today because it would be a waste of energy, the same applies for, say, Cofidis, EF or Movistar who want to save themselves for other days.
When Axel Zingle followed Jonas Abrahamsen’s attack at the start of Stage 6 to Dijon he got roasted in public by his Cofidis manager Cedric Vasseur for “a spasm” and using up energy needed for Bryan Coquard’s leadout later, and for the coming days.
The Giro d’Italia has the Fuga prize (Italian for breakaway) where there is a classification for the riders who have spent the most kilometres up the road. A daily award and the photo opportunity is an incentive for lesser teams trying to get some limelight; the Tour though has the Combativity prize which can overlap. An extra prize in the Tour? Awkward because while the Giro has many prizes and awards, a confusing array even, the Tour likes its relative simplicity.
Finally if nothing happens there’s a benefit as riders can redouble their efforts the next day.
Conclusion
A stage without a breakaway makes for unusual viewing and with TV being so important to the event there’s probably going to be some reflection if the lack of breakaways become a trend. There are still wide gaps between the teams in terms of budget and ambitions but the lowest level has closed the gap and even invitee teams have plans to execute rather than energy to burn on doomed moves. And if there’s nothing to watch you can read about the trend of nothing to watch.
The post When Nobody Attacks first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A sprint stage and a visit to the centre of France today, or at least to two of the places that stake their claim to be the geographical centre of the country.
Stage 9 Review: notes to commend a fine day’s racing with plenty of action and constantly changing scenarios:
- Anthony Turgis got an overdue win, a podium finisher in Sanremo
- He was one of the first riders to race regularly with a 55T chainring, he’s on his seventh Tour and has ridden most if not all of them with one, a sign of his force.
- The other winner was Jonas Vingegaard who survived the onslaught and without looking his odds on the overall must be shortening, with stories of a third week revival.
- France has a lot of vineyards with gravel roads in between and after this expect more although note the Troyes stage was in the planning for years, the Tour de France Femmes were the pioneers and this validated things for the men.
The Route: 187km and 950m of vertical gain, the flattest stage of the race outside of last week’s time trial. That mysterious bump close to the finish? Nothing much, a long straight road that does rise but no more than 5% for a brief moment.
The course does have some changes of direction, it goes east to Vierzon, then south, the east, then south as if trying to catch the wind but it might not blow enough.
The Finish: a run through town to finish by the pyramidal building, a site that has hosted previous Tour and Paris-Nice finishes. Rather than a straight run to the line there are three bends in the final kilometre, a pinchpoint at 700m with the final corner at 500m to go.
The Contenders: a likely sprint stage. There’s no hierarchy but Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is the persistent pick for close finishes, he’s clearly not got last year’s form, likewise his leadout Mathieu van der Poel but he’s coming close. Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco) has shown he can win fast flat sprints, likewise Mark Cavendish (Astana).
Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) is close easier to see for a “podium” (nobody who finishes second or third actually visits the podium) and the flat finish isn’t what green jersey Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) thrives but he can keep racking up points by placing too.
| | Philipsen, Groenewegen | | | Cavendish, Girmay | | | De Lie |
Weather: sunny and 29°C with a risk of a thunderstorm late in the stage but more likely in the evening. When the Tour came here in 2013 the route looked the most dull stage of the Tour on paper but crosswinds turned it into a big day but this is normally a calm region. A weather system is coming in but gently, and a 15km/h wind from the WSW means a crosswind and it could gust stronger but unlikely.
TV: KM0 is at 1.25pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.35pm CEST. Tune in for the sprint, tomorrow’s stage offers a lot more.
Postcard from Bruère-Allichamps
Where is the centre of France? With 10km to go today there is Bruère-Allichamps and as the postcard shows it hosts the “column of the centre of France”. The finish today Saint-Amand-Montrond also stakes a claim, as do five more places.
It’s a tricky question. First we have to define what is France because as a political entity it includes overseas departments in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. More often métropolitain France is typically deployed, as in mainland France but do we include Corsica or not? This only narrows things down.
Bruère-Allichamps got there first when cartographers selected it in the late 18th century but this was a rudimentary attempt using the best means at the time. Clearly maps were only partially accurate and France’s borders have since changed which tweaks things significantly.
Today it is possible to be more accurate, even to account for the curvature of the planet. France’s Institut national de l’information géographique et forestière, the government agency tasked with measuring and mapping France’s geography, often better known as IGN, has worked on this geodetic project. Using the “Affholder method”, it involves plotting the boundaries of the area, in this case France, on a spheroid to mimic the Earth’s curvature and then to finding the centre of gravity – which sits slightly below the surface – and marking the place above. So where is the centre? The answer is for the race to continue past Saint-Amand for 30km to reach the small village of Nassigny; or if you want to exclude Corsica then nearby Vesdun just to the northwest.
The post Tour de France Stage 10 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
All the focus on Astana this week has obviously been Mark Cavendish’s stage win. Yet what next? Cavendish is surely going to retire now, up to him to pick the moment.
The team goes on, or does it? Both both cyclingnews.com and L’Equipe have published items saying the squad is going to be taken over by XDS, a Chinese bike manufacturer keen to promote its X-Lab brand. This raises plenty of questions and some have to get answered quickly because the clock is ticking if a new owner wants to take over the team.
The story is that XDS Carbon wants to take over the team. Both CN and L’Equipe say the squad will be under a Chinese flag next year. Can you have a Kazakh-funded team with a Chinese flag? Presumably something has to give here.
XDS?
XDS is Xidesheng. It has a Conti team and supplies the Chinese Olympic team with MTBs. The company claims it has “the world’s largest carbon fiber factory” on a dated website in English.
To find more updated info Xidesheng you need to search the Chinese internet instead, and 喜德盛 (“Xi-de-sheng”) is located on the outskirts of Shenzen where it has a large factory and makes everything from its “X-lab” road bikes to MTBs, e-bikes kids bikes and accessories like bidons and bike computers.
The old English website is interesting as some factory photos include frames with Orbea decals (pictured) so while the company has its own bikes it is working as an “original equipment manufacturer” or OEM. This is how most bikes in the World Tour are made. Specialized, Scott, Trek, Canyon etc are not all made in factories belonging to these companies, instead third parties make the frames for them and do assembly. In the past we’ve seen one OEM company make the all three bikes of Tour podium finishers.
Several OEM manufacturers have been thinking about breaking into the market with their own brand because the margins are so much bigger. Why make a frame for someone else who sells it with juicy margins when you are capable of making these products and stand to gain from controlling the whole process? The answer is because branding is subtle and if manufacturing is hard, so is design, marketing and after-sales too.
Xidesheng’s website says it wants to become the world’s leading bicycle brand. Having a shop window in the World Tour could be part of this.
Now come the questions…
Why Astana? Well the licence could be for sale so it makes for an entry point for someone looking to buy their way to the top… but the team is facing relegation from the World Tour and so is not an obvious start. A bike brand wanting to crack the market could back a more successful squad that will be guaranteed entry to the Tour de France and the rest of the premium events.
They can buy their way out of relegation but this means big signings for 2025, the final year of the three year cycle. Astana is roughly 4,000 points adrift of 18th place, the safety spot. For illustration Mathieu van der Poel has 3,000 points this season and could score more by the end, let’s say he makes 4,000. He’s not moving teams of course but is just an illustration for the arithmetic involved, the kind of gap they need to close, a rider of this calibre would need to have a spring like he did to close the gap. More realistically supply your own list of five riders who can each deliver 1,000 points next season, then see if they are available, and then willing to sign.
If they want to do this then the time to do it was last spring but it can be done now, but we’re at the “rest day announcement press conference” stage, big names won’t be on the market for long.
Cyclingnews understands that the Shenzen-based company will become a major investor in the team for a period ranging from five to 10 years. The Chinese-registered team will have a budget in line with the ‘super teams’ of cycling’s top tier such as UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease A Bike. The team will also switch bike suppliers as part of the deal, moving from Wilier to little-known Chinese brand X-Lab.
– cyclingnews.com
Why take over a whole team? Control is the answer but this comes at at a price. The quote above shows ambition but almost too much. It’s one thing to come on board as a bike sponsor but to buy the whole team? The trend in the sport has been in the opposite direction with bike sponsors being priced out of naming rights and not seeing the World Tour as the be-all and end-all of marketing. Just being present at the Tour is not enough, what really works is a charismatic rider who makes winning look easy and fun, think Tadej Pogačar or Peter Sagan.
The quote above evokes a budget equivalent to €30-40 million a year? Can XDS afford this? Maybe if it was a Chinese project backed by big brands (think “Byd-Air China” on XDS bikes) the funding might look more ready but there’s no sign of this. Assume Astana stays and there’s still €10-20 million needed for a super team budget. As a business proposition it is not an obvious one; although what if the XDS owner is a massive cycling fan?
It all creates a Catch-22 scenario where riders and their agents might be wary of signing with a team with likely relegation and uncertain funding. In order to convince them the team and its backers would probably have to pay a premium to secure their services because if you are a “thousand point” rider you can sign elsewhere, especially to a team that doesn’t have the reputation as career cul-de-sac.
Conclusion
If Astana is going to be taken over it’s big news, more so if the ambitions stated are to come true, it’s one thing to say you want to win the Tour de France in five years, another if someone is briefing about half-wheeling UAE in terms of team budget.
There’s a clock ticking here as for a team to exist in 2025 a lot has to be signed off by mid-August under the UCI timetable. The backroom admin is important and there are still weeks to resolve this but if they want big signings now is the time otherwise the fanfare arrival could be a sad trombone moment if they are relegated.
There’s a lot to put in place. Crucially a lot needs to be seen to be put in place if they want to tempt riders across and reassure them about the continuity project.
The post Astana Takeover Talk first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The gravel stage with 14 off-road sectors spaced throughout the course. There are two races today, one to win the stage and the other to avoid losing time.
Colombey-les-deux-étapes: the stage started with a bang as EF’s Stefan Bissegger and Neilson Powless attacked out of the peloton. You could tell they were going to move, poised at the front and wearing the team’s TT-style helmets. The indefatigable Jonas Abrahamsen made it across but nobody else could, he’s been a star of the first week.
It was almost too much too soon but were the team using this as a decoy move to tire the field so that Ben Healy could attack? Alberto Bettiol did try to launch the Irishman but it came to nothing. It was like watching a heist movie where the robbers to burst into the bank, only to turn on their heels and slip out. The EF pair sat up to leave Abrahamsen alone for the day, but at least they tried on a day when the rest of the peloton sat tight.
After a 150km interlude it came down to a bunch sprint. Cofidis hit the front but the front hit them back, Bryan Coquard stalled just as the slope began to rise. Biniam Girmay came around him and Jasper Philipsen pulled level with the Eritrean but in the final moments Girmay pulled clear, his second stage win. Once again Philipsen was close and Arnaud De Lie strong but he can’t find a way through.
Not to labour the point but Girmay is more than a sprinter and can sustain uphill efforts like this when others cannot. One of his rivals has been Mads Pedersen but the Dane is out of the race. It leaves Girmay well clear the points competition, 216 to 128 for Philipsen.
The Route: 199km and a rare loop, the start and finish in the same town. 33km are off road gravel sectors, often amid the vines. Gravel comes in many different forms but remember some of these roads were used in the inaugural Le Tour Femmes in 2022. Marlen Reusser won the stage and the only GC rider who lost time was Mavi Garcia, but not undone by the stones but felled by her team car. The gravel is not fierce but there’s the “fear of fear” effect where teams stressed about something going wrong fight for position which adds to the pressure and so on.
The early sections are hilly, tackling some tough ridges and contribute to the day’s total of 2,000m. They are counted down in reverse order and of the 14 sectors 12,11 and 10 are the most severe with plenty of double-digit gradients and wall-like ramps. Exciting, sure but these finish with 80km to go. Comparisons with Paris-Roubaix are probably excessive but one similarity should be the stress to get into position for each sector, the battle can be on the approach rather than the gravel itself. The sections keep coming but the latter ones are flat and the final one finishes with just 6.5km to go.
The Finish: flat and big boulevards.
The Contenders: wide open to many but this should have the feel of a spring classic. Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is a suitable pick, his top speed might not be enough right now but give him a tougher stage and it might work; of course if not then it could be time for Mathieu van der Poel who has cut a discreet figure so far but has had today’s stage in mind for a long time. Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) and Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) are picks too but both would like an uphill finish.
There’s a long list of contenders. Tadej Pogačar (UAE) makes the list but if there is a sprint from a group some names are quicker but as dynamic and versatile as he can be, can he get an advantage of his GC riders and can his team deliver. Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB) ought to be a pick but what if he is a sherpa for the day for Jonas Vingegaard? Matej Mohoric (Bahrain) as the stealth pick, Oier Lazkano (Movistar) is looking in great form and Frank van den Broek (DSM) is a name to mull over but he might have to be solo to win.
| | – | | | MvdP, Philipsen, De Lie | | | Girmay, Van Gils, Mohorič, Madouas, Pogačar, WvA, Bettiol |
Weather: 22°C and mostly cloudy, a 15km/h breeze from the south. Damp gravel sections from previous rain.
TV: KM0 is at 1.35pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 6.00pm CEST. The start should be hectic with a battle to get in break and with the GC teams racing for position.
Postcard from Troyes
Troyes + cycling = the Simon family. There are seven or nine Simon siblings depending on which newspapers you read. What’s certain is that five of them were boys and four became professional cyclists.
Pascal Simon was the oldest, born in 1956 and he had a solid career as a pro, taking a stage of the Tour de France in 1983 in the Pyrenees and with it the yellow jersey. With Bernard Hinault not racing Simon had a good option on the overall win with 10 days to go and a lead of four minutes on Laurent Fignon. The next day was a transition stage out of the Pyrenees and at KM46 there was an innocuous crash in the bunch but it included Simon and he fractured his shoulder. He almost got in an ambulance there and then. He tried to defend his overall lead in but the agony was overwhelming and he could not pull on the handlebars. Laurent Fignon took back three minutes in the 15km Puy-de-Dôme time trial. Simon was forced to quit the race two days later on the stage to Alpe d’Huez. “I think I could have kept it but destiny decided otherwise” he told local newspaper L’Est Eclair.
Régis Simon was the next brother, born in 1958 and he won a stage of the Tour de France too. Jérôme Simon was born in 1960 and he too would win a stage, and later became one of Greg Lemond’s domestiques.
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François Simon was born in 1968 and he did not win a stage. Instead he did wear yellow and finished sixth overall in 2001.
The cycling family does not stop there because Robert Millar (now Philippa York) married a Simon sister and become their brother in law. The fifth brother was Stéphane who also got into cycling but was just a good amateur…
…and this brings us to another Troyes cycling connection. It’s not a big town but it has two rival cycling clubs: UV Aube and UVCA Troyes. Each has helped send many riders into the pro ranks. One of them, pictured in his UVCA kit, returns with the Tour de France today. Can you work out who it is?
The post Tour de France Stage 9 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Life in The Peloton by Mitchell Docker and Tom Southam
Want to terrify a neo-pro set to join the World Tour straight out of the junior ranks? Don’t warn them of the difficulty they’ll have on the climbs against Pogačar or having to rub shoulders with Van Aert on the farm tracks of Flanders. That’s what they’re looking forward to. No, ask them if they know how to collect a full musette while riding at 40km/h, or preferably two in case their team leader wants extra and remind them they need to master this otherwise they might be the guy who wipes out on first contact with a cotton bag, taking down Van der Poel in an early season race and being roasted alive on social media.
There’s a lot to master for neo-pros and Docker’s book is a manual for newcomers making their way in the peloton. This could mean a niche readership even if they’d do well to read it but reading the advice and anecdotes is of wider interest as it touches on tactics and other skills that sofa spectators can enjoy.
This is partly Mitchell “Mitch” Docker’s autobiography. But instead of the usual rise-up-the-ranks-turn-pro-setbacks-satisfaction-decide-to-retire tale, here he uses anecdotes as examples and tips. Take the amusing tale of an Australian rider who decides to take it easy on a time trial during a stage race to save energy for the coming days. Only that day Bradley Wiggins blitzes the course and Docker’s friend is outside the time cut and goes home. It’s a funny story in itself but turned into a parable about the level of effort required for a time trial and comes with advice on pacing to avoid being DNF.
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There’s plenty along the way like, lessons learned and now shared. Some is of this particular to Docker and his career. Plenty can be useful to spectators as tactics explored, from leadouts to fetching bottles. The advice for how to navigate the convoy of team cars is instructive for participants and onlookers alike. Plus there’s plenty of insider tips, take the convoy and how being friendly with photographers can help because one day a rider might welcome the draft of a moto for a few seconds, maybe they are on their way back from the convoy with some bottles. An ally with a camera might decide to line up a front-on shot. It’s a small performance gain but this and other ruses don’t get the same publicity as a new skinsuit and require experience.
It’s co-written with Tom Southam, the EF Education-Easypost sports director, the two share a good podcast with Luke Durbridge. The book feels very much like it’s in Docker’s voice but at times you might be able to detect the work of Southam, such as decreeing that a sprint stage in a grand tour typically has less than 1,500 metres of vertical gain and other technical aspects.
It’s an easy read in more sense than one. The text is spaced apart, pages are not always full and there are many illustrations. Sometimes bullet points are used. Take the page on “Post-race routine on the bus”, this rattles through the tasks to do after a stage and if “take a drink” is obvious, the one about having the fastest shower possible is invaluable for a neo-pro who might want to warm up or scrub away but they won’t win friends if team mates are queuing. Putting this in list format helps and does give it the feel of a manual.
Docker’s pro career ranged from Skil-Shimano in 2009 to EF in 2021 which gives range, enough time to pick up plenty of war stories to tell and experience to share, including of the modern modern era with things like warm-up protocols and the arrival of high carb diets.
The Verdict
Entertaining and instructive. There are books on how to ride in a peloton and their Youtube tutorial equivalents but this explains more of the intricacies of life in the pro peloton as it covers plenty from tactics to logistics, even contract negotiations. It’s not exhaustive, a neo-pro will still have plenty to learn and Docker doesn’t lift the lid on everything but it is educational and fun.
Along the way Docker tells the story of his career and this comes with more focus on the classics and sprints which were his speciality but he does get others to contribute, like Michael Woods on mountain stages during a grand tour. As a domestique his tales are often of helping others and the book is continuation.
- It’s sold via MAAP’s website, the clothing company who collaborate with Docker and retails for AUD 40 / USD/EUR 27 and GBP 21.
A free electronic copy was sent for review. More reviews at inrng.com/books
The post Book Review: Life in The Peloton first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A sprint stage? Probably but this is a deceptively hard stage with plenty of climbs throughout so if there’s a sprint it’s for a different cast of characters.
Grand cru: time trials don’t always make for gripping viewing because the day’s winner might set the fastest time hours before the racing is done. This time things were better, the early starters saw riders going faster and faster. Kévin Vauquelin was the first under 30 minutes, moments later Victor Campenaerts went quicker.
Soon the GC contenders started. Perhaps it was the short 25km course or the mentality that every second still counts, but they seemed to be sprinting out of the start hut. The sense of speed was visible, almost audible as if their tires were screeching around Nuits-Saint-Georges.
Three intermediate time checks – beaucoup for 25km – helped tell the story too. It was close with Jonas Vingegaard in the match early but soon a duel between Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogačar. The Belgian started closer but Pogačar was closing in on the climb. On the run to the finish Evenepoel was gaining again. Only he suddenly sat up thinking he’d punctured. This probably provoked tachycardia in his following car but he thought twice and raced on, panic over.
Evenepoel won by 12 seconds. He’d been out to recon the stage several times, to the point where – via L’Equipe’s essentiel podcast – local shopkeepers had become used to seeing un belge riding by.
Speaking post-stage he suggested Pogačar is still in a race of his own for the maillot jaune but Evenepoel is literally on the up. However once again the test for him is repeating long days in the mountains. But he’s looking sharp, veins protruding like his legs were drafted by Richard Rogers. Roglič was third and climbed up to fourth overall. Vingegaard finished fourth to stay third but he’s now over a minute down.
The Route: 183km and 2,400m of vertical gain, a lot for a course that largely stays in a range between 250m and 500m. The five categorised climbs are selections among the many climbs. This region has plenty of long straight roller roads but this course is different, it twists and turns a lot. The last climb at Sexfontaines will sting, unmarked but a good launchpad for an attack or just to thwart some heavyset sprinters.
The Finish: a long straight road into town. It’s gently uphill in the final kilometre, 3%.
The Contenders: sprint or breakaway? It might not be that binary either, the winning move could form later in the stage. The intermediate sprint can matter today because it comes after 59km, will teams control for this long in order to give their house sprinters a chance?
What does today’s finish remind you of? It’s the Dun-le-Palestel sprint in Paris-Nice from 2022, an uphill run after a lumpy stage. You can see Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) winning there but now his crash in Saint-Vulbas has left him sore and just contending and taking some points would be an achievement.
Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is a pick because he is fast and suited to the uphill finish, for all the tales of woe so far in the Tour he’s been close twice and the gradient helps him today. However the hillier course doesn’t suit his team mates as well, although if there is a sprint things flatten out towards the end. Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) is much more than a sprinter and the course suits him too. Above all this is the stage that suits the brute force of Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny).
More picks come crowding in. Michael Matthews (Jayco), Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB), Marijn van den Berg (EF) are in the mix but outsiders for a straight sprint. Likewise Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) and team mate Axel Zingle. If we mention Van Aert then Mathieu van der Poel has to be tipped too in case the shampoo squad change leaders.
| | De Lie, Philipsen | | | WvA, Girmay, MvdP | | | Godon, Coquard, Gaviria, Laurance, Zingle |
Weather: early sunshine turning to clouds and then the chance of rain, 20°C tops. The wind will blow from the WSW at 20-25km/h meaning a tricky three quarters tailwind and the chance for some crosswinds, especially if it gusts more with the arrival of rain.
TV: KM0 is at 1.20pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.30pm CEST. Tune in early to see if there’s a battle for the breakaway.
Postcard from Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises
How many churches does Colombey have? One, but in case you are wondering about the “two churches” suffix it used to have a priory as well. Ecclesiastical addition aside it’s synonymous in France for Charles De Gaulle, the exiled war leader who was twice President. He chose the village for a second home and later retired here.
In 1960 a Tour stage from Besançon to Troyes =rode through here and De Gaulle was roadside, almost anonymous in the crowd although his tall figure was a clue. The riders halted to chat and pay tribute to the President. It’s the first and only time the race has halted like this. There have been roadside protests, rider strikes and other incidents but not a decision just to stop, chat and then race on. Presidential authority to make today’s incumbent jealous.
The halt was not just anecdotal because Pierre Beuffeuil had been dropped earlier in the stage and was able to get back when the peloton stopped. He then won the stage…at least that’s what the Tour de France website says.
Just be careful about bringing this up with Beuffeuil himself though. 89 years wise these days he was asked about the win recently by local newspaper L’Est Eclair (my translation):
“Shit, to turn yourself inside out like I did only to hear, still 60 years on, that I sneaked a stage of the Tour… it’s infuriating“
He told another local paper La Nouvelle République:
“Some people ganged together, saying I profited form the pause when the peloton stopped… …it’s absolutely false, I won that stage “à la pédale”. I even started from Colombey behind the peloton because I’d stopped for a pee.”
Beuffeuil retired from pro cycling and to run oyster farm on the Atlantic coast. He’s still riding today and told La Nouvelle République he’s doing 8,000km a year and had racked up 100km the day before they spoke to him, perhaps this helps explain the energetic declarations. Most importantly he won another stage of the Tour de France in 1966, a point he’s only too happy to ram home when asked about 1960.
The post Tour de France Stage 8 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A short time trial and significant day for the GC that will tell us plenty about the form of the contenders.
Sporting Dijon: Jasper Philipsen looked to have things in place as Mathieu van der Poel led him out but this wasn’t the snappy jump of last year where Philpsen himself struggled to hang on.
Instead an impatient Arnaud De Lie to launch his sprint with 300m to go and it proved to be the ideal leadout for Dylan Groenewegen. As the Belgian champ faded the Dutch champ went to the left and was clear for the win. Meanwhile Philipsen was drifting right and blocked Wout van Aert and he was duly relegated by the commissaires. Third placed Biniam Girmay extends his lead in green.
The stage was enhanced by crosswinds but if this was spice it was low on the Scoville scale. It was notable for Tadej Pogačar being alone up front while all his team mates were caught out. UAE can be a fearsome team but sometimes remind us they’re the old Lampre that happened to stumble across a gold bar.
Little else happened. Mads Pedersen collected the combativity prize for starting and contesting the intermediate sprint after his scary tumble the previous day. We keep seeing days without attacks, probably something to explore in a blog post one afternoon next week when the same happens again.
The Route: just 25km and a stage in four parts:
- First after touring Nuits-Saint-Georges it’s out on a regular road to the first time check, it’s fast but no billiard table.
- Soon after there’s a right turn and four kilometres uphill with the first kilometre at 7% and then a dip before it drags up again to the second time check, not more than 1-2%. After this there’s for 500m at 5-6% again. This is all on a smaller road and while not savage, tricky to know when to accelerate
- Then a reciprocal descent that twists and turns
- After the third time check there’s a wide, flat road to the finish.
The Contenders: it’s hard to see past Tadej Pogačar (UAE) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep). Pogačar was beaten in his last time trial in Italy so he’s not invincible but that was a flatter course, he’ll like today’s version with the climbing and the absence of flat course specialists, no Ganna, no Tarling. Evenepoel won the Dauphiné TT and he’s looking sharper since but the stage win is a goal, closing the 45 second deficit to Pogačar, taking back two seconds per kilometre, feels outlandish.
Primož Roglič (Red Bull) can do great time trials but his form at the same level as the two named already? Ideally he’d take time to make himself a contender after looking on the back foot so far.
It’s another fitness test for Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) but hard to see him winning… and yet if he missed out on the Galibier he was able to respond when others could not and maybe a single chainring wasn’t the best choice for a tough climb and a terrifying descent. Team mate Wout van Aert has downplayed his form of late but this course suits.
Juan Ayuso (UAE) looks like a climber but he’s yet to win a summit finish but has won three World Tour level TTs. A tough ask today.
Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) is a specialist and if he’s a big build he’s good on climbs. Unlike the others he hasn’t had to fight for position or race hard in the Alps but his energy saving so far is still modest, it’s still the first week; also sitting 75th overall means he goes earlier than the big names but there doesn’t look to be any significant weather advantage. Compatriot Stefan Bissegger (EF) is another specialist but he was a minute down in the Swiss champs which suggests it’ll be harder today.
| | Remco Evenepoel | | | Tadej Pogačar | | | Vingegaard, Roglič, WvA |
Weather: hazy sunshine and 24°C and a faint breeze from the south, 5-10km/h.
TV: the first rider is Mark Cavendish and off at 1.05 CEST and the last rider is due in at 5.30pm CEST.
Postcard from Gevrey-Chambertin
If this year’s race is finishing in Nice it still includes a visit to the Champs Elysées as today’s course passes the “Elysian fields” of wine making, or at least that’s what locals and Burgundy wine promoters like to say.
Gevrey is a small place, population 3,000 but famous around the world, at least to wine drinkers for the Côte de Nuits and its premier crus wines. You’ll struggle to get change from a €100 note for one bottle, often you’ll need a fistful of notes for the prized ones; presumably oenophiles are similarly shocked to find you can pay hundreds for a derailleur. At least us cyclists don’t have to lay down our goods in a cellar for a decade or more.
If you want a cheaper souvenir with an unforgettable taste try the Ami du Chambertin cheese for an unforgettable experience. Made from cows’ milk and washed many times with marc to give it a harder rind, the makers say it has a “pronounced aroma” which is a gentle way of putting it.
The post Tour de France Stage 7 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Want to run the Tour de France? There’s no vacancy today but it’s starting to be talked about.
A front seat at the Tour de France, limitless food and wine, it sounds tempting…
Christian Prudhomme is the directeur du cyclisme at Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the organisers of the Tour de France. He 63 years old, the notional retirement age in France but it’s not compulsory and there’s no vacancy yet. Still he is starting to evoked retirement, phrases like “being closer to the end [of his career] than the start” have emerged, talk even of succession.
The job might not be what you think. The high-level business side like negotiating TV rights and wrangling with the UCI is done by people above like Yann Le Moenner, the directeur général of ASO, as in the chief executive. The technical side like crafting the race routes is largely led by Thierry Gouvenou, the race directeur ex-pro who seems happiest exploring new roads and discussing the day’s vertical gain rather than being a salesman.
Pierre-Yves Thouault is Prudhomme’s deputy but he’s the auxiliary, a support with technical skills who can go from discussing policing requirements to diesel generators the next. And if you’ve not heard of him that is almost the point.
Prudhomme and his role of directeur du cyclisme is very visible. It’s what defines the job; just as there are many technical tasks for the Giro and Vuelta too but the public face is Mauro Vegni or Javier Guillén.
Read or listen to enough Prudhomme interviews and the same stories and lines often repeat. One of them is that his role is not really a job, it’s not a career even but a “mission”, often quickly chased by a line to say it’s nothing divine of course, just that it is consuming.
He’s the one who presents the route every year and is the face in July but there’s a lot of work the rest of the year to make it all happen. He travels around France to network with the politicians who are the clients of ASO. A mayor here, a senator there and préfets everywhere, a lot of time is spent in the millefeuille, France’s layercake of local and regional governments. France’s annual assembly of départments, the congress of mayors and the Paris agricultural fair the three unmissable appointments in the year.
For all the meetings with politicians and technocrats Prudhomme and the Tour are largely apolitical, even if he was a signatory to a letter in 2017 where people in France’s sports sphere cautioned against voting for the far right in the presidential elections. Otherwise there’s a convivial neutrality about the Tour in a country where everything can be politicised. Handing out stage of the Tour de France is not contentious, politicians who don’t want the race don’t apply so there are few losers left with an axe to grind; towns not satisfied by this year’s route often get a nod and a wink it’ll be there time soon.
In July days are spent in the team car, partly to oversee the race but also hosting a VIP, possibly the French president. He can go to two dinners in an evening to satisfy expectant locals. It’s not just the riders who go big on calories this month, the job almost requires a second stomach, a second liver even.
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Another physical requirement is a firm handshake. One Prudhomme quip is that his elbow has a memory of its own because when he goes to greet someone there’s a brief moment where he struggles to recall their name but as his elbow unbends and his hand moves forward for the handshake, suddenly their name emerges on the tip of his tongue.
In the job since 2007 Prudhomme has shaped the race. But has he made the race more TV friendly with never more than two sprint stages in a row, fewer time trials, more mid-mountains and special summit finishes like the Galibier and Granon because he wants this, or is this just what the TV market demands and technology allows? Probably both, the Tour has lent into this more than the Giro, borrowing from its sister race the Vuelta while visits to the Planche des Belles Filles or the Puy-de-Dôme have had a personal touch. Exploring this is for another day.
Until the 1980s a lot of the Société du Tour, as ASO was called then, was staffed by ex-army types, colonels and lieutenants; now it has a large share of ex-pros. But the directeur has come from the media, whether Henri Desgrange, Jacques Goddet or Jean-Marie Leblanc, journalists from the in-house newspaper. Prudhomme was an outsider who came from radio and TV which explains plenty for a job that requires a lot of talking. Is the next candidate going to come from the media? Just as Leblanc picked Prudhomme and had him first as a deputy so he could be introduced to mayors and others before he took over, the same is likely to happen again.
Could Marion Rousse be promoted? Why not. FranceTV’s lead commentator Alexandre Pasteur could step in aged 53, a coincidence or not he is watching today’s stage from Prudhomme’s car.
When Leblanc started looking for a successor two decades ago he had several candidates in mind. He thought the job needed three qualities: you need to know cycling well, you have to like people, and you need have a sense of public interest and duty. These probably still hold if you want to polish your CV.
The post The Top Job first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Another sprint stage but with the possibility of crosswinds later.
Pinball wizard: how can Netflix compete? They released the second series of their clunky docu-tainment show just before the Tour but viewers of the real thing get the thrill of live TV, script lines that the producers can’t concoct, plus it’s free-to-air. Sure Episode 5 of Le Tour got off to a slow start but the advice was always to tune in for the finale.
Alpecin-Deceuninck made a late charge for the finish, rumbling past the other trains under the flamme rouge. Sat on Jasper Philipsen’s wheel was Mark Cavendish. This was the place to be and the likes of Phil Bauhaus and Fernando Gaviria tried to bump their way in but couldn’t dislodge Cavendish. Behind others were tangling and braking, but to dab the pads was to quit.
With 300m to go Cavendish came around Philipsen and then launched with 150m to go. And that was it, he was well clear and had time to sit up and celebrate.
Overtaking Eddy Merckx has been the defined goal but it’s a stat and not the whole story. At times he’s seemed haunted by the need to race and to keep on winning rather than set a record. It’s also a tale of longevity, at 39 years old he’s the second oldest winner of a stage in the Tour de France and has the widest span in stage wins. 2024 here, 2008 then, beating Oscar Freire and Erik Zabel, whose son has recently retired from pro cycling. When Cavendish was winning in Châteauroux George Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy were Presidents. The Iphone was new and Samsung had yet to launch a smartphone. Cavendish’s bike was a 10 speed with protruding gear cables.
The only thing left is to pick his exit. You could forgive him for stopping right now, a night spent bathing in champagne and leaving on but he’s still got a team in his service… and stages to suit…
The Route: a scenic start out of Macon amid the vineyards and a slog over the Col du Bois Clair but only just, the Paris-Lyon-Marseille TGV line runs parallel and does so for more of the course. More vineyards, especially mid-stage, more clattering TGV trains and plenty of white charolais cattle, these details stand out because there’s not much else to write about. The general direction of the course is north but it zigs and zags later, as if trying to appeal to any crosswinds.
The Finish: the city of Dijon has its hills but this avoids them. The finishing straight is almost 1.6km long and if there is a roundabout inside the final kilometre – passage via the right side only – it is a giant one and a wide bend, it’s not dangerous itself but will thin out the bunch.
The Contenders: Mark Cavendish (Astana) has to get a chainring or more. For someone who usually takes a while to warm-up he made it look easy in the first sprint he got to contest.
Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) was close yesterday and if his leadout train can be sharper then he’s the obvious pick too. Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) is consistent. Fabio Jakobsen (DSM) was fifth, not quite a come back but notable while Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco) can be close. Once again Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) is the obvious priority for his team now he is in green
Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) took a hard fall yesterday and may not start, this counts twice as he’s got a big team in his service but if they don’t chase others will.
| | Philipsen | | | Cavendish | | | De Lie, Kristoff, Girmay, Van Aert, Jakobsen, Bennett |
Weather: cloudy and a cool 20°C. There will be a crosswind for much of the stage 20km/h from the west/left. Normally 25km-30km/h is needed to shred the bunch but 20km/h can suffice for a determined group.
TV: KM0 is at 1.50pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.25pm CEST. Check for any crosswind action, otherwise get in place for the sprint finish.
Postcard from Dijon
The Tour de France last visited Dijon in 1997 and here’s a riddle for you: Bart Voskamp (TVM-Farm Frites) and Jens Heppner (Team Telekom) rode to the finish together to contest the stage in a two-up sprint. Who won?
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The answer is Mario Traversoni (Mercatone Uno). Stage 19 saw a breakaway of 12 riders form early in the stage and with 12km to go Voskamp and Heppner slipped away from the rest of them to sprint for the win. Only they tangled, dangled, mangled and wrangled. Voskamp veered sideways to put Heppner in the barriers, the German fought back and leaned on the Dutchman. It was as if they went or lent sideways as much as they tried to go forwards for the line. As one of the best Tour chroniclers of the time wrote (my translation):
So what do they say, these commissaires? Do we at least know which one was at fault? Who are we going to punish? The little German or the big Dutchman? It’s unbearable. At least the president of the jury has got religion and decides to split the difference. King Solomon speaks… …The two men are disqualified. Mario Traversoni, third, who finished 26 seconds behind the two group riders, is declared the winner.
– “Les gogos d’une arrivée aux coups à coudes” by Jean-Louis Le Touzet, Liberation 26 July 1997
Apparently it took 35 minutes before Traversoni was declared the winner. And if you think it’s unusual it is, but this was the third stage that year revised by the commissaires that year after Stage 6 saw Erik Zabel cross the line first but Jeroen Blijlevens was awarded the win and Stage 11 went to Laurent Desbiens after Serguei Outschakov was relegated too. Here’s hoping for a safe sprint in Dijon today.
The post Tour de France Stage 6 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Out of the Alps for a sprint stage and a tonal change as the race leaves the mountains for a week.
Faire Valloire: UAE were not subtle. They started work early and even managed to split the field briefly before the Lautaret, catching out the likes of Simon Yates. Then they kept up the pace, scything down the breakaway and threshing the peloton.
By the Galibier proper race radio was reeling off the names of riders being ejected, among them maillot jaune Richard Carapaz and soon it was easier to list the riders left up front. Pogačar was out to test Jonas Vingegaard’s health.
There was an interesting inter-office moment when João Almeida beckoned Juan Ayuso to do a turn, shades of “I’m burying myself in this headwind and you’re free-riding to become our second-placed GC rider without doing a pull“. Only supply your own caption as they won’t say it aloud. Amid the demonstration of power Adam Yates was dropped.
Pogačar attacked as soon as the slope kicked up after the turning for the Galibier tunnel, 900m before the top. It was forceful, he was out of the saddle and shaking the bike below him for 20 pedal strokes. Vingegaard replied, but only 10 pedal strokes out of the saddle before he went into the brace position, seated and head tucked low. Being aero counts on the upper slopes of the Galibier when you are moving at 30km/h. Evenepoel had responded but couldn’t get across.
Vingegaard was valiant in the chase and for a long time there were only seconds in it. But once away from the most technical parts Pogačar pulled out a lead. Later Vingegaard was caught by Carlos Rodriguez and Primož Roglič and soon after Remco Evenepoel made it across.
So the stage and the yellow jersey for Pogačar but is it conclusive? Vingegaard is close in terms of form, he’s arguably exceeding some expectations but his team mates are not, he was isolated at the end.
Pogačar now leads by 45 seconds with Remco Evenepoel next and Vingegaard third. Roglic are Rodriguez already over a minute down while the rest of the GC contenders are over three minutes away.
The cards could be shuffled soon with the time trial and gravel stage. How Vingegaard can respond? He might improve as the race goes on while Pogačar’s fatigue grows, but if this happens he still has to find a way to get past the UAE team. Rodriguez is now the sole leader at Ineos and Evenepoel is a contender but would both sign today for a podium? Is that a rhetorical question? Roglič so far is only following, for a change he hasn’t got any time bonuses, but still a contender.
The Route: out of the Alps and avoiding as much of the climbing as possible, even the mountain passes on the course today are not cited. It’s down the Isère valley and past the Lacets de Montvernier and climbing options galore but it’s a deliberately flat day.
Over to Chambéry where the Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale team has its service course. The French teams each have a regional identity: Decathlon are savoyards from the Alps: Cofidis nordistes from the north, Arkéa-B&B Hotels from Brittany while Groupama-FDJ is more the exception, its service course is outside Paris by the CDG airport but it has a base in Besançon in Eastern France.
Then comes the unmarked Col de Couz, 13km long but just 3-4% and then it’s down to the Rhone and a course that tracks the river. The climb to Lhuis is the last obvious obstacle for the sprinters, 3km at 5% and with steeper parts but all with 35km to go, more scenic detour than anything else.
The Finish: Saint-Vulbas is a village but with a giant logistics park on the side and it’s the latter that hosts the finish meaning big roads built for trucks. It’s slightly uphill but we’re talking 1-2% tops and the finishing straight is practically 2.5km long.
The Contenders: unable to sprint last time, we’ll see if Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) gets a go today and again if he has Mathieu van der Poel as a battering ram than he’s got a good chance of winning.
Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) has the train and the speed to be in the mix but he’s not a bike length ahead of the rest. Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco) has the speed but can he get an opening? His aero position can count in a headwind.
Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) for a second win? Why not but it’s not even clear he’s a sprinter, yes he’s fast and agile but lighter than most sprinters so he needs the right opportunity rather than a straight dragster contest like today. But he’s close to the green jersey so presumably the team, Thijssen included, are on duty.
Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) was close. Sam Bennett (Decathlon-Ag2r) is on team turf but it doesn’t make him faster.
| | Philipsen | | | Pedersen, Groenewegen | | | De Lie, Bennett, Girmay |
Weather: cloudy and 22°C. Not much wind but it’ll count in the sprint, 10-15km/h from the NNW meaning a headwind.
TV: KM0 is at 1.30pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.25pm CEST. Tune in for the climb to Lhuis at around 4.30pm, earlier if you want the scenery of the Rhone and the nearby hills where Mandrin – France’s version of Robin Hood – roamed.
Postcard from Saint-Vulbas
Would you like to visit Saint-Vulbas? As you can see from the postcard it has a charming priory… and the Bugey nuclear power station sits nearby. It’s not famous for much, Nacer Bouhanni won a sprint stage of the Dauphiné here in 2016 with a boxing victory salute, appropriate after his Cofidis lead out and the Katusha team came to blows during the approach. He’s retired and, married to an award winning actress and film director, taking an increasing interest in cinema. Maybe we’ll see him on the silver screen soon?
Back to Saint-Vulbas, at least known to truckers because it is home to a giant logistics park with warehouses for many companies. And talk of logistics brings us to your chance to visit because Visma-Lease A Bike has offered guests the opportunity, yours for €2,775 a go.
As the hospitality schedule sets out guests can spend two nights at the race, arriving in time for a light lunch, a ride in the countryside and then an “extensive dinner”. The next day includes a visit to the Tour start and then race-hopping with staff to points along the race. This is the interesting bit as the experience includes “helping with supplies” which can mean passing up waterbottles, usually at points early in the race when things are not critical although the Tour peloton is hardly taking in the views. It’s a clever move by the team, not all VIP experiences have to involve being waited on or hanging out with stars and the team can deploy paying guests rather than extra staff. After watching the finish and another “extensive dinner” guests stay one more night with the team before returning home the next day.
The post Tour de France Stage 5 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Money makes the wheels go around and every pro team is reliant on funding from its title sponsors who can easily supply 90% of the income needed to keep the squads on the road. But do you want some Wanty, do you know what Visma does and do you know the connection between Cofidis and Arkéa?
There are 22 teams in the Tour de France with a variety of sponsors from household goods to governments. Here’s a quick explainer of what they all do, presented in the start list order…
Team Visma-Lease A Bike
Jumbo-Visma this time last year, only for the Dutch supermarket to half and almost crater the team. Visma is a Norwegian IT services company that does dull but essential things like accounting and corporate payrolls. Lease A Bike is a company that works with employers to allow employees to, you guessed it, lease bicycles via payments out of their salary. It’s part of Pon, a Dutch conglomerate named after Bernadus Pon, the man who came up with the idea for the VW camper van and which today owns bike company Cervélo.
UAE Team Emirates
The clue is in the name, the UAE is the United Arab Emirates, a federation of oil and gas rich kingdoms with Abu Dhabi as the capital that has literally risen out of the desert and is now a destination for many, from casual shoppers to organised criminals fleeing arrest. Along with the state itself is Emirates, the flag-carrier airline which is part of the state. With success the team has become more central to the ruling family, many sub-sponsors on the jersey are linked to Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the prince also known as “TBZ”, he is the country’s spy chief and a corporate kingpin whose business interests include frame company Colnago.
Team Jayco-Al Ula
Jayco is an Australian caravan manufacturer which sounds like a niche backer but it’s just one of several companies owned by Australian tycoon and sports fan Gerry Ryan, one of several “sugar daddy” sponsors. Its his fortune that is behind the team, as he likes to joke he’s spending his children’s inheritance. Al Ula is a Saudi tourist project designed to bring tourism, including cyclists, to the desert town of Al Ula.
Ineos Grenadiers
Ineos is petrochemicals company for the plastics that surround us. It’s grown so big that it now drills for oil and gas in order to get both its raw materials and the energy to power its chemical plants. Owned by James “Jim” Ratcliffe, Britain’s third richest person he doesn’t just play sport, he funds it. He has a sailing team, owns French football club OGC Nice, is a sponsor and part owner of the Mercedes Formula 1 team and is now the new minority owner of Manchester United. Why? Because he can, but being a sugar daddy sponsor brings VIP opportunities galore. The Grenadiers name is a side project to produce a luxury 4×4 utility vehicle. Despite the team name the squad uses Mercedes team cars.
Lidl-Trek
Lidl is the upstart German discount supermarket which has been expanding in Europe and now the US in recent years and grabbed significant market share. The arrival of this big public-facing multinational is a boost for the sport in general, a coup for the team as it came just as Jumbo. The team owned and backed by the US bicycle brand Trek making the only “factory” team from a bike brand left in the World Tour. The squad is now on the up and trying to make the top tier of pro teams with an increased budget and ambitions.
Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale Team
New for 2024 is Decathlon, the French sporting goods retailer has come on board as a title sponsor. Operating out of retail warehouses it has outlets around the world, from Brazil to China and now India and if the squad has had a great start to the season this has delighted the new backers who have seen big demand for the team-issue bikes, particularly in Asia. Ag2r La Mondiale is one of France’s largest social insurance companies allowing savers to take out life insurance, pension plans and additional healthcare cover.
Bahrain Victorious
An obvious one, this is the oil-rich island in the Middle East. The key man behind the team is Sheikh Nasser, a sports-mad prince from the ruling family with business interests and the spy chief brief for the kingdom, much like his counterpart in the UAE. A case study in “sportswashing” because the term itself is so wrong: there is no laundry of reputation. Instead an oppressive country that sits 173rd out of 180 on the press freedom index – two places down from last year – is here and we have to deal with it. The Victorious label is also code for “your name here” as the team might be sponsored by a wealthy nation state but there’s no unlimited credit line and they are keen for a co-sponsor in order to bolster funding and strengthen the squad.
Soudal Quick-Step
Soudal make adhesives and other chemical products for construction, you can buy their tubes of glue and silicone in DIY stores. It is a Belgian company founded and still owned by Baron Vic Swerts that has spread around the world. Quick-Step makes laminated, wood and vinyl flooring and while originally a Belgian company is is now owned by a US firm. You can use the two sponsors together, spread some Soudal adhesives to stick your Quick-Step flooring down.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe
Austrian sports drink company Red Bull is more than a sponsor, it’s an owner having now acquired the German team and the team has just got a new name and kit. Red Bull is all caffeinated excitement, lively marketing and now coming into road cycling but surely no rider will actually drink Red Bull in-competition. Mind you, nobody will use a Bora kitchen cooker mid-race either, the selling point is that the extractor fan is built on the hob rather than above and so no big unit has to be installed above. Hansgrohe makes plumbing, think mixers and shower heads.
Groupama-FDJ
A 50-50 joint venture owned by the two title sponsors. Groupama is a giant mutual insurance company whose rural logo hints at the original name of Groupe des Assurances Mutuelles Agricoles, Groupe AMA… Groupama. FDJ is short for La Française des Jeux, it’s the French national lottery and now a privatised company that wants to run more lotteries, it does the Irish one and is also expanding into gambling across Europe. Groupama’s corporate colour is green but as they get to go first on the team name they’ve accepted the blue kit.
Alpecin-Deceuninck
Alpecin is a shampoo brand from Germany with caffeine in it (reviewed on this blog). Can they sign a bald rider? Was Simon Dehairs hired because of his name? Oddly for a team out for exposure in France, the shampoo’s not for sale in supermarkets nor the myriad of pharmacies in France. Continuing the construction site theme among Belgian sponsors, Deceuninck’s a Belgian maker of PVC windows and doors.
EF Education-Easypost
EF Education is language and study-abroad business that was started in Sweden and now HQ’d in Switzerland and now the team owner. EF Education First sounds like a pleonasm but loyal readers will know the initials EF actually stand for Europeiska Ferieskolan, Swedish for “European Holiday Schools” because this is what the founder Bertil Hult named his venture. Easypost is an e-commerce platform to help ship small goods and packets.
Lotto-Dstny
One of the second-tier teams outside of the World Tour after relegation but a fixture in the sport. Another lottery operator with Belgium’s state operator and with this, some political oversight that can stray into interference but mostly it’s benign, like a duty to recruit both from Flanders and Wallonia to bridge the divides. It’s been a team sponsor since the 1980s. Dstny is Belgn tlcms cmpny (yes, this blog can hrdly tlk) that now operates in several European countries which means it wants wins abroad, particularly at the Tour de France.
Israel-PremierTech
Another second-tier team this is owned by Israeli-Canadian real estate mogul Sylvan Adams, a keen cyclist and another sugar daddy sponsor. The Israel label is presumptuous, it’s Adams promoting his new country rather than the state as a sponsor but fraught for this because people will see this team through the prism of politics and war rather than just following it as a cycling team backed by a massive cycling fan if it was labelled, say, the Adams Academy. PremierTech sounds all fancy but it is a Canadian company that start mainly sells soils and fertiliser for horticulture but has some sidelines in agricultural machinery.
Cofidis
Cofidis is a consumer credit company. It began giving credit to people buying from the Trois Suisses catalogue retailer and now offers instant credit. It’s part of the big Crédit Mutuel group, more which in a moment. Cofidis has been an exclusive sponsor of the team since 1997 and had ups and downs from super team to doping scandals. It’s not flashy today but that’s the point, for all the “cycling is the new golf” talk, the team are out to connect with a different demographic who might suddenly need cash, in France and beyond which part explains why the team has Spanish, Italian and central European riders.
Movistar Team
Movistar is mobile telecoms operator that belongs to Spain’s Telefonica, it is a brand in Spain and Latin America. It has a sub brand in O2 which is used in Spain,Germany, the UK and other markets. A fixture in the peloton as a sponsor, it backs the oldest team in the peloton. The squad is actively hunting for a co-sponsor but this is always around the corner. As Spain’s only top tier team hopefully they can land a deal and Movistar are happy to share naming rights if it means results improve because they would be mentioned more often.
Arkéa-B&B Hotels
Having mentioned that Cofidis is part of French banking giant Crédit Mutuel, so is Arkéa. But the group is disparate and you’d need a large organigram to find both Cofidis and Arkéa. Anyway Crédit Mutuel Arkéa is a group of their banks in Britannia and South West France. B&B Hotels sounds like an oxymoron but it tells you plenty, a hotel that gives you a bed and then breakfast, it’s that functional and the French hotel chain is expanding around Europe, typically found by autoroute junctions.
Intermarché-Wanty
Intermarché is a French supermarket but the sponsorship here is via their Belgian shops to appeal to Belgian shoppers, telling in a small way how Belgium is cycling crazy. Wanty does civil engineering, think building bridges or specialist demolition projects. The particularity of the team is that since the 1970s has grown out of a local club, the Vélo Club Ath that, starting with sponsorship from watch brand Rodania, has gradually risen up the ranks, getting an invite to the Tour de France in 2017, promotion to the World Tour (via the expired CCC licence) in 2021 and now won its first Tour stage win.
Team DSM Firmenich-Post NL
Currently wearing out keyboards thanks to the long name, this squad has been backed by Dutch life sciences company DSM since 2021. The firm makes plenty from vitamins to dyes to put in fish food so that farmed salmon is the “right” colour when filleted for customers; and since then it has merged with Swiss peer Firmenich whose speciality is aromas, there’s a good chance any detergent or deodorant you have has molecules cooked up by Firmenich. Post NL is more obvious, as the Netherlands postal service.
Astana Qazaqstan Team
This is the Kazakh state but in varying forms over the years as the actual provenance of the funds has come from different agencies and entities; at times it’s not come causing unpaid wages and not wanting to be the bringer of bad news, the fear is the team is struggling for stable financing for next year and facing World Tour relegation beyond. Astana used to be the capital city’s name but it was renamed in tribute to long term ruler Nazabayev but has recently reverted to Astana. The Qazaqstan is the new name for the vast energy and mineral rich country which wants to drop the Russian/cyrillic “K” and opt for a more romanised term; it’s the origin of the “cossack”.
Uno-X Mobility
An invitee team, this is a Norwegian retailer, a chain of service stations that is moving into charging stations, useful in Norway which has Europe’s highest rate of electric car use. Other names on the kit include Reitan and Rema-1000 but they’re all under the same corporate umbrella of Reitan, a Norwegian conglomerate that has business in Denmark too. The more Jonas Vingegaard wins, the more Danes tune in and so they get more exposure but the team is cohesive and can get its own results too but identifiably local teams are risky ventures because of the asymmetry where the talent pool is deliberately restricted all while the best riders from the area – Norway and Denmark here – can also sign elsewhere.
Total Energies
The paradox of the weakest team in the race but backed by a corporate giant, oil company Total, or TotalEnergies as it’s now called. The oil major got into cycling by accident when it acquired Direct Energie, an alternative electricity supplier in France but has used the team as a vehicle to help with the rebranding from Total to TotalEnergies and the sponsor does everything from service stations to lubricants, alternative energy to drilling for oil and gas. The Total boss, as in the oil man, has personally said he’d “break open the money box” to sign a star rider and they need this star appeal as invitations are already drying up and their Tour place is in danger in the coming years.
Comment
There are plenty of sponsors selling goods to consumers, the traditional sponsorship method with the likes of, say, Alpecin shampoo wanting to reach you. For all the Tour’s reach there are only a few global brands like Emirates, Lidl, Red Bull and Total; there are plenty with a local reach too like Uno-X or Cofidis.
Many teams are happy to get mass publicity, take DSM Firmenich whose management probably want the company to be more widely known but for they and many sponsors the real value of sponsorship comes internally, being able to take VIPs to Tour stages or to orientate employee communications about stories of victory, the hidden side of sponsorship.
The Tour de France is crucial too all of this, by many accounts 70% of more of a team’s media exposure but also massive added pressure because sponsors are not just watching, they are in the team car or on the bus right now. If you really want to find more big names look to the Tour itself with sponsors like Nestlé, Continental, VW Group.
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The Tour calms down today with a long parade and a likely sprint.
Vauquelin ends the drought: another solid breakaway including the polka-dotted Jonas Abrahamsen. No threats on GC meant so DSM let them take time. It was only over the hills that the other teams upped the pace, but this was defensive on the climbs and amid a surprising crosswind. Safety but Laurens De Plus, Wout van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson crashed and in response the peloton seemed to ease up and the gap went out 10 minutes. Victor Campenaerts though led the chase and took a chunk out of the lead, only four minutes by Bologna.
Having scaled the San Luca once Nelson Oliveira attacked the breakaway on the boulevards of Bologna. As Arkéa had two riders in the break one of them had to respond. Was it clever that Kévin Vauquelin did not follow instantly? It allowed Oliveira to open a gap and then Vauquelin could use his skills – a frustrated second in the recent French TT championships – to bridge across, rather than close it down. Abrahamsen followed but as soon as the San Luca climb started Vauquelin attacked to go solo. It’d been almost 24 hours since a Frenchman won a stage.
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Few would have had Vauquelin winning after being dropped the previous day, he said he’d been “at the bottom of the bucket” to use the literal translation which half works. But a big win was due. Second in the Flèche Wallonne, a defeat that he said he’s thought about probably every day since. Plenty would have been delighted with a podium finish, he’s been consumed by it.
Vauquelin has grown up in cycling in his native Normandy, collecting regional and national titles on the road and track since he was a boy. He was turning out 6.5W/kg… as a cadet, the 15-16 year old category, according to L’Equipe’s vital podcast. What kind of rider he’ll become remains to be seen but you’ll have read here before he’s reminiscent of Geraint Thomas, a rouleur who wants to become a grimpeur as well. Even amid the delight yesterday he was saying he only won from the breakaway: he sees himself one day going up against the best for the win.
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We got two races for the price of one. It was a day rich in information for the overall classification even if the time gaps were compact. Tadej Pogačar is now in yellow with Jonas Vingegaard matching his attack on the San Luca climb, the Dane’s rehab seems on track.
Just behind the pair was Remco Evenepoel. He is looking sharp – no frikandel, he told TV he’s lost 2.5kg since the Dauphiné – and he caught Pogačar and Vingegaard by the finish with Richard Carapaz for company. The Ecuadorian is a very interesting position now as of late he’s tried to follow moves and imploded, now he was there even if the workload with Evenepoel was hardly 50-50.
The surprise on the downside was Roglič. Out of position and unable to respond on familiar ground but he only lost 21 seconds. Worse off were Santiago Buitrago, Geraint Thomas, Jack Haig, Chris Harper and Derek Gee who aren’t done for if they want a top-10 but lost time.
Many sprinters finished way down but there was no point fighting for time. However it was notable that once again Mark Cavendish and Fabio Jakobsen were adrift in the hills of Emilia-Romagna, distanced when rival sprinters were not.
The Route: 230km, the longest of the race and there’s no point trying to decrypt every kilometre of the course. After Bartali and Pantani, now Coppi gets the limelight with the visit to Tortona where he lived.
The Barbaresco climb is amid the vineyards and the road keeps on going up after the KoM point.
The final climb is 3km long with a bit of 7% as it goes to Sommariva, the hilltop town whose name is derived from “summit” but it’s not much of a launchpad even the opposite, a chance to eject suffering sprinters as there’s still 50km to go.
The Finish: a flat run along the Corso Unione Sovietica, a long straight road past the Fiat factory.
At 900m to go there is a 90° left turn, another with 750m to go and it’s onto the finishing straight by the Olympic park. A dragster finish.
The Contenders: Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is the reductive pick. He’s been beaten a few times this season but now his sprint train is upgraded with Mathieu van der Poel who even Philipsen finds hard to follow.
Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco) gets a stage to suit, the last climb is an hour from the finish, there are days when these obstacles come closer.
Beyond them things open up more. Three days in a row for French riders? Tough as Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) would like a more acrobatic finish. It suits Arnaud Démare (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) more and he won the intermediate sprint yesterday but parlaying that into triumph today is a massive ask, he hasn’t had a podium finish this year.
Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), Wout van Aert (Visma-LAB), Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dsnty) might not have the pure speed but an opening and they can win.
Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) might like a thunderstorm or more but has a beefy leadout. Sam Bennett (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is in the mix but not an easy pick. Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain) likewise. Do Intermarché-Wanty back Biniam Girmay or Gerben Thijssen… or both?
Mark Cavendish (Astana) isn’t an easy pick after the struggles on the hills, likewise Fabio Jakobsen (DSM), they’ve had it harder although and there’s always the chance some team exploit this by upping the pace on the climbs. If you want to rate sprinters on fitness Pascal Ackermann has (IPT) been among the last sprinters to be dropped… but that doesn’t equate to speed today.
| | Philipsen, Groenewegen | | | Pedersen | | | Girmay, WvA, De Lie, Kristoff, Démare, Bauhaus |
Weather: 28°C with some clouds.
TV: a long day for those doing live commentary. KM0 is at 11.35am and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Dip in to see if anything is happening but otherwise take a leaf out of the sprinters’ books and get in place for the finish.
Postcard from Torino: here were again after the Giro d’Italia’s grande partenza. It’s the home of brands like Fiat and Lavazza and long time the seat of the Italian monarchy until the establishment of today’s republic in 1946. It’s this history that is of interest today because to speak of the Italian royal family is a relatively modern concept, instead for the best part of a thousand years the Casa Savoia (“House of Savoy”, at times the Duchy, Kingdom, County et cetera) ruled the north-west corner of Italy and beyond into the Alps which are now in France. The great stages of the Tour de France to come, whether on the Galibier tomorrow or the final days in the Alps and Nice were for centuries under “Italian” rule.
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Today Italy is a republic but a monarchical tradition persists with the use of the colour blue. Italy’s flag is the tricolore of green, white and red but sports teams wears blue. This is the blu Savoia and the azure tone supplies the collective term azzuri, as in “blues”, for the national sports teams whether it’s football, cycling, or in general at the Olympics. It is unusual to see national athletes in different colours to the flag but happens elsewhere, look at the Dutch and their oranje which is also a nod to the royal standard.
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It doesn’t stand out on on the profile thanks to the modest y-axis but today’s two climbs of the San Luca climb are hard and the final hour should be lively.
De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace: “focussing on certain stages… … I hope to profit more from the fervour of the Tour” wrote Romain Bardet in his column for Saturday’s L’Equipe, the idea being he’d pick some stages instead of going for the yellow jersey. This prophecy looked ambitious when he tried to get in the day’s breakaway but didn’t make it.
Instead his team mate Frank van den Broek launched a very solid breakaway. Uno-X missed the move and fired off riders in pursuit, it looked forlorn until Jonas Abrahamsen bridged across and he’d sprint to enough hilltops to take the mountains jersey, a deserved reward.
With 52km to go Romain Bardet shot out of the what was left of the peloton in an unplanned move on the San Leo climb, although he’d asked Warren Barguil to fetch him some ice and a bidon so he could go equipped.
He quickly bridged across to what was left of the breakaway with the help of Van Den Broek who was able to help as a precious relay. The pace was too much for Abrahamsen and then Madouas who paid for their earlier uphill sprints to leave the DSM tandem in the lead with Ben Healy stuck en chasse patate.
Two minutes lead looked promising on the road to Rimini but the gap was melting like mozzarella dropped on the tarmac as several teams joined in the chase. With 5km to go the gap was below 30 seconds, 3km it was 20 seconds with the pair now in sight of the peloton and the hope that Bardet could get a well0deserved win was fading fast. Yet the hardest part of closing a gap is the last part and the chasing teams were running out of riders, all while some seemed to be holding back in order to lead out their sprinters. 2km and 14 seconds as Matteo Jorgenson took a big turn in the streets of Rimini. 1km and 10 seconds…
Bardet took the stage and the yellow jersey while Franck Van Den Broek didn’t finish the day empty handed with the combativity prize, the green jersey, the white jersey and hopefully a free drink any time he walks into a bar in France. It was close but the pair had just enough time to sit up and share the moment.
Bardet’s best win? Le Bettex in 2016 was a coup, attacking down the Domancy descent to win the day and hoist himself onto the podium, his goal at the time but a source of stress too, a deliverance, this was joy. He’s a different rider now, no duty to ride for GC and now with irony is he’s got the yellow jersey. Long an exemplary rider whose strived to make the most of his talent, he was going on personal altitude training camps armed with a sheaf of academic literature on the subject; later dragging the Ag2r team towards his meticulous ambitions where staff nicknamed him “toujours plus” (always more) for his demands.
Elsewhere, after a hard day’s racing in broiling heat a few bids for the top-10 were over before they started with Alexey Lutsenko losing 24 minutes and Groupama-FDJ pair David Gaudu and Lenny Martinez losing even more, Gaudu saying he’s still recovering from Covid. Mark Cavendish and Fabio Jakobsen had it rougher, the Manxman was dropped early and had most of his team around him including Michele Gazzoli who didn’t finish the stage even if Cavendish and Jakobsen eventually did.
The Route: 199km and 1850m of vertical gain. A start in Cesenatico to exhume the memories of Pantani once more before heading into the hills of Emilia-Romagna where the clay soils have had their role in cycling, because transformed into tiling by the likes of Ariostea and Panaria they’ve funded eponymous cycling teams and because these tiles need to be stuck to walls and floors and the gaps in between filled in, sparked the need for products from Mapei which also had its team.
More recently the Gallisterna name might be familiar if you remember the 2020 World Championships. These climbs are small but help spice up what can otherwise be a flat stage, the Giro often sticks to the Via Emilia and the plains, eg Stage 13 this year.
The Finish: a ride into Bologna to ride around the old city walls on a boulevard to cross the finish line then with two times up the glorious but fearsome climb to the Basilica San Luca.
Used every year in the late season Giro dell’Emilia and in the Giro at times too this is a hard with double-digit gradients right from the start. 1.9km at 10% doesn’t sound like much but it’s got a hard start to rob momentum and acceleration after is expensive.
An urban climb it is lined by a brick-built portico all the way up so people can walk to the hilltop basilica in the shade. The road itself though is exposed and with long ramps. The 19% on the profile above is the inside line around the “orphan’s curve” where it’s more like 16% here. The second time up offers a time bonus if 8-5-2 seconds for the first three.
It’s the same descent as Emilia too which helps but the pressure of the Tour is different of course and the race then takes the big boulevard around the old city walls, no obvious difficulties but stressful as riders will jostle for position going into the climb knowing it takes a big effort to make up just a few metres on a climb like this.
Then it’s off the climb again and a flat run around town to finish with a 900m long flat section.
The Contenders: DSM are likely to chase any early breakaway and we should see the GC teams take over later as they’ll want to pace their leaders into place for the foot of the climb. Each time too, meaning anyone launching the first time up the San Luca might take 10-15 seconds over the top but good luck holding this on the streets of Bologna, let alone preserving this the next time up.
An uphill kick? Primož Roglič (Redbull-Bora-Hansgrohe) is the obvious pick but as he gets older has he still got the same searing jump? He has just won two stages of the Dauphiné with his modus operandi. His team are strong too to help get him in place.
And yet competition is going to be fierce today with Tadej Pogačar (UAE) the other obvious choice to clean up in town after, a beefier sprint as we saw in Rimini yesterday. There’s a theory that today’s stage gives Pogačar a bigger advantage over Vingegaard than the Galibier as the Dane just doesn’t do one day races and is more at ease on a long climb. So twice up the San Luca plays into Pogačar’s comparative advantage and UAE should lean into this but comparative because maybe Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) can put on a show too while team mate Wout Van Aert has a chance but could be on team duties today which makes him a harder pick.
Longer shots already include Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny), Tom Pidcock (Ineos) and Oscar Onley (DSM).
| | Roglič, Pogačar | | | Vingegaard | | | Van Gils, Ciccone, Pidcock, Bilbao, Onley, WvA |
Weather: warm and sunny, 33°C at the finish Bologna. A WSW wind will blow at 15km/h and could gust to 25km/h which is borderline crosswind weather again for the sections where the race uses the long and exposed Via Emilia sections.
TV: KM0 is at 12.35pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.20pm CEST. Tune in for the final hour to see the race reach Bologna, the two climbs of the San Luca and the edge-of sofa descents.
Postcard from Brisighella
Brisighella is 70km into today’s stage. Today every parameter going in cycling seems to be measured. L’Equipe has had a good series this week on the modernisation of cycling in recent years, one piece asked if riders are becoming lab rats. For years power and heart rate have been measured in training and racing and lactate levels logged during training camps. Now teams are trying to explore all sorts of measures. UAE coach Iñigo San Milan told the newspaper (translated):
“With two drops of blood we can see between a thousand and two thousand parameters, the metabolic responses, the recovery capacity, all the glycolic path or the mitochondria“.
Now two thousand signals sounds like be noise are instructive but teams trying to find the signals. In recent years blood glycogen and body temperature sensors have appeared as commercial products and so they’ve been in the limelight. Hydration monitors are probably next. But monitoring blood levels is private and discreet among each team, it’s not a commercial thing and there’s probably a weariness to talk about haematology given the sport’s past. Perhaps one day all sorts of haematological, endocrinal values will be logged live during a race, even on display on a bike computer. We’re not there yet.
What’s this all got to do with Brisighella? Well just as the race leaves Faenza to ride to Brisighella so did Davide Cassani many times. He was a pro from 1982 to 1996, and recently the Italian national team selector and now again a pundit on RAI, Italian state TV and he also came up with the route today. This was his warm-up along the straight road that gradually climbs up the Lamone valley. Then turn at Brisighella for the SP23 to Riolo Terme. Here the road kicks up with some hairpin bends. It’s just a two kilometre climb but Monticino was considered enough for Cassani to test his form: if he felt good on the climb then he knew he’d be alright in a race. During his time he probably had a stop watch and later a heart rate monitor but feeling was his guide. Indeed it still counts for plenty and a rider who feels they’re floating up the climb out of Brisighella might fancy their chances later on the San Luca, no matter what their bike computer says.
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The Tour de France starts in Italy. With the recent announcement that the 2026 edition will start in Barcelona foreign starts are now more than a curiosity, they’re almost the norm. The potential for big crowds and a chunky hosting fee make it an attractive option for the organisers.
Firenze is the 25th edition out of 111 to start abroad. Until the 1950s the race always started in Paris with one exception. The starts began to move elsewhere in the 1950s, around France but including Amsterdam as the first foreign start in 1954. West Berlin in 1987 and London in 2007 stand out.
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This trend has accelerated. Half of starts this century are abroad and since 2014 we’ve had seven outside of France. Why? There’s a big demand with large cities and their regions keen to be in the spotlight, the Tour is a global media event. Live audiences for start to finish for the racing are bigger than other events but it’s the reach of the Tour, it gets on TV news bulletins and newspaper front pages in a way that other races don’t. This is valuable.
Plus there’s the logistics. If a foreign city wants the Tour, hosting start is obvious. Visiting Rimini and Emilia-Romagna is easy this weekend compared to mid-race; otherwise a city outside France has to be close so Brussels or Lausanne can work.
Money makes the wheels go round. Stages have their hosting fees and in 2019 the standard tariff was €70,000 for a stage start and €120,000 for a finish. For a grand départ it varies but that year Brussels reportedly paid a hosting fee of €5 million. That made the start more lucrative than all the other stages combined. You can see why it’s called a grand départ.
Also it’s not said out loud but while there might be up to 300 candidates to host a stage of the Tour de France, few willing to negotiate the large fee for the start. Plus mayors might like a finish one afternoon but a long weekend can be more controversial, good for hoteliers and restaurants but with road closures frustrating some locals and shopkeepers worried about takings.
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There sometimes comments in the French media like “it’s not the Tour de France“, “it’s not right” but for those with a nationalist or mercantilist streak – and there seem to be more than a few about these days – the Tour ought to be seen a valuable export. Instead of locals paying, foreigners are. Arguably more importantly is the soft power of a cultural export where millions of people in Yorkshire or Denmark come out for the day to celebrate a little bit of French culture. As race director Christian Prudhomme remarked, even pubs in Yorkshire joined in and the Black Bull pub became Le Taureau Noir for the day, the Red Lion renamed Le Lion Rouge.
Prudhomme also likes to say that if Tour starts abroad in a big city then it must also visit small places in France. It’s a nice formula but the Tour probably visits small towns and villages anyway. The one place the Tour doesn’t visit is France’s overseas territories. Places like Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean and Réunion in the Indian Ocean are legally and politically as French as Burgundy or the Vendée and cycling is very popular too. There have been plans, one draft in the 1980s involved using part Air France’s fleet of supersonic Concorde planes. But the logistics of long haul travel means they’re inaccessible for now. Even Corsica was a challenge, the race has only been once. The race had actually been exploring options for a start in Algeria but the Arab spring and protests meant the hosts had other priorities.
This start will be interesting to observe. One of the factors behind the big crowds in Yorkshire 2014 or Copenhagen in 2022 must have been a “now or never” feeling that if people wanted to see a big bike race then it was that weekend or else. Italians on the other hand have their own grand tour and a rich calendar beyond that. Likewise for a start in France, if you miss it then the race is bound to be nearby in a couple of years. Mind you so do the Basque people and they turned out in full for last year’s Bilbao start.
This scarcity and excitement is not limited to fans, we’ll have to see how they turn out this weekend in Italy. But we can already see the excitement of mayors and regional governors, they’ve paid big and invested in this weekend.
Finally spare a thought for Mauro Vegni and the Giro organisers who get on well with their French cousins but it must be odd to see the Tour on their turf; imagine if your neighbours decided to hold a BBQ in your garden. The Tour rides into Torino tomorrow, the city hosted the start of the Giro in May and now it’s back just a few weeks later. The Tour’s finish is debatably more central too… although neither race gets the prestige of a finish in the centro.
The post The Tour de France Exported first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The Tour de France starts with a tough opener, don’t call it Tirreno-Adriatico in a day but it is a succession of climbs that’s almost coast to coast. Firenze to Rimini, Michelangelo to beach lounger in a day and the yellow jersey awaits.
The Route: 206km and 3,600m of vertical gain. For comparison last year’s opener in the Basque Country had 3,200m but the big selection happened on the final climb.
Two steady mountain passes feature in the first 100km, the Valico de Tre Faggi and then the Colle del Carnaio, both steady climbs and with some shade in places among the chestnut woodland.
With 76km the climb to Barbotto starts. Labelled the Côte de Barbotto it’s a mountain pass proper, the Colle del Barbotto for locals and at 5.8km at 7.6% tough but it’s anything but a steady climb. Four kilometres into the climb comes corkscrew series of hairpins and the road is 10-13% for half a kilometre here. Harder still for any dropped riders is that the road keeps climbing after the KoM point before a fast descent with some hairpins but they are wide and gentle.
The next climb to San Leo is 4.6km at 7.7% more even but only just some some hairpins and typical of the region, some ramps along the way that just seem to pitch up the slope with no engineering to soften the slope. Here it’s over the climb and straight to the next one.
The Montemaggio climb is still tough, 4km but now below 7% so the climbs are becoming less difficult all while the fatigue is rising.
San Marino is built on the flanks of Monte Titano (“Mount Titan”) and this is the last climb. This is a long climb but never steep, a wide regular road to get people in and out of the principality but by now the last chance to attack.
The Finish: downhill all the way into Rimini and flat for a finish by the sea. It’s big roads and under the flamme rouge for a wide 180° bend and a long finishing straight.
The Contenders: hardly a wide open stage but there must be 30 or more riders in the mix depending on which way the tactical cards fall. Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is a safe pick, he’s got a team to help and can clean up from a group sprint. He’d have liked a climb closer to the finish like we saw in the Giro opener to try and escape the rest. Plus he can always ride away…
Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) is downplaying his form so the test today is how he copes with the climbs but he’s arguably the best of the “sprinters” if we use this label widely. Where there’s WvA there’s Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and both have a virtual finish line in San Marino because if they can stay in contention they can hope to clean up in Rimini. Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) and Magnus Cort (Uno-X) are two similar candidates. Multiple climbs of 4-5km at 7% are a big ask but all the same in a stage that’s open to plenty they’re candidates.
Got Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny) in mind? You have now because the Belgian is quick from a small group, ice cool and often handles short climbs well. Tom Pidcock (Ineos) can pick his moment, an attack on the climbs, a move downhill or just from the sprint. Matej Mohorič (Bahrain) is added to the contenders too for his ability to float away in the finale.
Alberto Bettiol (EF) is the patriotic pick on a stage that starts in his local city. Resplendent in his new Italian champions kit the trick is to see if he’s donned his TT-style helmet today too where he can try to repeat his Milano-Torino triumph from this year by slipping away although the heat could make this harder. An infrequent winner, he’s always won by barging away solo so not an easy pick for the all or nothing angle. See how he links up with Ben Healy who could move first to open the road.
Longer shots include two new national champs in Paul Lapeira (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) and Alex Aranburu (Movistar) as two versatile riders with a quick finish and the latter seems to be winning all of a sudden after so often placing but a Tour stage would be a major promotion. Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) is suited to the opening weekend too.
| | – | | | Pogačar | | | Van Gils, Pidcock, Matthews, WvA, Lapeira, Bettiol, MvdP, Pedersen |
Weather: hot at the start, 35°C but cooling once into the Apennines where there is some shade and more like 30°C at the finish. This could have an impact as summer has hardly started in places and so riders are less accustomed to the heat.
Another factor is the wind, 20-25km/h from the east once off the final climb and on the plains to Rimini and this is borderline bordure or ventagli weather.
TV: the roll-out is at midday and KM0 is at 12.40pm CEST, yes 40 minutes of parade to ensure Florence gets its money worth. The finish is forecast for 5.50pm CEST.
All stages are live from start to finish and this should look scenic. But the Barbotto climb is a good moment to look for action on the climbs starting from around 4.00pm.
Postcard from Florence: Firenze now has a majestic cycling palmarès having hosted the Giro, Worlds and now the Tour. Its greatest cyclist is Gino Bartali who was said to be the second most famous person in Italy after Benito Mussolini.
With Fausto Coppi he formed a cycling rivalry for the ages. Chose your character: Coppi as the modernist sophisticate with Brylcreem versus Bartali as the bald peasant sporting sandals but resilience incarnated. Like France’s Anquetil and Poulidor later much of the difference was caricature, the amplification of small differences. The pair had plenty in common.
Bartali was born in Ponte a Ema, just outside the city. There is a large plaque on the building in question. There’s a cafe downstairs if you want to linger. The family that lives above hears their doorbell ring from time to time with nosy onlookers wanting to see the inside. If you’re visiting go to the nearby Bartali museum instead.
The route today pays tribute to Bartali visiting the Gavinana, the suburb where he spent most of his life. It passes the Piazza Cardinale Elia dalla Costa, named after the former archbishop who was a friend of “Gino the Pious” as one of his nicknames went. Bartali’s house is here too.
Moments later the route passes the Piazza Gino Bartali, a modern square finished a few years ago. You’ll find a bronze statue of Bartali that could have been made by the same person who made that one of Cristiano Ronaldo, or else made from sketches of a manga artist, see for yourself here.
More impressive than any sculpture is Bartali’s palmarès. It is also inviting, to see him winning the Tour de France in 1938 and then again in 1948, and the Giro d’Italia in 1936, 1937 and 1946 is to wonder what could have been in a more peaceful world.
During the war Bartali is credited with ferrying forged identity papers given to to Jews so that they could evade capture if stopped, a feat that earned him “Righteous Among the Nations” honours. Some accounts are contested; while other accounts have him sheltering a family in his cellar, others that he did indeed carry papers in his seat tube. Today’s Le Monde has a fuller version behind the paywall of the debate between historians.
One myth that has been undone is the idea of Bartali saving Italy itself. In July 1948 communist leader Palmiro Togliatti was shot on the streets by a student from the far right. This caused a wave of protest and uprisings, the nascent Republic was on the brink of insurrection, even civil war. Meanwhile on the other side of the Alps in the Tour de France Bartali was 21 minutes down on GC and trailing Louison Bobet. Only the story goes Bartali received a phone call from parliament with the request “to win for Italy” and tasked with patriotic duty he demolished Bobet in the Alps and tensions eased in Italy upon the news. John Foot’s Pedalare! Pedalare! unpicks this story well. Bartali won but it’s a stretch of the imagination that his win had such a soothing political effect.
Perhaps the lesson here is that Bartali was so famous that he was not just a champion but hero and so a figure of projection to whom myths could be ascribed.
The post Tour de France Stage 1 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
France may be on the verge of a political crisis but the anticipated four-way battle between Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel is on. The cards have been shuffled this season by fate but they’re all here.
If you want all the route details and more from points scales to time cuts to prize pots and more, see inrng.com/tour.
The expected scenario has been turned upside down. Tadej Pogačar‘s decision to ride the Giro d’Italia could be read at the time as a concession to Jonas Vingegaard’s superiority in the Tour, the plan was to win the Giro with its softened route and then come with a top-heavy UAE squad to see what was possible in July, to brandish the Trofeo Senza Fine as a triumph and, just in case, a consolatory excuse. Only after a pink passeggiata Pogačar is almost everyone’s pick and the bookmakers have him odds on. If he lacked rivals in May and comparisons were being made with the likes of Eddy Merckx there were also signs that he has progressed in areas, such as time trials, too.
Can the double cost him? Yes. Racing is different today with riders aware that if they can take on enough carbohydrates then things don’t fall apart like they used to. He won’t be hitting his peak numbers come the third week, nobody does, but he ought to be more stale than most and this year’s route save the hardest for last. He announced yesterday he’s just had Covid too, the virus is doing the rounds and while the general public isn’t worried it’s establishing itself as an added, persistent risk factor alongside crashes and punctures. This isn’t reassuring for his form but he sounds confident.
UAE are a more imposing team, finally built to match the ambitions of their leader. Adam Yates made the podium a year ago and has just won the Tour de Suisse ahead of team mate João Almeida who makes his Tour debut, as do Juan Ayuso and Pavel Sivakov and all could lead other teams. Everyone will be looking in case one starts to hint at this and how management prevents hubris. The backroom seems to have sharpened up but they’re still the team that thought a bike change was right for last year’s Combloux time trial.
Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike) has the public profile of a nuclear submarine, as in he seems to surface once every few months. Normally he would have appeared in June but the heavy crash in the Tour of the Basque Country changed everything, a litany of musculoskeletal injuries. So instead of riding away with the Critérium du Dauphiné and starting here as everyone’s pick he’s much more of an unknown quantity. His team did not share his rehab much and he’s said very little too. He’s a private guy and that’s fine, but as a communications exercise it means rivals, the media and spectators are left guessing as to his form. The opening days will be an obvious fitness test culminating in the Galibier on Tuesday but potentially stressful skills test for someone who has not raced in the bunch for months.
The team have long said they would only bring him if he was 100%. Pick your percentage as to his form today but if he’s in top shape then he’s not just a challenger to Pogačar, he’s the two time Tour winner and so he’s not in Firenze ifor the Michelangelo and Botticelli. Even if not at his best, his employers might need him anyway after a torrid season so far where you wonder if the music on the team bus is the blues – “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all” – and coming after an off-season where they staved off a rescue merger because of a sponsorship crisis.
Fortunes and form can change, see the Vuelta last year when he came in undercooked but got better and better so if he’s down in the coming days he’s far from out and can hold on for the third week. Unlike UAE, the team is not composed of first picks but still very strong and should be a force in the race, particularly if they can get to defend the yellow jersey. Matteo Jorgenson has been excellent and consistent this season and so has a crucial role but in the team’s word he is a protected rider but not here to win.
Primož Roglič is back to winning ways having won the Critérium du Dauphiné. If the headline was a win, the subheading was he was dropped on the final mountain stage and saved the overall by seconds aided by time bonuses; but if you want to read an article it’d have to mention that he was climbing very fast despite being sore from a crash.
He’s been so good at picking off stage wins and the time bonuses but can he hang with the likes of Pogačar and Vingegaard and pick them off for the stage win? He’s done it before but he’s 34 and to win outright would make him the oldest winner post-war winner of the race, surpassing Cadel Evans by a few months.
His Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team – to use the full name which won’t last long – are very solid with Aleksandr Vlasov and Jai Hindley as lead support in the mountains. If he was a trump card then he’d win with “uphill sprint” but “tendency to crash” would be his weak point although this year’s race should be much less stressful after just a couple of days and this added space might help. Would he sign for a podium today? Probably not, the stoic Slovenian has done it before but the paradox is that his best shot at winning is probably not gambling but hoping he can get past a tiring Pogačar and a faltering Vingegaard.
Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) rides his first Tour de France aged 24. It’s been a long time coming, a spaceship trajectory where he has been around the orbit of the Vuelta and then Giro in order to pick up the momentum needed for this mission to France. Belgium expects, but at the same time ought to know that finding a way past both Pogačar and Vingegaard is a tall order. He has said a top-5 is the goal as a way to anchor expectations.
For all the long-term planning he’s had short-term hiccups. A faller in the Basque Country too, his rehab has seen him back racing in the Dauphiné where he took a time trial win but when the race went to the Alps he was dropped day. Look closely though and he did not implode. His team manager has said out loud what others could see in that he had weight to lose and if he’s managed to address this he can be right in the mix. Only since then he’s been ill and missed the Belgian championships.
He’ll like the two time trials but the first is only 25km, shorter than the Dauphiné stage he won recently, and so he can’t pull out a big lead. The team are all in behind him, no room for lightning legs Tim Merlier but they’re unlikely to get the peloton under their yoke, the test is whether they can be there in the mountains if he is dropped.
One definition of a catalyst is “any substance that increases the rate of a reaction without itself being consumed” and this brings us to Ineos. Several times this season they’ve ridden in their line formation during a mountain stage and brought back the breakaway, but without a leader capable of winning they’ve acted as agents for the likes of UAE and others who have won after their work. We might well see the same again as they aim to place Carlos Rodríguez on the podium. Fourth overall last year until he crashed on the final mountain stage, he’s improved since although repeating is no easy task. The form is improving, the Spaniard won the final stage of the Dauphiné and if this was possibly part of a deal, he had to be up the road with Jorgenson to negotiate.
Egan Bernal continues to make his way back after crashing two and half years ago now and can ride to a high finish as well but also roll up his sleeves to help the team. A year ago the story was Tom Pidcock was learning valuable lessons about riding for GC but interviews and Netflix appearance since have suggested biding his time with controlled efforts was against his nature so we’re more likely to see him on the move for stage wins, starting with Saturday. Geraint Thomas is also doing the Giro-Tour double but in his own words he’s there for the team but he is dependable.
Simon Yates (Jayco-Al Ula) was fourth last year and is back for more. He’s on a team with sprint and stage-hunting abilities but he’s not resource-intensive, often happy to fend for himself. But how to win? Unlikely but he can be up with the best and eye the third spot on the podium.
Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost) has stood on the podium and even been a contender for the overall win. Now he’s likely to be stage hunting. Still the course suits for a high GC finish for the Ecuadorian who can be a tricky customer to bring back if he can slip away. Short term form is an issue after exiting the Tour de Suisse after a crash.
So much for teenagers bursting on the scene, just short of turning 27 Ottawan ornithologist Derek Gee (IPT) makes his Tour debut. He was the revelation of the Dauphiné with a stage win, sixth in the time trial and no worse than fifth on the three Alpine stages on his way to a podium finish. Now what? The Gee-Cee for as long as he can but the team’s big goal is a stage win. He is getting comparisons to fellow “G” as in Thomas as the ex-track rider now turning to grand tour racing but he’s a little more heavyset and this could cost him with the repeat climbs, especially if it’s hot.
Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-Samsic) is also worth watching as a prospect for the future, he makes his Tour debut aged 23 and his also a little reminiscent of Thomas. His team say he’s here as an apprentice with no concern for the GC and with carte blanche for some stages so adjust your fantasy team accordingly or not.
Eighth last year and the winner of the Col de la Loze – Courchevel stage, can Felix Gall prolong Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale’s annus mirabilis with a better GC finish? That’s a tough ask with the competition and the two time trials. Indeed landing a mountain stage win won’t be easy either as he doesn’t pack much of a sprint, it’ll require a reculer pour mieux sauter moment where he loses a bit of time to get more space.
Jack Haig and Santiago Buitrago (pictured) offer two different styles of racing, Haig as a smooth diesel and Buitrago as a darting climber who is a Tour novice but with two Giro stages to his name. Bahrain come with a strong team but are stage-hunting too.
Enric Mas (Movistar) crashed out on the opening day last year and in recent years the Tour has looked like a warm-up for the Vuelta. At his best he can be a punchy rider but it’s hard to see how he gets ahead of everyone.
Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) can supply his team with a second story. It was only the Giro d’Abruzzo but outrode the UAE team that day and he’s been top-10 twice here before. That looks harder now, especially as Abruzzo aside he’s not finished Paris-Nice, Romandie, the Giro and was a discreet 65th in Suisse.
Two podium finishes in his career but Romain Bardet (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) is after different things these days in his valedictory Tour but is out to race rather than wave goodbye.
Finishing second to Pogačar and ahead of Vingegaard on the road to Nice? David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) has done it before but this was Paris-Nice in 2023 of course. Fourth in the Tour in 2022 too, but how to repeat? There’s an article to be written about whether he’s really a GC contender and he’s arguably best on shorter 10-20 minute climbs, his challenge is longer climbs and in the heat. Enfant terrible Lenny Martinez starts and he can do a decent time trial for his build but probably he and the team would sign for a stage win above a top-10.
Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) can appear on the GC thanks to his snakes-and-ladders racing, losing time in a direct contest with the GC contenders in a summit finish or time trial but climbing back up via the breakaways but with two time trials cracking the top-10 is a tough mission.
Oscar Onley (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) makes his Tour debut aged 21 and he’s shown he can climb with the best at times, as a 19 year old he made a name for himself giving Vingegaard a hard time in the late season Tour of Croatia but the Tour is more than a step up, it’s a rockface to scale so if he’s just finished a creditable eighth in the Tour de Suisse in a denser field and across three weeks cracking the top-10 is a big ask.
| | Tadej Pogačar | | | Jonas Vingegaard | | | – | | | Roglič, Evenepoel | | | C Rodriguez, A Yates |
The post Tour de France Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A side note for email subscribers.
If you’ve subscribed to this blog’s email service you’ve had messages pushed out via a third party called follow.it. Loyal subscribers might recall the blog switched to this after Google closed down the Feedburner service.
Follow.it has worked great except that when you sign up they record the time of day and use this as the reference time to send you any new blog posts, the thinking being this when you are most likely to be online. So if you signed up one evening for the email you will be sent every new post in evening. This is useless if you want a race preview as it can arrive in your inbox after the race is done.
Followit > Convertkit > Kit
The fix is that the service has been switched to provider called Convertkit (about to rebrand as Kit). They say subscribers will get emails in about 30 minutes of a post going online.
If you’re not a subscriber and reading this you can sign up with the box on the screen.
Email can be handy if you are on the move and want blog posts sent to you but the format is adapted by the email service and so the suggestion is that if you can, visit every morning for the stage preview and each afternoon for other pieces.
The post Housekeeping – Admin For Email Subscribers first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Recent recon rides in France have seen that the sunflower crop is only a few centimetres tall right now after a damp and grey start to summer. But sans sunflowers you know it’s July when you see the polka dot jersey. He’s a look at the riders who might be sporting it soon.
The maths
Points are awarded as follows:
- Cime de la Bonnette: 40-30-24-20-16-12-8-4 points
- Hors Catégorie (6 in total): 20-15-12-10-8-6-4-2 points
- Category 1 climbs (10): 10-8-6-4-2-1 points
- Category 2 (11): 5-3-2-1 points
- Category 3 (19): 2-1 points
- Category 4 (21): 1 point
It’s the same system as last year. The old scale where the final HC climb got double points is gone and only La Bonette has double points.
One difference this year is the Galibier comes on Stage 4, an HC climb where the GC riders are likely to be riding hard. A climber or punchy rider can try and take points on the second and third category climbs. But we won’t see a 2022-like scenario where Magnus Cort held the jersey for eight stages with just 11 points.
There are two suggested routes to the polka dot jersey. One is accidental where the GC contenders pick it up by virtue of being on the attack in the mountains without really making it a priority, we’ve seen Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard win the competition this way, typically winning a mountain stage late in the third week to take over the lead.
However the “new” points system means there’s less weight given to stage finishes. Giulio Ciccone showed this second route last year after he won the competition thanks to several raids, pipping Felix Gall who collected beaucoup points at the Col de la Loze and tried to get more but the Italian was more incisive.
Giulio Ciccone is an obvious contender again. At his best he can hang with the stars in the mountains and has a searing sprint, he’s even got the better of Primož Roglič. Yet he’s also erratic and so all the better suited to stage hunting and the mountains competition.
Pello Bilbao climbs well and is punchy for a sprint to the top of a mountain but he’s never won a mountains competition in any race. Nor has Bahrain team mate Wout Poels although he was runner-up in this competition in 2021; today’s points system suits more. There’s a French saying of “never two without three” and the team has a third card and possibly an ace in Santiago Buitrago.
Felix Gall (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is here for GC but le maillot à pois could be un plan B if need be and he’s an excellent climber with his dainty high cadence style but he might have to strike out from afar on the climbs rather than sprint for the last 100 metres.
Fourth overall last was a result for Simon Yates (Jayco) but he wasn’t exactly blinded by the limelight. Having avoided relegation the team don’t have a pressing need for UCI points this season so a stage win or some podium time with the polka dots could suit as well. He’s leaving the team and his contract is sorted so he can sort of do as he pleases with the sort of freedom he probably won’t have again at Visma-LAB, his reported destination.
Romain Bardet (DSM-Firmenich) won in 2019 but it didn’t seem a joyous result, more a salvage operation after his GC ambitions ended but an impressive turnaround. He’s now here for breakaways and freedom so we’ll see for the polka dot jersey in his last Tour. Team mates Warren Barguil, the 2017 winner, and debutant Oscar Onley could feature too.
Groupama-FDJ are having a rough season and Lenny Martinez starting the Tour is proof. He was due to do the Vuelta but plans have been revised as they need results and visibility. Since he’s leaving the team there’s no point having a “take it as it goes, learn what you can” Tour. Form is the concern as he was turning stale in the Tour de Suisse so will he be fresh come the third week and the big climbs? He is an exciting rider and if he doesn’t win this year perhaps he’s bound to win at some point like his grandfather Mariano. David Gaudu can also be suited to this competition as he’s punchy and has good race craft but a discreet Dauphiné and determination to aim for GC means he’s less of an obvious pick at the outset.
Neilson Powless (EF Education-Easypost) had a good run at the jersey last year but his problem is the same again, he’s great in the mid-mountains but how to score big when it comes to the Galibier, Tourmalet or La Bonette? Richard Carapaz can take over instead while Ben Healy is strong but in a linear way, he just charges for the finish line rather than sniping points.
Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) is due a result but the highest mountains are his challenge. Likewise Stephen Williams (IPT) who is a punchy climber as we saw in this year’s Flèche Wallonne but he’s been excelling on shorter climbs, can he handle a longer effort? The other question is whether he’s retained to help Derek Gee. Second on the Grand Colombier last year Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny) is another rider who packs a punch but can he do it in the high mountains?
We’ll come to Ineos for the GC picks but can they go for this competition? It almost seems contrary to their style of towing the peloton. To some extent they’ll want to shepherd Carlos Rodriguez to a high GC position but can a rider be spared for breakaways? Tom Pidcock might find this fun.
Who won the Vuelta’s mountains competition? Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) but only after his GC plans imploded. He won’t even want to think about it now but if he can’t hang with the top contenders in the mountains then he could have kind of reset and change his goals for breakaways, stage wins and the polka dots. All this getting a bit conditional, that if X happens then Y is an option but that’s the point: it’s often the nature of the competition so including Evenepoel this way helps to illustrate the point.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) get mentions of course. They central case is that as GC contenders they stand collect the jersey on the way to something bigger; but there’s also the consolation angle where if one is sapped from the Giro or the other is short of form then stage wins and the mountains competition can help. Hopefully they are both sizzling and an open question is what will happen in the third week, will the GC hierarchy be established or contested? If it’s the latter we can see the GC contenders and their teams going all in and the likes of UAE, Visma, Bora and Ineos riding down the breakaways making things much harder for Ciccone et al.
The post Polka Dot Jersey Contenders first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A look at the points competition in the Tour de France, the contenders for the green jersey and a wider preview of the sprinters.
Learn to count
Points are awarded at the finish line and at one intermediate point in the stage:
- Flat stages (Stages 2,3,5,6,8,9,10,12,13,16) 50-30-20-18-16-14-12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3 and 2 points for the first 15 riders
- Hilly finish / Medium mountain stages (Stages 1,11,17,18): 30-25-22-19-17-15-13-11-9-7-6- 5-4-3-2 points
- Mountain Stages + individual TT (Stages 4,7,14,15,19,20,21) : 20-17-15-13-11- 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 points
- Intermediate sprints: 20-17-15-13-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 points
As said here before the pedant knows “it’s not the sprinter’s jersey, it’s the points competition” but the expert knows the flatter stages offer more points.
The past two winners of the competition are Wout van Aert and Jasper Philipsen. They make for instructive case studies. Philipsen won four stages last year which delivered him 200 points and placing on further days helped him score more, his winning streak meant the jersey followed as a consequence.
In 2022 Van Aert took three stage wins, one solo, one uphill sprint and a time trial and placed in some of the sprint stages, he built a commanding lead across the three weeks and was scoring on days when the pure sprinters were not.
These two techniques need not be exclusive paths. The dream scenario is the jersey changing shoulders regularly with every sprint and intermediate sprint contested.
This year’s route serves up more sprint finishes than last so it suits a pure sprinter even more than a baroudeur. Also the placing of the intermediate sprints tends to suits a pure sprinter, there are only a handful of stages where it is placed after a hard climb so the sprinters teams can hope to filter the breakaway most days and control who gets to contest the intermediate sprint.
Also talking of mountain stages, the old maxim of “to finish first, first finish” as the Tour has tight time cuts and this is a mountainous edition with days that could see sprinters lose beaucoup time early. The commissaires can reinstate riders in exceptional circumstances but if this happens they forfeit all of the points earned so far so adieu the green jersey.
Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) won green last year and four stages. At first glance he doesn’t look like such an easy pick for a repeat because he’s been beaten in sprints recently, whether the Belgium championships or the Belgium Tour but this happened last year too. Philipsen is more than a dragster sprinter as he can handle short climbs that other sprinters cannot and he’s now going to have Mathieu van der Poel as a leadout man who supplies a ferocious finish. Van der Poel could be crucial here as there days when he could have won for himself last year, like Limoges where Pedersen won, but he helped Philipsen try to win and place instead. Will this happen again? The Dutchman has an eye on Olympics just as he did the Worlds last year.
Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) has the potential to win but does he have the freedom? He can win days when other sprinters cannot and even harvest points from the time trials. Yet he could be on team duty for Jonas Vingegaard if the Dane is in the mix for the overall win which ought to be the case. With the team weakened by injury and illness he’s no longer a joker card but crucial in support. Plus his goal is the Olympics and just as he left the race last year to attend the birth of his child, he could have plans to leave here as well or at least back off the racing.
Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) isn’t a sprinter but he won a stage of the Dauphiné and many other bunch sprints and he’s got the versatility to win more. He’ll find faster riders ahead of him here for the flat finishes and his comparative advantage comes in an uphill sprint but there are few of these, only really Stage 8 to Colombey so he’ll have to hustle and bustle for it in the bunch sprints and breakaways alike.
Is Arnaud De Lie a sprinter? After a big crash in the Four Days of Dunkerque last year Lotto-Dstny have tried to take him away from the bunch sprints but it’s risk vs reward, no more tangling for points in 1.1 race but at the Tour de France? He needs a hillier, harder day and there are not many but he’s sometimes so powerful he can win on the flat by brute force.
Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco) is the form pick having just won the Dutch national championships but he hasn’t won a top-level sprint for a while, take your pick between the 2023 UAE Tour before that the 2022 Tour de France. Team mate Michael Matthews is likely to be stage-hunting but can contribute while Luka Mezec is a solid leadout
Fabio Jakobsen (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) was rivalling Jasper Philipsen for the title of best sprinter but he’s a case study for the volatile hierarchy among the sprinters today. Adrift in Paris-Nice and the Giro alike but comes with a strong leadout with Bram Welten and Nils Eekhoff which shows the team are backing him.
Not long ago Fernando Gavira (Movistar) was hot property among the sprinters, now he’s making a name for himself by launching early and averaging 1-2 wins a season so a win at the Tour would be a big turn around. Movistar are points hunting but UCI ranking points, not the green ones and 8th on a stage is 40 points.
Mark Cavendish (Astana) was the points winner in 2021 but all he wants is one more win to surpass Eddy Merckx as the rider with the most Tour stage win, “Project 35”. Of course if he gets into a winning streak then green follows but the central question here is whether he can get that first win. To achieve this he may sit out some intermediate sprints in order to boost his chances at the finish. Can he win a stage? Yes it is possible but the debate is whether it is probable. There six goes at a sprint finish where needs to find a way past the names cited already. The team are all in and have recruited sprint whisperer Michael Mørkøv to boost the chances.
Another sprinter who finds age just a number is Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) although he’s not won a World Tour sprint since 2020 when he took the opening stage of the Tour in Nice and works as a valuable leader for the team. Søren Wærenskjold is a great leadout rider who can win sprints but not quite at this level, likewise Jonas Abrahamsen.
Intermarché-Wanty are struggling this season. Once upstarts who’d try longshot breakaway moves, they’ve sharpened their focus with the likes of Biniam Girmay but he’s an infrequent winner who hasn’t show the same form of the 2022 Giro when he was outsmarting Van der Poel. He can win bunch sprints and so can team mate Gerben Thijssen so it’ll be interesting to see how they ride although we’ve seen the team before happy to have multiple riders in the mix rather than back one.
Once a green jersey winner, Sam Bennett is back to winning ways with Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale but he and the team would surely sign today for a stage win, as we saw recently it’s one thing to storm to wins in Dunkerque, another in the Dauphiné. Likewise Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) who has been through some introspection lately about his career and goals and seems to have come out with more wins but how to land a stage here, it would probably be his crowning triumph, topping his recent Suisse stage win. The same for Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain) who has started five grand tours but only finished one but he’s a sharp rider who can win World Tour level sprints but has yet to take a grand tour win.
Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-Easypost) is another versatile sprinter who can win on hard days but risks being swamped by faster sprinters as his team don’t bring a big train in support. Arnaud Démare (Arkéa-Samsic) was losing speed at Groupama-FDJ before his transfer last summer and his best result is a fifth place this year after illness spoilt his spring. Likewise for Pascal Ackermann (IPT) who has moved teams but hasn’t won for a year now both are not easy picks for a stage win but will hope for an opening.
As for Tadej Pogačar (UAE)? He’s good, but surely not that good? He was fourth in the points competition last year so he can be up there if no one sprinter wins multiple stages but the system is tilted to the sprinters so he’d have to have a superb Tour just to be in the mix. We’ll get more into his chances soon…
The post The Green Jersey Contenders first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Want to know when every Tour de France stage is on? Then here’s the calendar to view or better, download to your phone.
All stages come with the day’s timing from KM0 to the forecast finish so you can plan any meetings around them. These have been entered in the local time for the race but normally this should adjust to your device’s time zone. Obviously the finish time will vary according to the day, the used here is the central forecast from the organisers.
To help if you need to plan more there’s a subjective star rating from 1-3 to suggest the most important or exciting days although anything can happen at anytime.
Both the men’s Tour and the women’s Tour are included here… but the timings for the women’s race are not published yet so for now these stages are just listed as daily events. By default the alerts and alarms are switched off but double-check after importing.
iCal
An iCal is a calendar file that you can store on your phone or electronic diary like Outlook or Calendar. There are several ways to get this on to your computer or phone.
Subscribe and get automatic updates including the timing for the women’s stages: The recommended option is to subscribe by copying the iCal URL:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/7b22538f131493ca9d5e9ec90a958258d2c71cba37a630472900a42620850791%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
The descriptions below should help but with device and software updates they might not always be the exact path.
- If you use MacOS copy the URL… and open the Calendar app. Then got to File > New Calendar Subscription…) and paste in the link and you’re done
- iPhone/iPad users should push and hold down a finger here , wait for the pop up message and select “Copy Link”. Then on your device go to settings > calendar > accounts > add account > other > add subscribed calendar > paste in the URL in the server field
- If you use Microsoft Outlook on the web copy the URL and then go to Calendar/Calendar icon > Open Calendar > From Internet > and paste the URL to subscribe > OK > Yes
- Google Calendar: If you use Google Calendar then click on the icon on the bottom-right of the calendar up at the top of the page. Note this method can work with Android phones when the iCal file might not although you might need the Google Sync calendar app
- You can also download the tiny iCal file and import this too, right-click here and save.
Hopefully you can figure it out. In case anyone worries about downloading files from a sports blog, rest assured all these files are generated and hosted by Google.
A reminder that if you’d like something similar for the whole cycling season then you’ll find this at inrng.com/calendar.
The post Tour de France iCal Calendar first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Eddy Merckx, The Cannibal by Daniel Friebe
Having reviewed “Eddy Merckx The Cannibal” soon after publication a decade ago, it’s been back on this summer’s reading list in the light of Tadej Pogačar’s results and frequent comparisons to Eddy Merckx. Plus it’s Merckx’s birthday today, 79 years old..
With Tadej Pogačar racking up wins and often by a comfortable margin there are inevitable comparisons with Eddy Merckx, the reference point in the sport. These are often quantitative comparisons, such as the first rider to do this-or-that since Merckx, the biggest winning margin since Merckx, a plethora of what sports fans call statistics and what statisticians often call anecdotes.
What’s enjoyable with this book is that there’s so much on the qualitative side, it’s full of tales and not numbers. Yes Merckx wins often, he wins big and he really hates losing. Here it’s the stories and even the psychology that makes it an entertaining and informative read. As an example one of Merckx’s masterpieces was the the stage from Luchon to Mourenx in the 1969 Tour de France, he won it by almost eight minutes but Raymond Riotte put it better, “he was in the shower and we still had 15 kilometres to ride” which says more than the actual eight minute winning margin that day.
The author didn’t interview Merckx – a “blessing” writes the Friebe – but instead spoke many of his challengers and plenty who got crushed at the time, seeing their income drying up but are nowadays happy with their lot. Because of the many voices it’s a useful corrective. To reprise the Mourenx win again, Merckx often says he attacked because he heard his team mate Martin Van Den Bossche was leaving the squad and he didn’t like this act of disloyalty and, so in a fit of pique, chased down Van Den Bossche on the Tourmalet and then he kept going to the famous win:
“We’d learned the evening before that he was going to join the Molteni team, that was a hard thing to take, a disappointment because he could have waited for another moment…. …it was to deny him the points for the mountains competition that I attacked on the Tourmalet, before finding myself alone at the front”
– L’Equipe special edition “Impera-Tour”, June 2024
But Van Den Bossche is interviewed here and says Merckx did not know about the contract for the following year and was just being Merckx in trying to win everything going. Who is right? That’s not clear but Merckx is able to give his version events more often than the others, the winners get others to write their history.
The book touches on Merckx’s popularity. When the first lunar landings were happening Merckx was regularly sharing the front page with the Apollo module or Messrs Armstrong and Aldrin. “Fans” would leap over fences to get into his garden and steal his jerseys drying on the washing line.
Rivalries and challengers abound. Merckx won plenty but others were able to find opportunities. What’s interesting is how Merckx’s arrival on the scene and some of his wild moves at the start set the scene for years to come. Even Merckx later admits some of his long range attacks were reckless but with hindsight these cowed the others who saw him as near-unbeatable so they often didn’t try when it could have worked from time to time to challenge him directly.
Today the lack of rivalry is remarkable, to the point where it’s invisible. Framed against the tales in this book it’s arguably the big contrast between now and then. Yes Merckx is wearing a wool jersey and pulling chicken legs out of his musette as race food while today it’s lycra racesuits and gels. But it’s the personal clashes that stand out from the past era.
Pogačar may be the master of so much but Jonas Vingegaard has beaten him twice in the Tour de France. Yet there’s little rivalry between the two, just exchanges of polite words at the foot of the podium truck and talk of respect. Which is pleasant and good for them but it may not make for a sizzling read in decades to come. Similarly Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel are arch rivals on the road and probably would not go on holiday together but it’s hardly Merckx vs. Rik van Looy or Roger Roger De Vlaeminck and the book puts it all in stark relief.
The Verdict
Enjoyable a second time over, although it pays to sit down and read one chapter at a time rather than do more in a sitting so as not to be overwhelmed by the list of triumphs. There are other books to enjoy, William Fotheringham’s biography the other choice in English; in French there’s Merckx’s own “Mes Carnets Routes” diary, or Philippe Brunel’s biography and more. They surely all suggest that Merckx’s domination was near-absolute, both in terms of results but also the mentality and the way he imposed himself on the sport.
The recent Giro did see Pogačar run off with the race and he’s been doing this in other races like Strade Bianche and the Volta a Catalunya; yet Merckx did throughout the season, for many years and often infuriating his rivals. Pogačar hopefully won’t have it so easy this July.
More books to read at inrng.com/books
The post Book Re-Review: Eddy Merckx The Cannibal first appeared on The Inner Ring.
As teams turn over as many stones as possible in search of performance gains, what if they were able to buy their own bikes rather be tied to sponsors and find the best combination for frames, wheels, components and tires for them, even to be able to make choices to suit individual riders?
Pro cycling has a settled model where teams are funded by title sponsors, they rely on income from the likes of a billionaire, a fossil fuel rich state or an adhesives manufacturer. The budget is also topped up by secondary sponsors and first among these is the bike supplier who not only furnish the bicycles but compete for the right to do this by bidding with cash on top. The going rate varies by team.
This snippet from Groupama-FDJ’s accounts showed Lapierre, a brand belonging to the Accell Group, was paying €1.5 million a year. Presumably it costs more to sponsor the very top teams, think Pinarello’s deal with Ineos.
It’s lucrative but what if the real luxury was a team that did not need this obligation and could instead scour the market for the goods it wants?
The freedom to chose can go far. A team can have different road bikes and time trial frames or indeed chose different road bikes for different days and even vary the road bike for a sprint stage according to the type of rider.
As ex-pro Alex Howes remarked the other day, the EF team a few years ago found its Cannondale bikes with Mavic wheels were not as fast as they liked, despite the frame and wheels each testing well in the wind tunnel individually. But put them together and it wasn’t quite working. Put Vision wheels in the same frame and it worked better in the wind tunnel and on the road. You can see a similar thing on the same team where some riders use the wide “Darth Vader” helmet and others a more pointed one because there’s no single best helmet here, rather it depends on a rider’s position and their morphology.
This ability to tailor choices is an interesting angle here. Instead of a team being able to choose between two helmets, what if they could find the perfect frame, the perfect wheels and everything else to suit the rider rather than being tied to one product line? There’s a significant gain to be had here.
To state the obvious and forestall inevitable comments, no the bike isn’t going to transform the fortunes of a team. But it can help. Yet kit from the frame to wheels to clothing, including helmets is a component of performance. Instead of being obliged to use certain products because of sponsorship constraints, a team that has the choice can find gains that are off limits to rivals. Being wealthy enough to choose is a definition of luxury.
None of this is new though. Years ago when racing bikes were made from steel tubing it was common to have a popular consumer brand name on the frame like Peugeot, MBK or Raleigh but the frame itself was made to order from an artisan. But the point then was it was hidden, the argument here is that a team could openly shop for the best kit rather than mask items. You can’t disguise it these days.
It does happen to an extent today. Ineos have Shimano as an official sponsor but they’ll use other wheels at times, like Princeton. Many riders use custom TT handlebars rather than stock from sponsors. Less visible is teams having one nutrition sponsor but using other gels during a race.
However the difference here is not to have some stealth frame masquerading as a sponsor’s product. It’s the very opposite. Instead to shop for anything going and use this if it suits. For the sake of branding and team cohesion all the bikes used by a team could be in team colours.
It’s easier said than done and off limits to some teams. UAE might be swimming in money but a key influence behind the team is Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. “TBZ” is a busy man being part of the ruling family and the country’s spy chief but another role is a venture capitalist and with this he effectively owns Colnago via a company called Chimera. So UAE’s backers want Colnago on the podium, it is part of the package. The Lease A Bike co-sponsor of Visma is part of the same group as PON which owns Cervélo so that is unbreakable too. Ineos could afford to do it, possibly others. But also at the lower end of the market, a team that doesn’t earn much might consider it as a selling point, “we’re not the richest but we invest in the best kit”, a means to attract riders looking to turn around their career who knows they can get the best out of themselves.
The financial cost of forgoing technical sponsors is obviously the big hurdle. The millions banked can fund a team leader alone. Yet some of this problem could be mitigated by deal making. If a team does identify the “fastest skinsuit” and then buys this for their team, it’s a big boost for the company that produces it. Likewise for the best wheels, frame and so on. So much so that the team might be able to say “supply us, even sponsor us”. So instead of the usual phoney “Brand X is the choice of Team Y” ads it could be very valuable because of the authenticity.
Conclusion
As teams leave no stone unturned to find legal advantages and spend big money on performance staff and training camps, what if they could rip up the traditional model of bike sponsorship and buy what they wanted? No matter how good a product is, being able to choose and mix-and-match to suit conditions, types of races or different riders can surely bring gains and possibly benefits to outweigh the costs of lost sponsorship revenue.
This holds true for the teams at the very top who have generous title sponsors who demand the very best results in return. But it could also work for the most modest teams given the amount they can command in the sponsorship market is not so big. It need not be so costly financially as if a team really did chose a product and even publish why they like it then the suppliers would be delighted and surely supply it for free.
The post Buy Your Own Bike first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Want all the Tour de France stage profiles on one page? Here you go with some commentary on each stage too.
From now you can also find all these profiles and much more like race rules like time bonuses, the points scale for the green and polka-dot jerseys, time cuts and the prize money at inrng.com/tour bookmark it, or use the link from the menu at the top of the page.
Stage 1 – Saturday 29 June
Tirreno-Adriatico in a day, the race crosses the Apennines with a succession of climbs. With 3,600m of vertical gain, do we call this a mountain stage? Last July’s Basque opener went to the GC contenders and this is harder still. It will make for a nervous day with many worried the smallest of mistakes in positioning or handling could spoil everything.
Stage 2 – Sunday 30 June
Less mountainous than the previous day but with the best saved for last, two ascents of the spectacular Basilica di San Luca used in the one-day Giro dell’Emilia race before the finish in Bologna.
Stage 3 – Monday 1 July
A 230km stage, the longest of the race but with plenty to fill the airtime for TV viewers with talk of Paulo Conte, Fausto Coppi, or the wine and truffles of Alba before reaching Torino, or “Turin” to the French for a sprint, or “un sprint” as they say in French.
Stage 4 – Tuesday 2 July
Four days in and now a giant mountain stage to take the race back into France. Inevitable given the race has to get to France and they can hardly go via the coast to Nice. Still, they could have taken softer options. Instead it’s Sestriere and the Montgenèvre, they’re two long climbs you could drive a team bus up, ditto the Lautaret as well but you’ll have to park the bus here as here on it’s a much smaller road and steep as it passes 2,600m in altitude before the fast descent to Valloire, if a rider can crest this pass alone they’ve a good chance of staying away for the win.
Stage 5 – Wednesday 3 July
A sprint stage through the Alps rather than over them with some unmarked climbs along the way before a finish in Saint-Vulbas on the banks of the Rhone… and the shadow of the local nuclear power station.
Stage 6 – Thursday 4 July
A gourmet start in Macon passing plenty of vineyards and the home of chardonnay grapes plus more before a long procession to Dijon, mustard capital of France and beyond. All for a likely sprint.
Stage 7 – Friday 5 July
An important time trial on the Route des Grands Crus, celebrating the Côte de Nuit vineyards and on a course with some climbing and smaller roads too.
Stage 8 – Saturday 6 July
A sprint stage but a tiring one on roads that rise and fall all the time. French TV will go big on the history perhaps leaving international viewers flummoxed as Colombey-les-deux-Églises is famous for Charles De Gaulle, the exiled war leader and two-time President who famously – in France at least – came to see the Tour go past in his retirement only for the race to stop and pay tribute, the first and only time it’s halted like this (there have been roadside protests, rider strikes and other incidents but not a decision just to stop, chat and then race on). Anyway expect to hear this story and get helicopter shots of the Lorraine Cross before the sprint trains gather speed.
Stage 9 – Sunday 7 July
The most northerly stage of this year’s race and it starts and finishes in the same place, rare for a grand tour stage. The headline is 14 sections of gravel totalling 32km, of which nine are kept for the final 70km. Gravel is a catch-all label for unpaved roads, here it’s the same roads used by the women in the 2022 Tour when Marlen Reusser won and Mavi Garcia had a nightmare. It provides spectacle – perfect for a Sunday far from the mountains – and also a talking point: a chance to copy-paste old “does ~~pavé~~ gravel belong in the Tour de France?” debates. Some GC riders will fear this stage and the fear of the fear will heighten anticipation. There is a random element where, the wheel of fortune for some might spin, for others it’ll puncture at the worst moment. The hardest part of the stage is in the first half.
Stage 10 – Tuesday 9 July
After the first rest day things ease into a sprint stage to Saint-Amand in the middle of France, literally so as Bruères-Allichamps is supposed to be one of the geographic centres of France. Normally a quiet day but the Tour came here in 2013, the wind got up and the peloton was cut to ribbons.
Stage 11 – Wednesday 10 July
A big day for the breakaway, this should see a fierce start that could rage for hours as the move fights to go clear. The second half is a copy of the 2016 stage won by Greg van Avermaet during his golden summer, taking the stage, yellow jersey and later on Olympic gold so we’ll see who has ideas for the same here as they cross the Auvergne volcanos. It can also be a GC day as the Pas de Peyrol is a stiff climb.
Stage 12 – Thursday 11 July
200km to a sprint on a day with terrain that ought to encourage slow cycling and probably siestas for TV viewers amid scenery and – late arrival of summer permitting – sunflower fields.
Stage 13 – Friday 12 July
More siesta cycling is likely but the finish today has some climbs to spice things up before the inevitable, unavoidable finish in Pau but via a few late climbs.
Stage 14 – Saturday 13 July
Just 150km but packed with climbing. 70km on the flat is torture for the climbers hoping to go in the breakaway. Things start to climb with the Gavarnie valley leading to the towering Tourmalet. The charming Hourquette d’Ancizan is next before a descent to the valley and only a few kilometres on the valley floor before the surprisingly hard climb to Pla d’Adet with long 10-12% ramps at the start.
Stage 15 – Sunday 14 July
4,800m of vertical gain, the most of all the stages but here spread out over 198km and a 14 July festival. It’s up the Peyresourde via the steeper western side before the Menté and Portet d’Aspet via their steeper sides too. Next is the tricky Col d’Agnes which crosses over to the Port de Lers. A descent in two parts, the steep bit past the waterfall then it flattens out and then comes the valley floor, all plenty of time for the final drinks and gels. The Plateau de Beille summit finish has been called the Alpe d’Huez of the Pyrenees but that’s a stretch, it does start steep and has some wide hairpins but that’s about it, no ski resort at the top, just a car park – there’s a building… but it burned down recently – and no comparable views on the way. Selective though.
Stage 16 – Tuesday 16 July
A sprint stage with inevitable “watch out if the Tramontane and Mistral winds blow” warnings.
Stage 17 – Wednesday 17 July
This could be a stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné with the long Eygues valley road from Nyons to Gap, the Col Bayard and then the combo of the Col du Noyer and the Superdévoluy… the finish did feature in the 2016 Dauphiné, and then as now the Noyer is the superior climb, breathtaking twice over for the scenery and the 13% section before the top.
Stage 18 – Thursday 18 July
This could go to the sprinters as it’s not a mountain stage even if it’s in the middle of the Alps. But by now anyone who weighs 70kg or more knows this is their last chance for a stage win and teams will send rider after rider in the breakaway, think of last July’s hectic stage to Champagnole won by Matej Mohorič for the template. It rides past the Serre Ponçon lake, scenic for cyclists and a windy spot for kitesurfers before the Demoiselles Coiffées climb before the finish 3.9km at 5.2% to split things up further. The approach to Barcelonnette is not the main road but uses a trickier side road too.
Stage 19 – Friday 19 July
4,600m of vertical gain which is beaucoup for just 145km and where the opening 20km are flat. The Col de Vars is much harder than the 5.7% average suggests, you can spot the flat middle section and the opening part to the Col de la Viste is more like 10%. Then comes the mighty Cime de Bonette at 2,802m which is over an hour of climbing and a good part of this above 2,000m altitude, daunting and normally a slog but the short distance stage might tempt moves some, otherwise Isola 2000 is the most of the Col de la Lombarde and a steep but steady climb to the ski station used by plenty of Nice and Monaco pro cyclists for altitude training.
Stage 20 – Saturday 20 July
Plenty of déjà vu from Paris-Nice on a day with very little rest. On paper this promises more fireworks with long climbs and twisty descents. But could it be a stage too far if some GC contenders sit tight fearing the following day’s time trial? Or the second order effect that they might hold back on Stage 19 too so that they have reserves for Stage 20 in case they’re needed here and for the TT, a scenario we’ve seen in many a back-loaded Giro; a flat stage would be a harder sell. Fingers crossed it’s close on GC and everyone’s up for it. It could be easier in July than March with improved form, it could roasting hot too.
Stage 21 – Sunday 21 July
A time trial via the Col d’Eze, the old ending of Paris-Nice. Just in case you’re wondering why the Tour de France finishes in Nice instead of Paris, it’s because of the Olympics, not so much a calendar clash, more the Tour finishing elsewhere gives Parisian policiers a rest before a busy period.
This is no parade-criterium stage but could be the race decider, that’s the dream scenario. It’s first time the race has ended with a time trial since 1989 when the Tour de France celebrated the 200th anniversary of the French revolution with a journey from Versailles to the capital and of course it was the closest-ever edition. The profile just doesn’t do the course justice, no way is it a level climb up and a fast descent back down, it’s more technical with plenty of rhythm changes and where taking the right line downhill wins time.
The post Tour de France Stage-by-Stage first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Primož Roglič won, but just. None of the main GC contenders will come out delighted even if others are satisfied with the work last week, especially Derek Gee.
An abbreviated review with no pictures because of travel in a place with little internet coverage
Has Decathlon-Ag2r’s golden season slowed? On the opening day Sam Bennett was beaten and the next day Bruno Armirail was caught within sight of the finish when until now everything was going there way. The more rational explanation is Lidl-Trek had the beefier lead-out for the opening day and Mads Pedersen timed his sprint better to win; the next day Armirail did well to keep going out in front for so long until he was engulfed by the bunch within sight of the finish and Magnus Cort took the stage, holding off Primož Roglič.
Derek Gee’s win on Stage 3 was impressive but made even more sense with hindsight, he was able to make a move off team mate Krists Neilands and then outplayed Romain Grégoire for the win. Knowing what kind of climbing ability he’d show in the coming days we can see things bode well for him for the rest of the summer.
The time trial to Neulise was Remco Evenepoel’s day, the stage win and the yellow jersey after he beat specialist Josh Tarling and the uphill finish to town making the difference. Roglič was the only rider within a minute and he was followed by Matteo Jorgenson, Oier Lazkano and Derek Gee, again we can see these rides in a different light now. At the time they were solid performances but now part of a package with added range in the mountains from Lazkano and Gee. Continuing with the helmet visor of hindsight from the day Carlos Rodriguez lost 1m41 seconds or almost three seconds per kilometre so as good as we could climb later in the race this penalty put him out of the GC race.
Stage 4 looked like a sprint stage on paper with a chance to the breakaway given some hilly roads in the final. Coming off the last categorised climb of the day the road down to Marennes was soaked and a mass crash happened. Riders were doing between 60-70km/h with the only mitigation being that many slid out rather than hit hard. But there was mass damage, so much so that the race could not go on. There must have been a run on medical gauze that day or the next as team doctors replenished supplies to tend to the all the abrasion.
Laurens Huys, Adne Holter, Axel Mariault, Remi Rochas were out, as were Milan Menten and Luke Durbridge who reportedly crashed before. But so were Dylan van Baarle and Steven Kruijswijk, yet more bad luck for Visma-LAB as two key lieutenants look to have the kind of injuries that mean July is spent in rehab. At this race the team will be asking themselves whether they just stay on Mount Teide all season and fly in for the grand tours and Monuments; but the calculation is not new as during their Roglič years they weighed up the benefits of racing pre-Tour or not and in some years got their leader to race precisely to hone his peloton craft.
The Marennes crash was a downer three times over, for the injuries sustained in the moment and the resultant lack of racing; for the impact it had on riders during the rest of the race with many left sore and inflammed and unable to show us what they were capable of; and worse because of the impact on the rest of the summer. Many more riders would leave the race with injuries and others are left nursing injuries that will need time to heal just when they want to be putting the finishing touches on their training.
The mountain stages were still instructive. Roglič said he struggled to put his hand in his dorsal pockets to reach food but still managed to win two stages in a row. We’ll come to the third day for him in a moment. Derek Gee was the major revelation and active too, making a move in the final kilometre. Alas Remco Evenepoel was struggling here but relatively, he looked a little cherubic in the cheekbones and his boss Patrick Lefevere put it more bluntly writing that he needs to shed 1-1.5kg before the Tour. Back-of-envelope calculations see losing 1kg is equivalent to gaining 20W which probably closes the gap to the best so there’s hope for him to improve, especially as he was nursing a shoulder injury too. But this means he’s trying to get his body to break down, it’s delicate now.
This was Roglič’s second win in the race and quite the contrast. The first in 2022 meant he went into the Tour de France as a top favourite, even if at the Plateau de Solaison his junior colleague Jonas Vingegaard was on the up and assume leadership after Roglič’s first week “mummie” crash. Now Roglič is leader of his team but instead of riding away from the field he was fighting to save his race lead. So he wins but did not float away with things.
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The Verdict
Lively at times. The Dauphiné has had some gripping editions when the result has been overturned on the last day. Recent editions (2021-2023) have lacked this drama so to see the overall result uncertain until the final moments added some spice but the suspense only came in the final five kilometres as Roglič faded. It probably won’t make the highlights of 2024.
The race was spoiled by two crashes. The first was the infamous incident in the Tour of the Basque Country that meant Jonas Vingegaard was not racing and Remco Evenepoel is still in rehab. The second was on the way to St Priest. It had several effects, on riders, the race and possibly the Tour de France. From the outside the frustration is trying to apportion form versus injury, would Roglič’s fade on Col des Glières have happened normally or was it due to the crash injury, inflammation and fatigue? Likewise with Remco Evenepoel, was his performance in the mountains as he expected as he makes his way back, or temporarily derailed by injury?
Carlos Rodriguez probably got one of his finest win so far and this bodes well for the Tour de France. The time trial cost him plenty but a year ago he was further off the pace and closed the gap by the Tour, if he can repeat this he’s got to be on the list of podium contenders, especially with Ineos behind him. They’d surely sign today for third place.
Derek Gee was the revelation of the week. His Giro last year with long raids and endurance in the mountains showed plenty and told us he was an amateur ornithologist but at the Dauphiné he soared to new heights. Mentions to Oier Lazkano for added depth, Callum Scotson for climbing performances and Javier Romo too.
While the final result was the second closest this century, just eight seconds it should also be defined by just 94 finishers, the least since 2010.
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The final stage of the race and it’s mountainous but not as severe as the past two days. The finish is earlier once again.
Soler energy: two stage wins in row for Roglič. Which was the more surprising? Two days ago he didn’t seem so lively but still delivered. Yesterday it looked like the win was promised to Marc Soler who had over five minutes coming off the final descent, bookmakers must have been giving even odds or worse for his triumph.
Only it was Soler, a fascinating rider capable of bold moves but also supernova-style implosions and we got the later as he cracked, he shattered on the final climb. Some of this happened because Bora-hansgrohe applied the pressure but still, five minutes in 20km.
Once the final kilometre arrived the result from Roglič seemed inevitable, like watching a drama where you know a particular character has the plot armour to win. So it was and once he gets a small gap nobody can seem to come past. It was the kind of riding that, with hindsight must have his ex-Visma management green with envy, although presumably if he stayed with them he’d have fallen off a ladder while changing a lightbulb etc. Still Dutch management can console themselves with Matteo Jorgenson who was second on the stage and second overall, a strong signing and instant delivery.
Movistar ought to be delighted with Oier Lazkano finishing fourth, he was even attacking in the finale – in case you are wondering there is only one Lazkano in the pro peloton, the same rider who was crushing the cobbles earlier in the spring – but he’s leaving and on many teams the moment a rider is known to be leaving they become a secondary presence. One place the Spaniard him was Derek Gee. Javier Romo did a solid ride for Movistar while Callum Scotson’s impressive performance to Le Collet d’Allevard didn’t repeat but he was still 15th. Meanwhile Remco Evenepoel was adrift and again it’s hard to apportion form versus injury.
The Route: after a downhill start on a big road it’s around to the Col de Forclaz de Montmin, a scenic pass that has been used before to take the race away from the opal shores of Lake Annecy. It’s got a soft middle section before kicking up before the top again.
From here on a series of hilly roads. It’s easy to skip past them but they’re still roads that would be decisive in many another race, it’s just they are dwarfed but today’s big climbs.
The Salève a long climb with steep sections all the way to the top and then a balcony section across before a more gradual descent.
The Finish: 9.7km at 7.1% but the first seven kilometres are regularly over 10%. After the gradual valley road approach the road kicks up and starts climbing the flank of the valley. It’s steep from the start and on a narrow road. It’s like this for 7km to the mountain pass and from here the road drops, the race profile doesn’t capture this, and then it kicks back up to the line.
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The Contenders: Primoz Roglič (Bora-hansgrohe) for three in row? The finish suits with the uphill run to the line and his team are riding well. If there’s a sprint among him and the rest it’s hard to see him losing.
Breakaway picks include Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), Davide Formolo (Movistar) and Sep Kuss (Visma-LAB) on a route that gives the breakaway a good chance to form and get clear.
| | – | | | – | | | – |
Weather: grey skies and the increased chance of rain, 21°C.
TV: another early finish, forecast arriva; time is 2.50pm CEST with the last 90 minutes on TV. This frees up France TV’s schedules for the Roland Garros tennis tournament.
There’s a small irony as the tennis tournament is named after the stadium it takes place in which is named after Roland Garros who is celebrated as a first world war aviator. He had little to do with tennis and in fact enjoyed cycling, and become French schools champion in his youth but under the pseudonym of “Danlor” (an anagram of Roland). So all this clay court to-and-fro is a tribute to a cyclist.
Postcard from the Plateau des Glières
Much of today’s stage is on the same route as the final stage of the 2013 Tour de l’Avenir. While winners of the race are supposed to go onto great things, the 2013 edition was won by Spain’s Rubén Fernández who a decade later is still in a pro peloton having just finished the Giro for Cofidis but yet to land a win. What’s helped him along the way is consistency, he’s had many top-10 finishes and so he’s reliable and when it comes to scoring points, valuable.
The stage that day was won by Julian Alaphilippe who broke a spoke on his back wheel and despite a wobbly wheel went solo for the win ahead of Matej Mohorič. Adam Yates finished second and brother Simon took two stages; the prologue went to Alexis Gougeard, also with Cofidis today. Caleb Ewan took two sprint stages. Michael Valgren took the other stage which went to Albertville where yesterday’s stage started and it was a remarkable win for he and the Danish team attacked together in a coordinated move on the Col du Frêne and only the USA’s Gavin Mannion could follow. The short version of what happened then was the Danish team rode a team time trial to the finish with riders peeling off to leave Valgren to outsprint Mannion, holding off the bunch by seconds. It would be fun to see a team repeat this kind of move… but easier said than done.
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Another early finish, another tough day in the Alps with a tricky summit finish.
Roglič takes over: the stage win and yellow jersey for Primož Roglič. He managed a victory salute but said his arm and shoulder were sore from recent crashes, even reaching into his jersey pockets was difficult but he was able to get into the drops just before the finish and out-sprint Giulio Ciccone, his only rival after Aleksandr Vlasov had loyally helped tow his leader clear of the fray.
It was an usual finish with many riders cracking, presumably paying for yesterday’s crashes. Among them Remco Evenepoel who was not able to respond to the moves and rode his own time trial to the finish with a bit of help from Mikel Landa; frustrating as we can’t apportion form and injury to the result. The surprise was Derek Gee in fourth; although Oier Lazkano was not far behind in 15th place.
Roglič is now 19 seconds ahead of Evenepoel with Jorgenson and Gee around the minute mark so it looks advantage Roglič from here on but just, as he still looks sore.
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The Route: 155km and 4,200 of vertical gain. It’s up the valley out of Albertville to Beaufort, home of the eponymous cheese and then the scenic Col des Saisies with the descent via the Crest-Voland side. Then it’s through Megève and down to Sallanches and along the valley.
The Côte d’Araches is a new climb for the Dauphiné, handy as the race can steer away from the main road but scenic as it is the first part of the Col de Pierre Carrée which leads to the Flaine ski resort and cut into a cliff on the way up. After a balcony section across that’s not really flat it’s down to Taninges and around the Col de la Ramaz. This has featured in the Tour de France before and is a tough climb, long but just awkward as it winds its way up through the meadows and gets steeper towards the top where there’s a tunnel before flatting out for the Praz-de-Lys plateau and then a final kick up to the pass.
A fast descent leads back to the valley floor and then the new climb.
The Finish: Samoëns 1600 climbs on the opposite side of the valley to the Joux-Plane. It’s a tough road to a ski station; this climb is often known as the Plateau des Saix and it’s a tough climb, forums abound with adjectives like “terrible”, “wild”, “infernal”. It’s 10km at 9% and after two gentle kilometres it gets well over 10% once in the woodland and stays like this until 5km to go. The slope eases but only just and remains a tough climb up to the finish.
The Contenders: Primož Roglič is the obvious pick, he out-climbed everyone yesterday and Bora-hansgrohe have a strong team here. He didn’t look too incisive on the climb, his jumps are usually more trenchant but all the same the climbing rate yesterday was high. Aleksandr Vlasov has a chance here because he is climbing well and his boss this week can help out.
Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) has a chance if he can get some space, he’s 11th on GC so doesn’t have to be marked in the final kilometres.
Ineos could hold the key to the stage, if they join Bora in chasing then this can help contain the breakaway and Carlos Rodriguez and Laurens De Plus have a shot at the stage.
Derek Gree impressed yesterday but this is a harder test with the Ramaz + Saix.
| | Roglič, Vlasov | | | Ciccone | | | De Plus, Rodriguez |
Weather: rain clearing with sunshine later, 22°C in the valleys.
TV: the finish is forecast for 2.50pm CEST.
Postcard from Samoëns
Samoëns (“sam-wan”) sits almost at the end of a valley in the Alps. You can keep cycling beyond but the road ends soon. Instead the usual option for cycle tourists and the Tour de France alike is to do a left turn out of the town.
This is where the Joux-Plane starts, over 11km at 8.5% which is plenty but it is one of those climbs that feels harder than the stats suggest, probably because the steep start can take its toll and the mid-sections seem to climb through meadows with none of the usual visual cues to aim for: no hairpins, no road cut into a cliff. Plus it is south-facing and hot on a summer’s day.
Samoëns is maybe not the place you’d sit down for long lunch before tackling the climb. Which poses a challenge as plenty pass through but few stop, let alone stay. So today puts a “new” climb in the spotlight. Samoëns name with “1600” indicates the altitude in metres. It probably sounded like a boast when the infrastructure was built but today it could equally evoke slushy slopes.
For the cyclists it’s going to be a tough climb and if the Dauphiné can put it on the map, it might be a matter of time until it appears in the Tour de France too. Regular appearances are need to make a climb really famous but just a couple of visits to Samoëns 1600 might suffice to encourage more cyclists to think of this as a destination: come for the Joux-Plane and Morzine, stay for the Samoens 1600.
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The Dauphiné reaches the Alps and the first of three days with summit finishes.
Neutralised: it looked like a sprint finish was on the cards until a crash on a descent before the village of Marennes with 22km to go felled about 50 riders, to grab the brakes was to slide out of control but seeing others sliding meant more grabbed the brakes.
The race was neutralised while medics attended to the wounded, a lot of riders with torn clothing and skin abrasions but Dylan van Baarle and Steven Kruijswijk looked worse off and they were among the eight riders not to finish the stage, although some of these had crashed earlier. The race neutralised, the rest of the peloton was escorted the finish and that was that.
The Route: a stage in two parts, first plenty of flat and rolling roads, the marked climb out of La Côte-Saint-André is real and at KM50 the race tackles the small Col de la Rossatière.
With 70km to go the race climbs into the Chartreuse Alps and tackles the Col du Granier via Saint-Pierre-d’Entremontier, listed at 5.4% it’s more like 6-7% most of the time but with a flat section halfway which softens the gradient. The hard part is the descent, the steepest road of the Granier is used.
The Finish: the Collet d’Allevard is a ski station summit finish meaning a regular, engineered road but it’s steeper than usual for the French Alps with a selective 8.1%. It was last used in 2011 when Joaquim “Purito” Rodriguez won.
The Contenders: a pinch of salt for all picks with riders wounded. Taking to the start today doesn’t mean everyone is 100%, even a bad night’s sleep because of raw skin can spoil things for today. Primož Roglič (Bora-hansgrohe) has fallen twice already but he’s stoically joking about using up his stock of team kit. He’s in from from the time trial and should be fast for taking the stage.
Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain) is an excellent climber and “only” two minutes down. That’s not much but tells us he did a great time trial so the form is there.
Among the breakaway picks Clément Berthet (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale), Tiesj Benoot (Visma-LAB) and Davide Formolo come to mind but all three might prefer tomorrow or the day after.
| | Roglič | | | Buitrago | | | Ciccone, Rodriguez, Kuss |
Weather: 24°C but a strong chance of rain.
TV: the finish is forecast for 5.10pm CEST.
Postcard from the Gorges du Guiers
In between the intermediate sprint in Les Echelles and the Col du Granier is the Gorges du Guiers where the road climbs up a narrow canyon. This is probably the location of a famous photograph.
You may have seen this photo of Bernard Hinault before. There’s a lot going on. He’s wearing the yellow jersey and we can tell it is the Tour de France by the “Banania” sponsor of the jersey. His race number 11 corresponds to the 1985 edition. He’s sporting Rayban glasses, something that became his “look” in a time when few riders wore sunglasses.
Hinault’s stopping to urinate, the photo captures things mid-flow which is unusual but typical Hinault machismo. Stopping to pee often marks a tactical moment in the race: when the yellow jersey pauses for a leak the peloton is often expected to ease up. It’s not ordained, there has to be some sense and consensus, for example the breakaway has gone and everyone, perhaps reluctantly for some, has sat up. If the yellow jersey can stop, others will take their cue and so we have a tactical moment.
But where was it taken? He took the jersey on Stage 8 that year and kept it to Paris. The terrain looks mountainous and the addition of infrastructure with the white fence and the zinc railing below suggest the Alps. As Hinault has stopped it’s probably early in the stage. By a process of familiarity and elimination it’s the Gorges du Guiers by the Pas de Frou, note the postcard with the white fencing and the darker railing below.
Today’s stage won’t quite climb past this point as the road has been changed, the old road was literally hanging over the steep cliffs in places and subject to heavy rockfall. A tunnel has been built. The old portion and the white fencing still exist though, they’re just fenced off for motorists.
Hinault looks in command, surveying the scene. While Fred Vichot had attacked on the descent – his thing – the bunch was relatively calm until a hectic finale. With moves flying Hinault was struggling to cover his rivals as Luis “Lucho” Herrera rode away for the stage win. Hinault got back on terms and coming into the finish, crashed after hitting a sunken inspection cover and tangling with Phil Anderson. Hinault sustained a range of facial injuries, including a nose broken in two places and needed stitches to his face and scalp. Perhaps the metal and glass Raybans made things worse. He pedalled across the line, blood running down his face to make another famous Hinault image.
Hinault did not lose time as the crash happened in the final kilometre. A touch of irony here as the finish was in the city of Saint-Etienne and it was here that Eddy Merckx fell while sprinting for the win in 1972. He was given the same time as the group he was with, this incident was part of the origin of the kilometre rule, today now extended to three kilometres.
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A likely sprint stage. If you want to watch this on TV, note the very early finish.
Flying colours: if this year’s Dauphiné sets some tests for Remco Evenepoel, he’s passed the first one with ease. He won the stage, beating Josh Tarling by 17 seconds, Primož Roglič by 39 seconds and they were the only rivals within a minute. Evenpoel looked calm, his trajectories were prudent rather than desperate and he let his chainring do the talking.
This now sets up the second test for Evenepoel and his team, he is in yellow and it’s on him and his team to defend. He kept repeating “day by day” in post stage interviews and the high mountains remain the real frontier for him, more so as he’s making his way back from injury and doesn’t look razor sharp yet. It sets things up nicely for a duel with Roglič but plenty of others who are down on GC and so might have to move early which can make for lively racing.
The Route: 200km and over 2,000m of vertical gain, this is a possible sprint stage but far from certain.
The Côte de Givors climbs out of the post-industrial city of Givors but keeps going beyond the KoM point to the Col de la Croix Régis.
The Bel-Air climb closer to finish is nothing scary, a wide road.
The Finish: there are more scenic ways into Lyon, this one goes past the railway yards and factories for a flat finish and there are nine roundabouts in the last 10km and several turns and bridges over railways to contend with.
The Contenders: a rematch for Sam Bennett (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) and Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and normally they can get over some climbs that others cannot which means today’s hill course is within their range.
It’s the last day though for riders who can’t climb so we should expect some moves in the finish.
| | M Pedersen | | | Bennett | | | Grégoire, Gee, Lazkano, Page, Meurisse |
Weather: warm but cloudy and the chance of rain, 25°C.
TV: note the change in the timings with the finish is forecast for 2.30pm.
Postcard from Saint-Priest
Today’s stage finishes in the suburbs of Lyon, France’s third largest city. Walk around Saint-Priest and amid the housing estates, hospitals and the sprawling Renault trucks factory there’s every chance you might spot a van with a “CNS” logo, or people wearing “CNS” branded clothes. It’s a cleaning company and there’s a cycling connection because CNS stands for Calzati Nettoyages Services, “Calzati Cleaning Services”.
Those with long memories might remember the ex-team Sky rider Sylvain Calzati, a Tour de France stage winner in 2006. CNS is his business and he’s been cleaning up in more than one way.
Swapping Team Sky for contract cleaning doesn’t sound like the most glamorous of retirement plans. But don’t imagine Calzati with rubber gloves and a mop… he took over the business from his father and has grown it rapidly. Last year he had over 150 staff cleaning 2,300 buildings, turning over €7 million a year and banking profits of €1 million. Now he’s just sold the business, presumably for many times the annual profit. He may have left Team Sky as one of their least famous riders but could now be one of their richest retirees.
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A time trial stage and at 34km, a long one these days.
Gee Whizzes: a long day concluded with a lively uphill sprint. IPT’s Krists Neilands launched in the final kilometre and got a gap forcing others to chase. When he was brought back his team mate Derek Gee countered and was clear but had Roman Grégoire closing in. The 21 year old French man came past Gee but visibly at great cost, he seemed to be buckling with the effort and needed the finish line to come right away only Gee suddenly had a wheel to sit on and popped him for the win. Lukas Nerurkar was the best of the rest in third place, even younger than Grégoire at 20.
The Route: 34.4km, long these days for a time trial, more than the Tour de France (just), more than the Vuelta and only the Giro had longer. It’s stage in two halves, the first part is on big straight roads and then once the course crosses the Loire river it goes onto smaller roads that twist, turn and climb to the finish although this second half is harder but it’s no maze.
The Contenders: world champ Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) finds a course to suit but is the form there? He’s cut a discreet figure so far in the opening stages.
Josh Tarling (Ineos) is the time trial specialist out to usurp his own team mate Ganna as the invincible figure of time trials but hasn’t raced since being disqualified from Paris-Roubaix.
Juan Ayuso (UAE) looks like a climber but of his seven pro wins, three have come from World Tour level time trials.
Primož Roglič (Bora-hansgrohe) looked sharp on the second stage, but it’s a lot to extrapolate this to a 34km TT.
| | Tarling | | | Evenepoel, Roglič, Ayuso | | | Sobrero, Vlasov, Armirail |
Weather: sunshine and 24°C.
TV: the final 90 minutes are on TV and last rider is in before 5.00pm.
Postcard from Saint-German-Laval
Today’s start and finish towns are not famous at all, one theme of this year’s Dauphiné is how it is visiting small towns and villages. The finish town of Neulise – population 1,347 – made the headlines last July when a hailstorm ravaged the place, these things happen but some hailstones were 10cm in diameter. You wouldn’t want to be out cycling that day.
What’s notable today is how close today’s stage is to other recent time trial stages of the Dauphiné. Last year’s TT won by Mikkel Bjerg was a just few kilometres over to the north-east; the 2022 battle between Filippo Ganna and Wout van Aert was a few kilometres to the south in La Bâtie d’Urfé, 2021’s TT was a bit further south but still close to the Loire river like today, and the 2019 edition won by Van Aert but probably more notable for Chris Froome’s ruinous recon crash… was just a few kilometres away to the north-west. So somehow this is time trial central for the Critérium du Dauphiné.
The race often needs a time trial stage in order to give balance to the Alpine finish and enhance the week’s feel of a Tour de France redux. Yet today only a small share of the peloton will be racing for the win or even racing for a time, for many even most it’s an active recovery ride. It’s not exceptional given a sprint stage can see most of the field just aiming to complete the course and sometimes for minimal effort all day too; but it’s actively encouraged today by the 25% time cut; in the Giro this was 30% for the time trial stages, more than any other type of day. As crushing as Pogačar’s ride in Perugia was, the last rider was only ten minutes down, safely inside the roughly fifteen minute margin. So while today is billed as the “race of truth”, for many it’s truthfully not a race at all. They can save energy today in order to attack in the coming days.
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Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale directeur sportif Julien Jurdie has got a tattoo to mark wins by his riders and at the rate things are going right now he could soon be mistaken for a yakuza. What’s behind all these wins? It’s been a recurrent question of late and here are a decathlon of attempted answers…
The team is on 23 wins at the moment, only UAE and Lidl-Trek have more and on the UCI points scale, they are second this year behind UAE and so kicking sand in the faces of Ineos, Soudal-Quickstep and Visma-LAB… for now at least.
The chart shows the number of wins per season. 1999 was something special but you can see more recently how the team has had single digit years. A good or bad year can depend on your reference point. As it happens the average rate for a World Tour team in the last few years is, excluding 2020’s abbreviated season, 25 wins per year.
They’d have wanted more wins along the way but it’s also been partly by design, the glory days of wins with house sprinter Jan Kirsipuu ended and they focused on stage racing. Having Jean-Christophe Péraud and Romain Bardet on the podium of the Tour de France didn’t boost the win rate but they were massive triumphs for a modest budget team.
2024 is very different with 24 wins so already. Plus there is depth too, they have over 10,000 UCI points so far this season when they won 9,000 last year. So what’s behind it?
1. Signings
The roster changed over the winter but the new signings haven’t been so prolific. Victory Lafay has yet to race as he nurses a knee injury. Bruno Armirail came close yesterday in the Dauphiné but no wins. But Sam Bennett does fit the turnaround story with his four wins and the GC at the Four Days of Dunkerque, these results have lifted the team above Quickstep and Visma for wins so far.
2. Management and logistics
The team management had a sit down last winter because the previous season was so bad. They started asking more questions about what was needed and made some internal changes to management and resource allocation. This is hardly “magic formula” stuff but it has helped. Team founder Vincent Lavenu is taking a back seat with retirement looming. There’s more focus on nutrition to help the riders. Logistics have been improved which sounds dull but if bikes and team vehicles turn up for a training camp or a race then the team staff can focus on tactics.
3. Calendar choices
One angle here was prioritising riders for certain races. You might remember Benoît Cosnefroy dancing with his friends on the Joux Plane last summer… because he did not do much else that Tour despite all his talent, the scenes were fun but got team management annoyed. Grand tours are not his thing and so he’s being spared them, if he does the Vuelta it’ll be partly for training. Instead he’s been focussing on other races and perhaps thanks to this found winning ways again. Ben O’Connor going to the Giro was another part of this, especially as he was supported by a strong team that took two stage wins.
4. Luck
Sport teams depend in part on luck. There’s a lot of academic literature on this for other sports. A team or athlete can have a stock of talent but the ball can bounce one way or the other; a star player can slip on a banana skin while on a shopping trip and be out for months. Management or athletes might try to claim success is due to their unique talent but there is always a degree of fortune here; to borrow from Napoleon you probably want “lucky generals”. Teams tend to perform to their ability but they can have lucky times and unlucky ones too. In this sense is Cosnefroy winning again this spring a result of the management decisions over winter and focus; or just because he’s a talented rider who has won races in the spring before? Probably both.
5. Unluck
Talking of luck, the team doesn’t race in isolation. Rival teams are struggling. Arkéa-B&B’s new signings Arnaud Démare and Florian Sénéchal were injured and ill this spring when if they were 100% there’s a good chance they might have won a race that Decathlon won.
Likewise Groupama-FDJ’s house sprinter Paul Penhoët, the youngest ever winner of the Coupe de France series last year, looked set to build but required knee surgery in December and has missed much of the season.
6. Joly good
L’Equipe does a good monthly podcast on cycling and some of the feedback they got was the recruitment of Sébastien Joly as a sports director is working out very well. Formerly of Groupama-FDJ, he’s said to bring a sharper focus on winning rather than placing and putting in place clear tactics to deliver the win.
7. Youth growing up
At the other end of the age range the team is bringing on young riders, it always has. But a crop of riders like Paul Lapeira, Valentin Retailleau and Valentin Paret-Peintre have grown up in the team’s feeder system and are now winning with the World Tour team. This pipeline looks set to continue thanks to the establishment of their in-house Continental development team which can act as bridge between the team’s impressive junior squad.
8. Van Rysel RCR Pro
The new bike is a factor. Professional cyclists are conditioned to flatter their sponsors so there is the “they would say that, wouldn’t they” aspect. But there are still some angles to explore here but riders are often equally quick not to oversell this, after all if it was the bike then prospective employers on other teams could be put off. It’s said the previous BMC model was a bit long in the tooth. The new Van Rysel frame could well be an aero improvement. Plus the combo of the new bike and wheels could work well. If this also feels faster then the placebo effect is worth it. It makes for a nice story too given Colnagos are sold in showrooms, Pinarello even has a bottega and Specialized a marketing behemoth while Decathlon is basically a sports kit supermarket now selling World Tour bikes out of retail warehouses although still for €9,000 and there are cheaper World Tour team-issue machines.
9. Hassle-free bikes
The other unseen angle of the bike from Decathlon is that it is delivered as a package. For several seasons the team had issues with their bikes, loyal readers will remember the look at the team’s accounts which showed unpaid debts from past suppliers and retained bikes on the balance sheet. Both Ridley/Merckx and Factor didn’t work out. Plus if the team got frames, they were at times left scratching for other sponsors and suppliers. Now the bikes all come in one box, work as a system for mechanics and management can spend time on other tasks rather than literally shopping for parts.
10. Budget
Talk of Decathlon’s arrival also allows us to evoke another reason: the budget increase. Decathlon is now the lead title sponsor and putting in more funding than Ag2r La Mondiale; a year ago Ag2r paid more than Citroën. This financial leapfrog isn’t felt immediately in the budget but one hypothesis is that riders know there is budget for next year and beyond and good results now, especially in the first half of the year can mean renewals and extensions.
Conclusion
Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale are having a great time, they’ve scored more UCI points in 2024 than all of 2023 and they have more wins this year than the past two seasons combined, including double the amount of World Tour wins this year than last.
What’s the secret of success? Abandoning the brown shorts? Nobody really knows, there are several factors at play, ten above is plenty. Riders and staff are talking of reorganisation and management improvements more than the new bike so this internal issue has its backing and we should pay attention. But hypotheses are listed above and hiring Sam Bennett has helped, we’ve seen the blooming of young talent, the extra cash from Decathlon must be an incentive… and plain old luck going their way.
What if Bruno Armirail being caught on the line yesterday marks the changing point? So far so good but would the team sign for the season so far if meant a Tour de France without success? In recent years they’ve had lean times but enjoyed box office blockbuster wins in the Tour de France thanks to Ben O’Connor, Bob Jungels and Felix Gall which has gone a long way to defining their season, and keeping Julien Jurdie’s tattooist busy.
The post Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale’s Strong Start first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A hard day in the Haute Loire with a tiring uphill finish.
Embed from Getty Images
Great Dane II: the day’s breakaway had some strong riders and none more so than Bruno Armirail who was caught almost within sight of the finish line except that it was so foggy that he probably could not see the finish. He’d jumped away on the final climb and provided a nailbiter of a finish.
With the peloton reduced to about 50 riders by the climbing Magnus Cort took a flyer with 200m to go to take the stage and with it the first World Tour level win for the Uno-X team. Primož Roglič finished second to collect the six second time bonus, he didn’t quite finish the job for his team who had been chasing earlier and Aleksandr Vlasov made a move on the climb before but they’ll take the result and aim for more today.
The Route: 181km and almost 3,000m of vertical gain. A small uphill start might help a breakaway go clear. Then it’s over to Arlanc and the climb to Saint-Victor-sur Arlanc which featured in the 2019 edition where the race split to pieces but this was with 20km to go. Here mid-stage it’s just a tricky climb.
The Finish: a big ring drag to the line in the shadow of Mont d’Alambre, an extinct volcano cone. It’s 4km at 5%.
The Contenders: the same again? Magnus Cort (Uno-X) has a good chance but the continued uphill run to the line means advantage Primož Roglič (Bora-hansgrohe).
The breakaway has a chance today too even if Uno-X will ride hard to give Cort another shot and defend yellow. Half the field is already five minutes or more down on GC. Semi-random picks are Koen Bouwman and Bart Lemmen (Visma-LAB), Kevin Geniets (Groupama-FDJ) or Davide De Pretto (Jayco).
| | – | | | Roglič, Cort | | | – |
Weather: cloudy but warmer, 23°C.
TV: KM0 is at 12.25pm and the last 90 minutes should be live with the finish forecast for 4.55pm CEST.
Postcard from Olliergues
Today’s course is a palimpsest, drawn over so many previous routes, whether the Dauphiné, Paris-Nice, the Tour de France or many other amateur events. With 150km to go today the route passes the small town of Olliergues – population 743 – and famous for… the Tour de la Communauté de Communes du Pays d’Olliergues. The pleonasmic title doesn’t trip off the tongue but recent winners like Valentin Paret-Peintre and Alex Baudin might be more familiar.
The latest winner is Paul Seixas, the 17 year old who is hoovering up U-19 junior races in France and beyond and tipped as the next big thing in French cycling… or even cycling. He’s already won national titles for road racing, cyclo-cross and time trialling which suggests range to put it mildly. In recent days he’s won the international-level Tour du Pays de Vaud stage race and the Classique des Alpes one day race. Seixas beat Spaniard Adrià Pericas – who is set to join UAE’s Gen Z feeder team – in both competitions. Notably he won the Classique des Alpes solo by over four minutes. Seixas is from nearby Lyon and rides for the Decathlon junior team where he’s alongside the likes of Aubin Sparfel, another name tipped for the top. So if today you don’t remember Olliergues, keep an eye on Seixas and Sparfel in the years to come.
The post Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 3 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The “tour of the Auvergne” continues with a ski station summit finish… sort of as you can cross-country ski in winter if there’s any snow plus it is a long climb. But it’s open to many riders thanks to the gradual rise.
Great Dane: a sprint finish and a win for Mads Pedersen on a day that looked more like April with grey skies, weak light and damp roads. Pedersen was the most powerful in the finish, Sam Bennett tried to come out of the Dane’s slipstream but couldn’t get level. If Pedersen was stronger, he was helped by his team with Alex Kirsch back and it showed and Ryan Gibbon as the leadout when Decathlon’s train got derailed on the approach.
As much as we can muse on what happened, we should also be pleased little else happened because the tailwind in the finish helped the peloton get close to 100km/h on just a false flat approaching the finish but all without incident. The fear of crashing seemed notable for Remco Evenepoel who could be spotted towards the back, not bothered about a split in the field.
The Route: a dash across the plains to Châteldon and then up into the hills of the Forez, part of the massif central. The Col Saint Thomas has a surprisingly steep section before the top but if it’s hard it’s miles from anywhere so won’t shape things.
The Finish: 25km uphill but never very steep, the road out of Chalmazel to the Col de la Croix Ladret is the steepest section at 6%. The profile makes it look like the road climbs after this but it’s often flat as it makes its way to the finish at the Col de la Loge, and it’s all on a big wide road.
The Contenders: Primož Roglič (Bora-hansgrohe) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) both pack a good sprint and their teams can shrink the number of rivals.
Giulio Ciccone and Tao Geoghegan Hart (Lidl-Trek) are both quick too if at their best and can extend their team’s winning ways.
Ineos pairing Omar Fraile and Michał Kwiatkowski have a shot today, the Polish rider is older but just and a crafty finisher.
Andreas Kron (Lotto-Dstny) is a specialist for uphill finishes but an infrequent winner. Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) is making a name for himself in just this kind of finish. Magnus Cort (Uno-X) is another contender, a big signing for the Norwegian team.
Dorian Godon (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) should find the climb too much but if rivals don’t set a tough enough pace he’ll find the flatter finish suits. Astana pair Ide Schelling and Anthon Charmig seem suited but the team are having a rotten season and they’re harder picks. Past Dauphiné stage winner Dylan Teuns (IPT) is suited on paper but form unknown too.
| | – | | | Roglič, Cort, Grégoire | | | Kwiatkowski, Evenepoel, Kron, Ciccone, Gaudu, Ayuso |
Weather: rain drying out and just 16°C.
TV: KM0 is at 1.20pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 4.50pm CEST.
Postcard from Châteldon
With many a bike race passing famous vineyards, today’s the chance to talk about water instead. The route goes through Châteldon, home of the eponymous bottled water. The spring here doesn’t gush like other outlets and the bottling plant is small and built into the hillside without room for expansion. Apparently it has only four staff and a million bottles a year are produced, which sounds a lot but over at nearby Volvic that’s a morning’s production.
Châteldon is positioned as something special and typically sells for a premium €5 a litre when the likes of Volvic are €0.50. It has an origin story with Louis XIV being prescribed the water by his doctor back as mineral water was seen to have medicinal value. It was even transported by donkey to refresh the monarch. Today can be found in supermarkets sometimes but often the purpose of Châteldon water is to be something you don’t find in the shops, it’s typically served in upmarket French restaurants.
It tastes… like water but actually of not much. It’s not unique chemically in terms of the minerals inside. It is sparkling and the water is naturally so… or it used to be. There’s been scandal when the OCLAESP raided the Châteldon plant in December 2020 after a whistle-blower claimed they were using additional CO2 to dope the bubbles while the label claimed the bubbles were natural. OCLAESP? Yes, the same public health police agency that’s raided teams at the Tour de France and, as many a cycling fan knows, their raids generate headlines but convictions can take years. However as local paper La Montagne reports, the bottle’s labels used to read “naturellement gazeuse” but now say “finement pétillante” as in finely sparkling with the “natural” reference gone.
For the visiting cyclist the town has a fountain in the square to fill up your bidons but it is not the same source. It is free though so it tastes better.
The post Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 2 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A sprint stage but with few sprinters present a chance for the breakaway.
The Route: 100% Saint-Pourçain as the stage starts and finish in the town of Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule and has a finishing loop based around the town.
A flurry of early climbs means some will target the breakaway hoping to take the mountains jersey and if only for day it’s a prize and a photo opportunity. A likely sprint finish but there’s 2,000m of vertical gain today to sap the sprinters. What’s also tiring is the use of départmentale roads today, small secondary roads that are often narrow.
The Finish: a four kilometre long finishing straight and flat into town and wider. Today’s finishing loop is the same as Paris-Nice used in 2015 but the finish line is earlier, there’s no rise up to the line.
The Contenders: a sprint at first glance. But if you like romantic notions (or force fed Wikipedia-grade symbolism) then today’s finish town of Saint-Pourçain is named after a freed slave so the breakaway can slip the peloton’s yoke. If you like stats or just anecdotes the Dauphiné opener can go to the breakaway in recent years and today’s lumpy course on small roads suits escapees and there are not many sprinters with dedicated teams here. Only a handful of teams will want a sprint and they might hedge their bets by having a rider up the road in case too.
Sam Bennett (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is the obvious sprinter, a form pick after repeat wins in the ~~Six~~ Four Days of Dunkerque but he didn’t face any star sprinters. Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) isn’t a sprinter but can win, especially on a hilly course and he’s got Alex Kirsch for the leadout. Casper Pedersen (Soudal-Quickstep) can win a sprint from time to time. Milan Menten (Lotto-Dstny) is another sprinter but a rare winner and by now we’re into teams that might fancy placing a rider in the breakaway, likewise Hugo Page (Intermarché-Wanty), Blake Quick (Jayco) and Jensen Plowright (Alpecin-Deceuncink).
Breakaway picks are more a lottery for the right move. Oier Lazkano (Movistar), Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X), Harry Sweeney (EF) and Kobe Goosens (Intermarché-Wanty) are among the archetypal picks but spin that wheel-of-fortune for more choices.
| | – | | | Bennett, M Pedersen | | | C Pedersen, Menten, Quick, Plowright, Page |
Weather: a cool 16°C and a good chance of rain.
TV: KM0 is at 12.35 and the finish is forecast for 4.45pm CEST.
Postcard from Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule
Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule is small town, pleasant but just not famous for much, if pushed it’s probably known for wine in France but among oenophiles rather than famous. Paris-Nice has had a finish here when Michael Matthews won the sprint here in 2015 and the Tour de France started here before too. It’s a long way from the Dauphiné.
The Critérium du Dauphiné gets its name from Le Dauphiné libéré, a newspaper formed in the post-war years whose title evokes both the post-war liberation and its area. The Dauphiné, a historic kingdom or principality in the Alps which, to simplify, maps onto the Isère department around the city of Grenoble.
One of the founders of the newspaper was Georges Cazeneuve and like many others he decided a bike race would make a great promotional tool. But unlike many other print promoters he had his idea later, at least in 1947. It seemed to work though, the paper and race both helped each other and Le Dauphiné libéré saw off competition from two other nascent newsletters to become the regional newspaper of the Alps. Remember in France the local newspapers often outsell the national ones: the Dauphiné has a bigger print run than Le Monde.
In 2010 Tour de France organisers ASO took over the race from the newspaper and renamed it the Critérium du Dauphiné. Chopping the libéré name from the title made sense as the newspaper has nothing to do with the race.
Should the Dauphiné name be kept? It’s clearly no longer a race in and around the Dauphiné. Saint-Pourçain is a long way from the Dauphiné and its capital Grenoble. It’s closer to, say, Poitiers, Tours or Orléans. The Sioule river’s water makes it way to Loire and the Atlantic rather than the Rhone and the Mediterranean. It’s really become the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Tour, perhaps it’s a matter of time until it’s rebranded as the Aura Tour?
The post Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 1 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The pre-Tour de France tune-up in the Alps, this year’s race has a tough course with a time trial and three summit finishes. With many riders coming down from altitude form is a mystery but we’ll learn plenty ahead of the Tour de France.
The top billing is a duel between Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel, while UAE understudy Juan Ayuso gets a chance to lead and more riders can answer questions about their form and hopes ahead of July’s rendez-vous.
The Route:
Eight stages with two possible sprints, two uphill finishes, a 34km time trial and the week finishes with three consecutive big Alpine summit finishes.
There are 3-2-1 second time bonuses at the intermediate sprint and 10-6-4 seconds at the stage finish (except the time trial).
If you want a stage-by-stage look, have a look the post from February when the route was unveiled, it’s been updated to reflect the recent change to Stage 7.
The Contenders: Primož Roglič (Bora-hansgrohe) won here 2022 – remember the body language where Vingegaard looked better? – and a repeat would do nicely, especially if he can come in ahead of team mate Aleksandr Vlasov too. So used to winning, Roglič was off the pace in Paris-Nice and crashed out of the Itzulia Basque Tour like many others. A triumph would be ideal for him and his team, fewer questions about form and cohesion. The course suits with a time trial and three uphill finishes, the kind where he’s often been so good at taking the win and the time bonuses. Jai Hindley brings added climbing power while Vlasov is a contender for the Dauphiné too just as he took a stage win in Paris-Nice when Roglič did not.
Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) was long due to ride this race but his crash in Itzulia has changed things, one bar less of pressure on him to win. This was always going to be a crucial test because his weakness relative to the likes of Roglič, Pogačar and Vingegaard has been the high mountains, particularly with repeat stages. Three days in the Alps should tell us plenty. There’s also a second test for his team collectively and how far they can do in supporting him. All this means tests where perhaps his rivals face challenges or have hopes invested in them but it’s because we know he can place well this week but to win or just be within seconds is unknown.
Juan Ayuso leads the UAE team in what is effectively their Tour de France squad sans Tadej Pogačar who is finishing his post Giro recovery around now, and Adam Yates. The Slovenian’s absence means a chance for leadership among the others and the time trial is likely to see the best placed UAE rider atop the pecking order for the week and Ayuso excels in this field but can he hang on in the high mountains, like Evenepoel this is his challenge. Pavel Sivakov could be a contender but injury and fewer wins overall make Ayuso the more obvious pick.
Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos) used this race to build for the Tour de France last year. You could see the improvement day by day, but just. So he might not come here ready to rip up the race, look instead for steady rides in the time trial and the high mountains.
Visma-Lease A Bike come with Sep Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson and a desire to turn around the team’s fortunes. Kuss will find the 34km time trial hard going while Jorgenson faces a test in the high mountains.
Tao Geoghegan Hart and is joined by Giulio Ciccone who won the memorable Bastille finish last year. Ciccone could be back with a bang after a season spoilt so far by injury while TGH has been able to climb and time trial with the best and the question is how he is faring compared to them.
Bahrain bring a strong team. Antonio Tiberi is here after a busy Giro and we’ll see how his form holds up. Santiago Buitrago could take a stage in the mountains but will lose minutes in the time trial. Jack Haig is reliable – grand tour podium reliable – but has yet to get a pro win.
Chris Harper (Jayco) is back after crashing in April, he’s a climber but can do a decent time trial, he could surprise but the absence after racing means we’ll just have to see. IPT bring 39 year olds Chris Froome and Jakob Fuglsang and some could be forgiven if they’d thought this pair had retired but this week is for them to grab some limelight and bid for a Tour place if the results follow. An existential crisis is a bit too strong but David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) seems to be finding it difficult to get a foothold at the moment, a GC contender or not? He’ll just look for a more reassuring week than he and his team had last year where he never cracked the top-20. Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) made the top-10 here last year, his team in the hunt for points would be satisfied with a repeat.
| | Roglič | | | – | | | Evenepoel, Ayuso | | | Rodriguez | | | Jorgenson, TGH |
TV: probably the same channel you watch the Tour de France on but it’s being filmed by the same broadcaster that does the Roland Garros tennis in Paris. The finish times vary, 5.00pm CEST is typical but because of the clash with the tennis, the prority event for host broadcaster France Télévisions. Some days have early finishes at 3.00pm, Thursday’s stage will be done by 2.40pm CEST.
The post Critérium du Dauphiné Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
With the Giro completed, a quick look at the weekly UCI rankings and the World Tour promotion and relegation race as the points for the Giro have been added.
Relegation-facing Astana and Arkéa-B&B have started scoring more but their problem is their rivals have too.
Relegation reminder
It’s a three year process between 2023-2025 based on the sum of each team’s rankings for each season. The top-18 teams qualify for a World Tour place, a World Tour team below 18th place faces relegation.
Riders score UCI points with race results and a team’s ranking is based on the total of its 20 best scorers. The in the chart below red line signifies the promotion-relegation barrier. The raw data is at uci.ch.
Lotto-Dstny and Israel-PremierTech are on course for promotion with both sitting well above 18th place. All the second tier ProTeams have the coral-tone bar for 2023.
Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Astana are still below the red line. Astana are still well behind but they’ve started scoring more and have taken over 1,000 points in the last five weeks. That still leaves them trailing and it’s probably not momentum that they’ll keep. Besides as good as recent times have been for them, Uno-X has now overtaken them to move up to 20th which shows this is always a dynamic contest.
Arkéa-B&B have been scoring of late too but their problem is that DSM Firmenich have too with the Dutch squad hauling over 2,000 points in the last few weeks. It all means Arkéa are about 1,250 points short of 18th placed DSM Firmenich and Astana 2,500 points behind.
There’s a mini-peloton of teams jostling above the red line and there are about 2,000 points between Jayco-Al Ula at the top of this section and DSM-Firmenich right now, or just one good month’s results. But they’re all more comfortable for now because Arkéa-B&B are still 1,250 points below DSM Firmenich, there’s a gap there. Still management at Cofidis and Intermarché will be worried that the Dutch team overtake them and they’re the ones sitting on the frontier.
Finally reminder that relegation isn’t ruinous. Just ask Lotto-Dstny. As in the event of relegation the two best teams on the rankings would get invites to the grand tours and this means Arkéa and Astana. For the big one day races the best three are invited so Uno-X get included here. As long as a team faces the drop with a plan and can retain riders then it can still prosper but easier said than done. Teams get demoted because of poor performance, it can be harder to recruit, sponsors crave the security of the World Tour and so on.
Conclusion
There’s still a year and a half to go so we can’t make definitive calls. Still for Astana we’re left reaching into the sack of sporting metaphors and pulling out phrases like “a mountain to climb”. Arkéa don’t have it easy either.
For all the tables, points and charts there’s also just the sense check here where these two teams just are not appearing the headlines or even the moves enough to get results. Without looking you can probably tell they are having a tough time of things.
The post World Tour Promotion-Relegation Rankings first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Was there a winning moment? Often this can mean a breakthrough, a coup. Not this time. Tadej Pogačar was never in trouble even if Jhonathan Narváez and Max Schachmann got the better of him on the opening stage.
The next day to Oropa would define the three weeks. Pogačar crashed at the foot of the climb, recovered and rode past the field. Once Rafał Majka pulled over Pogačar launched and he was away. Anyone who tried to follow paid, in this case Ben O’Connor got his wings burnt while Daniel Martinez and Geraint Thomas came in second and third half a minute down.
The chart shows the general classification of the final six riders relative to Pogačar. He was never in trouble, the lines of all his rivals bend away, notably on Stage 7’s Perugia time trial, Stage 15 to Livigno and Stage 20 over Monte Grappa. For all the domination by Pogačar and the biggest winning margin in a grand tour this century, his was the story of addition rather than audacity. He never needed a Cuneo-Pinerolo or a Pau-Mourenx because he just kept building his lead.
Ideally there would have been a revolt among the beaten but who wanted to turn the tables, and who could? While Pogačar’s pink passeggiata continued the lack of movement between the other contenders, their lines above are almost parallel. Just a small crossing between Thomas and Martinez after the Lake Garda TT. You can also see just how the opening weekend left Tiberi and Arensman adrift.
At times it was like reading two books on the go. One a colourful manga where Pink Pogi does as he pleases, tufts poking out of his helmet like a Slovenian Sakamuchi. The other an allegory of Dante’s Inferno where characters are confronted with forces more powerful than themselves and struggle on. The side steps of the podium are hardly the first circle of hell but to reach them was often a tale of stoicism.
Pogačar was never in trouble, at one point the greatest threat to his spell in pink were the commissaires and the brief unexplained storm-in-an-espresso-cup confusion over the colour of his shorts. He also seemed bored in the early post-stage interviews but with time, when these things normally get more boring, the cherubic charm returned.
The sprints ended as a duopoly thanks to Tim Merlier’s win in Rome, he and Jonathan Milan each finished with three stages. The contest was lively thanks to the variety of finishes, particular in the opening week where late climbs added spice. Just as many cobbled classics are merging into one type of event, there’s a hypothesis the grand tours are coalescing around the same model too, a Vuelta-fication where we see fewer sprints and if they have to happen then the local topography is exploited as best can be.
Milan took the ciclamino points competition for the second year in a row but as a changed rider and now hot property. Milan looks like one of the most exciting sprinters with his beefy style and ability to go long. Merlier clears the Alps in a grand tour for the first time so satisfaction for both but neither are due to ride the Tour de France so a sprint royale is a while away. Just as the GC battle had absentees so did the sprints with Olav Kooij, Biniam Girmay and Fabio Jakobsen among the exits, with Kooij a winner before leaving.
Six stages for Pogačar, three each for Milan and Merlier meant little left for all the rest. Several times we saw the breakaway in with a chance only to come up short, notably when teams that had missed the move rode it down only to be unable to win once they’d brought things back. It wasn’t just Movistar and DSM Firmenich mid-race. Benjamin Thomas’s crafty win in Lucca happened thanks to Alpecin-Deceuninck rinsing the sprint trains, and themselves, in the Cinque Terre hills to give the break a better chance.
The other breakaway wins often ended a good day’s sport. Andrea Vendrame and Julian Alaphilippe both found winning ways again, but as a different version of themselves by going long-range. Pelayo Sanchez, Valentin Paret-Peintre and Georg Steinhauser all took breakthrough wins, and Sanchez getting the better of Alaphilippe in Rapolano takes on a new light after the Spaniard’s other placings in the third week.
Filippo Ganna’s stage win was a big moment for him, a homecoming for someone often ejected from the hot seat. In the mix for other stages too he was useful for Ineos who were arguably the strongest team in the race but Arensman’s opening weekend quickly left them with a one-pronged attack. They still seem like a team happier with defence than offence.
Another home success came with Antionio Tiberi, he’s become “a man of three weeks” as team manager Enrico Gasparotto said. Crucially he’s written new headlines to displace the old ones and he’s cut a confident figure on TV with his baritone voice. Economically Italian cycling is in the doldrums without a major team but on the road things are looking up, there’s Milan for the sprints and Tiberi will be watching over his shoulder as Giulio Pellizzari is coming up fast.
The Stelvio could not be raced and the Umbrail replacement did not happen either. After Aosta last year, Livigno witnessed an unspoken rider strike, literally as riders sat in team cars while the mayor of Livigno stood in the rain and nobody can forward to explain. It left onlookers trying to piece together what happened. The incident is already part-forgotten but probably should not be because it will happen again if the extreme weather meetings are not an exchange but a dialogue among the deaf.
However this year’s weather was a vast improvement on the morose conditions last year, the sun shone for plenty of the race making it often joyful and bright.
The Verdict
There are differing views on how entertaining it all is to see the pre-race pick saunter off with the win, and that’s fine as enjoyment isn’t a matter of compulsion or prescription. Pogačar certainly put on a show. He did not have his team ride down rivals so he could snipe wins, he made moves from far out and UAE were valiant but not intimidating. The sprint stages and breakaways provided plenty of sport.
Legendary bike races often feature a contest that boils down to a duel but Pogačar was unrivalled. Alone in front, never troubled by others in the race, he was getting compared to Coppi, Merckx and Hinault rather than his peers. He is out to write his own story.
If we lament the lack of a contest during the last three weeks the solution is a little patience. In a month’s time we’ll be back in Italy for the Tour de France. Winning the Giro gives Pogačar a psychological head start but also a physiological challenge. If things go well he will line up with Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič, Remco Evenepoel and others and aiming to do the double while they all have their ambitions too. We’ll see if he has bitten off more than he can chew.
The post The Moment The Giro Was Won first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The final stage and once the peloton has arrived by plane in the morning, there’s a quick trip to the beach followed by a criterium around Rome.
If you’ve been watching for all three weeks today’s stage has a later than usual finish at 6.45pm CEST.
Channel hopping: these days there are often several races to watch on one day. At the same time as the Giro the Boucles de la Mayenne in France and the Tour of Norway were on Eurosport. The Giro had two races, the one with Tadej Pogačar and the other with all the rest.
The early break built up a decent lead but the bunch chased and Giulio Pellizzari surged clear from the peloton on the first climb of Monte Grappa to join the remnants of the breakaway. The second time up Pellizzari went solo.
It looked as if Pogačar and UAE might have to hurry up and attack because Pellizzari was over a minute clear with not much of the climb remaining and if the Italian could match him on the descent what would they do for the finish? Pogačar for a sixth stage, or a patron gifting a stage to a young rider on an invited team? In the time it took to reflect on what might happen here Pogačar attacked and soon Pellizzari was reeled in and overtaken, even if he did hang on for a while to see what it looked like.
From here on two races, Pogačar would go on to win the stage. A minute and a half clear at the top Monte Grappa, he would take more time on the descent to finish two minutes ahead of the rest.
Behind Dani Martinez attacked and got a small gap. Geraint Thomas and Ben O’Connor were struggling but had this continued it would just have widened the existing time gaps rather than changed the hierarchy. It all came back together during the descent. The only GC changes were Romain Bardet and Filippo Zana who had been dropped earlier, each slipping two places overall with Bardet ninth, Zana 11th and surpassed by Michael Storer who cracks the top-10.
Because of his attack Pellizzari will wear the mountains jersey tomorrow, there’s been a contest throughout the race to be the jersey carrier during Pogačar’s reign.
The Route: first a charter flight in the morning for the peloton to Rome. Then 125km and a copycat stage from last year. It starts in Eur – the district built for Benito Mussolini and now Rome’s business quarter – with a trip to Rome-on-Sea, aka Ostia, and back via Eur.
Then laps around Rome. The route isn’t quite a tourist bus tour of the city – there are too many things to fit in – but there’s plenty as the course passes the Colosseum and more.
The Finish: flat and with some urban cobbles – sampietrini for locals – on the approach and then a sweeping bend past the Colosseum, more cobbles with 400m to go.
The Contenders: Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) or Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep)? Milan found the finish in Padova a bit to hectic and became unhitched from his sprint train, today’s circuit finish should be more predictable for him and his potent leadout.
There’s always a chance for a last day surprise as we saw a year ago with Mark Cavendish winning. The “he’s been written off” Rome resurgence would fit nicely for Caleb Ewan (Jayco) but that’s hard to script. Another Australian Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is still hunting for a stage too and is first of the “hasn’t won a stage but has come closest” list but there’s no queue to be served. There’s always the chance of a late surprise, for example a flier from Filippo Ganna (Ineos).
| | Milan | | | Merlier | | | Groves |
Weather: warm and sunny, 26°C.
TV: KM0 is at 3.35pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 6.45pm CEST.
Postcard from Eur
Eur is Rome’s business district and Rome is, no surprise, the political capital of Italy. The race makes a long journey to Rome for what amounts to not much more than a victory parade and a premium criterium race and then everyone has to go back again, including all the vehicles. Too much? Possibly but the convoy has been touring Italy for weeks now and so one transfer is incremental, even if 536km is long. To their credit race organisers RCS have offered the media a special train. Still, instead of a long transfer ideally the race would visit Rome along the way.
It matters that races to go the capital cities and take place in front of politicians and other decision-makers. Last year saw Presidente Mattarella in attendance at the Giro and having the head of state show up is good for the sport and good for politicians.
Political capitals tend to have big populations too so this brings the sport to the people. Cycling is often a provincial sport, it takes place in the countryside and small towns. This can be charming, especially with good weather and the scenery shot from a helicopter. But it needn’t be exclusively so.
Races in capitals are rare. The grand tours usually manage it. The others, less so. Not the Tour de Suisse this year. For all the races in cyclesport-crazed Belgium, there’s the Brussels Cycling Classic that goes where others don’t. The Deutschland Tour doesn’t go to Berlin. The Tour of Denmark doesn’t visit Copenhagen. Neither the Tour de Pologne to Warsaw. And so on. The Tour of Britain for men and women alike did go to London but seems like it won’t any more, for now. But today the Tour of Japan concludes with stage in Tokyo, in Shinagawa.
Taking the sport to where people live and having an urban stage or two can be fun, especially if there’s a playful circuit to encourage lively racing. So while today is a long journey, hopefully Rome can stay on the route, ideally as a mid-race essential stop. Or even better, a finish after a vicious stage in the Apennines the day before.
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The last decisive stage of the Giro d’Italia and two climbs of Monte Grappa await. Can anyone beat Pogačar?
The Dukes of Savoy: a lively stage with a fierce fight to get in the break. Finally two groups went up the road and merged to form 19 away for the day and the peloton behind sat up as if they’d stopped for lunch.
Julian Alaphilippe attacked on the steepest early part of the Passo Duron and this prompted a selection. Andrea Vendrame was chasing over the top, a few metres behind but able to close the gap on the descent. Vendrame wasn’t climbing the best but has a sharp sprint, although so did others like Alaphilippe. What to do?
French military leader Marshall Foch once said “my centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I will attack” and Vendrame seemed to borrow from this as he went solo up the road with over 30km to go. Alaphilippe, Pelayo Sánchez, Luke Plapp and Tobias Steinhauser didn’t follow, there was a stand-off and Vendrame quickly had a minute. The chasers couldn’t collaborate and in the end Steinhauser and Sanchez rode away but it was too late. Vendrame gets his team’s second stage win.
Behind the main group arrived 16 minutes later with no change on GC but a small scare for Geraint Thomas after he overlapped his front wheel with Antonio Tiberi and slid to the ground. He was up and the group seemed to wait for him but we’ll see if he is sore today.
The Route: 184km and 4,250m of vertical gain. There’s the wall of Ca del Poggio which has featured in the Giro and other races before but it’s here for the fun of it, it’s unlikely to shape the stage.
Two ascents of Monte Grappa, it’s 18km at an average of 8.1% which is tough but that’s with two brief downhills on the way so it’s more often 9% and more, especially on the upper slopes. The descents matter as much as the climbs, tricky in places and it’s often on a narrow road through woodland.
The Finish: a descent down into town and a flat finish.
The Contenders: after two stages in the mountains where the breakaway has won, Tadej Pogačar (UAE) has said he’s after today’s stage. The only thing that might stop him is hubris, thinking it’s too easy because he could always lose in a sprint to a rival or find going down the tricky descents first is risky in the sense of a pioneer. However he’s likely to ride away from rivals so losing a sprint seems improbable.
A breakaway has a chance but it requires the right move to form early. Right, as in having plenty of teams and then each team needs more than one rider, a worker who will tow their climber across the plains to help build up a lead and this way pull the break clear of UAE. Easier said than done of course. Nairo Quintana (Movistar) sealed his Giro win a decade ago here. Michael Storer (Tudor) and J-P Lopez (Lidl-Trek) would be other picks.
| | Pogačar | | | – | | | Quintana, Martinez, Storer, Lopez, Bardet |
Weather: rain clearing to leave sunshine, 20°C at the foot of the climb, 10°C at the top.
TV: KM0 is at 11.50am CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the first time up Monte Grappa at 2.00pm, 3.30pm for the second ascent.
Postcard from Bassano del Grappa
Bassano del Grappa ought to have hosted more stages of the Giro. A large town located at the foot of Monte Grappa, today sees the ninth arrival of the race, the first this century. Among the past winners here are Fausto Coppi in 1946 and Eddy Merckx in 1974. Can Pogačar join the club?
One of the interesting angles of this year’s Giro has been the coverage of Pogačar in the Italian media. So far ahead of his rivals there’s been little coverage asking if Martinez or Thomas could overhaul him, instead frequent, flattering comparisons to Merckx and Coppi, or to appeal to younger generations to the greats in other sports like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods; yesterday’s Gazzetta tried to compare him to two top footballers in Serie A, Rafael Leão and Victor Osimhen because they too have massive break clauses in their contracts to prevent rival squads trying to buy them out.
Pogačar is compared to Merckx but they’re very different, in many ways and not just separated by their eras. If riders and teams lament Pogačar’s eclipsing them, they’ve got it easy compared to Merckx in some ways. The tale of Dino Zandegù comes to mind…
Zandegù was a good rider, he won the Tour of Flanders and the points competition in the Giro. In the 1970 Giro during one stage a Tuscan winegrower offered 40 flasks of wine for the winner of an intermediate sprint. No points, no time bonus: just wine. Zandegù notices Merckx readying himself but outfoxes him to take the sprint and the wine. Merckx was livid and declared “that Chianti was mine” and threatened Zandegù with never riding a criterium again, an important source of income for riders. After the stage Merckx tracks down Zandegù in his hotel room to demand half of the wine. Zandegù relents.
Already the highest paid rider in the sport, here we see Merckx enraged that someone can beat him in a sprint for some wine, going as far as threats and even wasting time hunting down Zandegù to demand half of the prize like some capricious feudal lord. All for some wine he could easily afford to buy.
This anecdote sheds some light on Merckx’s compulsion to win and is told in Daniel Friebe’s “Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal”, a book due for a re-read this summer given the multiple Merckx mentions. Friebe writes about allegations of a “mafia” racing style that used force and even violence to intimidate others, some of this coming from zealous team mates too keen to impress their boss but the kind of tactics that probably would not happen today with start-to-finish TV and social media. Yet if Pogačar does win today and then wins outright he’ll have surpassed Merckx who “only” won five stages at best on his way to the overall victory, although Pogačar won’t win a case of wine.
The post Giro Stage 20 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A stage for the breakaway.
Stage 18 Review: a win for Tim Merlier. Jonathan Milan was out of position and was closing in but Merlier got the positioning and timing better and won.
The Route: 157km and a dash north into the Carnic Alps. Three features in the first 100km, the small climb to Forgaria; the intermediate sprint in Peonis should be near the monument to Ottavio Bottecchia; and Tolmezzo, the claimed birthplace of Jonathan Milan and Tiramisu.
The Passo Duron is 4.4km at close to 10%, so short but selective. There’s a descent to Cercivento and then the Sella Valcalda, underrated as a third category climb as it’s 5km at over 7% but perhaps it’s because it’s the easy route from west to east… the other way is the Zoncolan.
The Finish: a long steady climb up the pass, a big road and the profile shows the steeper parts, this is the profile of the Passo Sappada but the race goes beyond the pass and rides into town… the veers off to take a narrow cycle path and then some backroads behind the town, there’s a rise to the flamme rouge then it’s flat to the line.
The Contenders: open to many but Jhonathan Narvaez (Ineos) is the archetypal rider, he can handle the short climbs and finishes well. Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco) is the local contender and will have had today in the diary for a long time, team mate Luke Plapp had other plans for the Giro but could be worth watching.
Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep), Andrea Bagioli (Lidl-Trek), Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) all fit the bill. Longer shot picks can include Jan Tratnik (Visma-LAB), Magnus Sheffield (Ineos) and Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale pair Andrea Vendrame and Aurélien Paret-Peintre. Of course there’s Tadej Pogačar (UAE) too especially if teams conspire to ride each other down again.
| | – | | | Narvaez, Alaphilippe, Bagioli | | | Pogačar, Costiou, Vendrame, Plapp |
Weather: sunny but a cool 18°C on the plains, rain likely later.
TV: KM0 is at 1.10pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. The start should be lively or tune in for the Passo Duron at 3.30pm.
Postcard from Sappada
A lot is made of the Giro-Tour double. Pantani did it in 1998 in unusual circumstances, the Tour had 96 finishers, seven whole teams quit after raids, rousts and rebellions. Pantani beat Jan Ullrich on the Col du Galibier but he was also helped by fate, or at least French customs agents.
In 1987 Stephen Roche did the double, were there particular circumstances or did he just triumph outright? Roche started the Giro well with the maglia rosa for much of the first two weeks before team mate Roberto Visentini won the Stage 13 time trial in San Marino to take over the race lead.
Two days later Roche went on the attack on the stage to Sappada. He said he was covering a move during a descent but he was sharing the work. Once a gap was established his team told him to stop but he kept going while his Carrera-Vagabond team led the chase. Roche took the race lead by five seconds and kept it, expanding his lead to over three minutes and kept it. He proved the strongest in the race, even without a full team behind him.
The 1987 Tour de France had many of the ingredients that make a great grand tour. The yellow jersey changed shoulders nine times and the top four finishers overall each held the yellow jersey at one point, it with a close contest. Along the way Jean-François Bernard took yellow on Mont Ventoux but lost it the following day after being ambushed in the Vercors and this put Roche in yellow. However Pedro Delgado was the superior climber in the Alps and looked to be riding away with the race, taking the yellow jersey at Alpe d’Huez off Roche.
Delgado seemed to have cracked Roche again on the summit finish to La Plagne only for the Irishman to recover and almost catch Delgado on the line, with some memorable video. Roche collapsed and was given oxygen by paramedics but as he lay on the ground he winked to a journalist who clocked this was part oxygen debt, part theatre.
The final mountain stage Roche attacked several times by Delgado but he was tenacious and even counter-attacked to take time and close in on the yellow jersey. With the time trial stage in Dijon to come Roche seemed to be everyone’s pick and while Bernard won the stage, Roche delivered and won his only Tour de France.
Embed from Getty Images
So while Pantani certainly had a rival in Jan Ullrich, he didn’t face the same kind of dense rivalry Roche faced in his golden season. We can only hope this July is as good as 1987.
The post Giro Stage 19 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A likely sprint stage but the last chance for the breakaway among riders who fear the Alps.
Try, try again: Giulio Pelllizari won the Cima Coppi ahead of Nairo Quintana at the Passo Sella and their sprint helped a group form over the top which went away on the descent and more come across including Georg Steinhauser. Romain Bardet had been in the mix but was caught and this mattered as DSM Firmenich took up the chase mid-stage on the Passo Rolle and rode down the breakaway.
It looked like once again teams were conspiring to serve up the stage on a platter for Tadej Pogačar.
But Steinhauser jumped away with Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier and the pair started the first ascent of the Passo Brocon together. Ghebreigzabhier’s shoulders were rocking and soon Steinhauser was away solo.
Behind there was little chase. DSM folded. Bahrain set the tempo but Steinhauser was taking time on them. UAE were passive, they’d wanted the breakaway to go away the previous day and seemed as relaxed this time.
This meant Steinhauser started the final climb with a big lead and could finish it with a big smile. Behind the suspense was for the podium race. Ineos set the pace almost out of tradition and this cracked Ben O’Connor among others, now Antonio Tiberi closing in on the Australian’s fourth spot. Dani Martinez made a move but he couldn’t get away.
Then Pogačar sauntered away. He looked like a boy who’d finished school and was pedalling home to get a glass of milk in time for his favourite cartoon on TV. Sure he’s a 25 year old man but it was the carefree style, he just floated off to take a nonchalant twenty seconds while the others were using everything they had to take a second between them.
The Route: 178km out of the mountains. The climb to Lamon is a real deal, the course turns off the main road to ride up into the town. Then lots of familiar roads from past Giri including Valdobbiadene amid the prosecco vineyards.
The course looks featureless from the profile after the last sprint point in Martellago but it does snake left and right a lot. It’s no maze, just that if a breakaway isn’t brought to heel by this point then it could have more of an advantage that you might first think… but only just.
The Finish: all flat with a sprint in the city centre amid the baroque architecture. A right turn with 500m leads onto the finishing straight.
The Contenders: Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) is the obvious pick, he’s bossing the sprints and his team look the strongest. Even coming off his wheel to go around looks hard. But he has gone long and the risk is he goes too from too far and someone manages to come around. Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) and Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) are the obvious second picks and we’ll see if Caleb Ewan (Jayco) can surprise.
Tomorrow’s stage suits breakaway specialists more making it hard to identify riders who fit the Venn diagram of: not being confident for the semi-mountainous stage tomorrow; having the brute force to stay clear; and being on a team where they can be released for the day because they don’t have a sprinter. Filippo Ganna (Ineos) fits the bill but it’s hard to see.
| | Milan | | | Groves, Milan | | | Gaviria, Dainese |
Weather: sunshine and 22°C. Rain is expected after the finish but could arrive early.
TV: KM0 is at 1.10pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the sprint finish but keep an eye on things in case there’s a breakaway with a chance.
Postcard from Treviso
Just north of Treviso is Villorba which will see an intermediate sprint today. It’s home to Cicli Pinarello.
Giovanni “Nani” Pinarello trained as an apprentice frame builder before a brief stint as a pro cyclist. Then he started Cicli Pinarello in 1953. For the next 50 years the company grew but remained an artisan effort, hand-built steel fames made in Villorba.
Along the way the manufacturing business became a brand and a virtuous effect where as the business grew it could recycle money into sponsoring pro teams which gathered more publicity which sold more frames. Their frames saw grand tour wins in the 1970s but the business took off in the 1980s and in the 1990s it backed the Banesto team during Indurain’s reign, Telekom with Riis and Ullrich, the 2000s with Valverde and more recently Team Sky and Ineos.
Today Pinarello has become a luxury brand. Villorba isn’t a workshop where artisans work blowtorches and files but a slick showroom where celebrities pose for an Instagram ad before walking out with their bike. The actual business of making things is outsourced to third parties, the frames are made in Taiwan. It’s a big business too, the the Pinarello family sold the business in 2016 to US private equity firm L Catterton linked to the LVMH luxury goods group in 2016 and Catterton it on in 2023 to an unnamed buyer, at least not mentioned by Catteron. But La Gazzetta confirmed the whispers with a report that it was bought by Ivan Glasenberg, the mining mogul who has also invested in the Q36.5 brand of clothing and a convert to road cycling. Sales have been booming with double-digit growth in recent years.
It’s a business case study where Pinarello has thrived, arguably because of this push into becoming a luxury brand at the very top of the market, a story similar to Colnago too and both are enjoy booming sales, a “Made In Italy” success story.
The post Giro Stage 18 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
It’s time to get your Brocon… weather permitting.
High Five: where to begin? That was the question everyone was asking yesterday morning with bad weather in the mountains and varying accounts of the severity.
The CPA union said their riders would refuse to go over the Umbrail, a decision taken on the eve so discussions in the morning were reduced to alternatives. The belated plan was move the start of the race to the foot of the Stelvio by convoy but only after having the riders sign-on in Livigno and then do a 20km parade. Only the riders had no inclination of doing a neutralised spin in the rain and stayed in their team cars leaving the mayor of Livigno looking forlorn with a flag at the start line. We didn’t miss any sport because of this but it’s more than a footnote in the history of the sport as this was a rider strike, an unspoken one.
The circumstances and conditions were different to Aosta’s missed start last year, but once again it could help if a rider could come to the microphone to explain things at the start and apologise to fans who’d come to see more.
The racing started in the valley road and Julian Alaphilippe went up the road in a move containing Mirco Maestri and others. Movistar were chasing hard for no obvious reason; Nairo Quintana is at best a diesel climber who needs a long ascent. Perhaps they were just cold?
Alaphilippe tried a solo move, but it’s notable he’s having to go long for someone who used to excel in sharp climbs like the one at the finish. He was hauled back and overtaken by on the climb out of Ortisei by Guilio Pellizari, Ewen Costiou and Christian Scaroni, Pellizari notable for form in the third week from the youngest rider in the race.
Sure enough Pogačar attacked and that was that. Although the most interesting moment came as he seemed to hesitate when passing Pellizari, perhaps a hint he would not mind riding together to the line. But Pogačar looked back and saw Dani Martinez was not far behind and pressed on. The Colombian and is now up to second but this was the only change in position on the day among the top-16, Bardet and Zana notably lost time but not places.
With five stage wins Pogačar can match past winners Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault who each took five wins on their way to the overall win, of course he can surpass them he wins more on his way to Rome. But he won’t beat Learco Guerra who took ten stages on his way to the win in 1934, nor Alberto Binda who managed 12 out of 15 stages in 1927. Not this year…
The Route: 159km and 4,100m of vertical gain. If this isn’t the Queen Stage it’s a Crown Princess day. It starts with the Passo Sella, straight up out town to 2244m where it will be cold… but dry. There’s 8km to the top with the 5km of steeper climbing at 7% to finish and the Cima Coppi prize awaits at the top, it’s been reallocated here. Then a long descent in two parts, the pass proper to Canazei and then the valley road to Predazo.
The Rolle is long at 20km with three parts, the first third at 7%, then a flat middle section, then up again and all on a smooth road.
The Gobbero is a small pass, 5km at 6% with a series of hairpins and this takes the race over to Canal del Bovo and foot of the Brocon. It’s first climbed from the north, arguably the best side if you want to visit. It’s 15km at 5.5% with a steeper first half that eases by the top. The descent is down the other side of the pass, the main road to the valley.
The Finish: it’s back up the Brocon but on a different route, a back road which is steeper 12km at 6.5% but 4.5km at 9.6% before the 2km to go banner, then it eases a bit, kicks up again at 10%, before easing again to the line.
The Contenders: yesterday could have been for the breakaway but the move was closed down by Movistar. Today the breakaway has a better chance of staying away, normally almost certain but this Giro is paradoxical because if Pogačar’s presence means there’s less chance for all the other teams, in turn this means if they miss a move one day they’ll chase because they might not get another chance which sets up Tadej Pogačar (UAE) for the win.
Normally today is for a climber and Michael Storer (Tudor) is a pick again as he can out-climb the best but sometimes, Valentin Paret-Peintre (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) another pick but Ben O’Connor has eyed this stage and might want every help possible, if not to win then to try and reclaim lost time.
Nairo Quintana (Movistar) came close the other day and today’s course suits with repeat climbs, he might find it hard to win from a group late on the final climb, colleague Einer Rubio has a bit more punch. J-P Lopez (Lidl-Trek) is back to the kind of roads he won the Tour of the Alps on even if the form isn’t as sizzling now.
| | – | | | Pogačar, Quintana | | | Lopez, Storer, VPP, Fortunato, Rubio |
Weather: 2°C at the Sella at the start but dry and partially sunny with temperatures up to 15°C in the valleys. Rain is expected later in the stage and it’ll take a few degrees of the temperature.
TV: KM0 is at 12.30pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in at 3.30pm for the first time up the Brocon.
Postcard from the Passo Brocon
Brocon, or broccone, is a local flower that grows in the meadows. The Giro visited in the Passo Brocon in 1956 on the stage to Monte Bondone. Yes, this was the day ravaged by bad weather where Charly Gaul started the day 24th overall, 17 minutes down on GC and rode through a snow storm to win the stage, take the maglia rosa and keep it. Different times of course.
Yesterday’s postcard told some of the history of the Stelvio, it was built 200 years ago. The Passo Brocon today is just over a century old. But like the Stelvio it was built when the region was part of Austria rather than Italy and also for military reasons. The Italians had built a large fort the south and this gave them command over the nearby valleys. So the Austrians wanted to respond in kind and the Passo Brocon was the solution, paving a road from the south up to the mountains for a vantage point to the south towards the Italian fort.
The road used today from Canal San Bovo, the first ascent of the Brocon is a highly engineered road that lifts the race up a steep mountain side. It’s steep but regular and the hairpins are wide, suitable for horses to haul cannons up the mountains. With the war between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian empire raging in the Alps, the “White War”, the Italians took the mountain 1916.
The Brocon and the South Tyrol region stayed with Italy ever since but the border between Italy and Austria was long disputed and times violently so. This was settled politically in 1992 with a deal between the two countries that sees power shared and rotated between Italian and German speakers among other things.
One upshot of this settlement is the Tour of the Alps race held in late April ahead of the Giro. Previously branded the Giro del Trentino, today it is a race shared by Italy and Austria with stages in both countries. This probably explains the generic name, it is not meant to be the tour of a defined region, not Trentino nor Tirol but an open space. Two nations sharing a bike race rather than pointing cannons at each other sounds better, but exploiting the very roads built for the same cannons.
The post Giro Stage 17 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The Giro resumes… hopefully given the mix of bad weather and some beef between the riders, their union and race organisers RCS.
The Route: …pending the weather with talk that the Umbrail could be crossed in team cars… 206km and 4,350 vertical metres. It’s out of Livigno via the road the race rode in on Sunday, the Eira and then the Foscagno, unmarked climbs but really passes and hard work from the start. Probably insufficient as well for the breakaway to go.
Then it’s onto the Passo Umbrail to reach the Cima Coppi. The Umbrail is 85% of the Stelvio, still a monster of a pass. Only the summer cheer of this year’s Giro is now a DNF as the weather looks grim. Over the top to Switzerland and a long descent of the Val Müstair and then back out on the valley road to Bolzano.
The Passo Pinei is as it looks, a steep start then things back off before some 7% to to the top, it’s all on a wide road.
The Finish: up the main valley road out of Ortisei on the lower slopes of the Passo Sella and Passo Gardena and once in Santa Cristina, a right turn. From here it’s only two kilometres but a complete change, 12% average and much steeper at the start and all on a narrow road with hairpins that are steep on the inside line so if there’s a group them positioning counts.
The Contenders: Whether the Umbrail features or not the winner has to handle the climbing in the final hour. So Tadej Pogačar (UAE) again? Normally today should be for the breakaway but if the move doesn’t have the right blend of teams they those that missed it will chase and before we know it Pogačar and a large group led by the UAE team is 90 seconds behind the breakaway starting the Passo Pinei, the move is mown down and Pogačar takes his fifth stage.
There’s 14 seconds in the team competition between Ineos and Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale, with UAE third at 27 minutes. While Ineos can climb high thanks to Thomas and Arensman, Decathlon might want to put a rider or two in the breakaway for a shot at a second stage win and the team GC so Valentin Paret-Peintre comes to mind while the GC bid of Alex Baudin ended on Sunday, too many climbs in one go for him but if he’s recovered today might suit more.
The winner doesn’t have to be a climber, someone able to exploit hesitation in places or descents can build up a buffer. Can Bora-hansgrohe spare Max Schachmann? Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) sort of fits the bill with a short climb at the finish but his long raid to Fano suggested endurance rather than the famous acceleration of old, a win here would be a huge boost to his value. If the Umbrail is on then Michael Storer (Tudor) chances increase as barging away on the flat could just be harder.
| | – | | | Pogačar, APP, Rubio | | | VPP, Schachmann, Alaphilippe, Scaroni, Velasco |
Weather: the big issue of the day. It’ll be 10°C and raining for the finish, the issue is whether the Umbrail is rideable, both up and down, and if measures are needed.
TV: KM0 is at 11.20am CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Bolzano hosts a sprint just before the climbing resumes for the finale and is around 3.40pm.
Postcard from the Stelvio
Today’s stage doesn’t reach the Stelvio but with the Umbrail it climbs the same road before taking a left turn a couple of kilometres short of the Stelvio. The Umbrail is the original way here, it’s been a mule pass for centuries, although very new for the Giro as it was only tarmacked over the top in 2015 and the race first crossed in 2017.
The Stelvio existed too for centuries but just as a narrow perilous path and probably only of use in the summer for individuals. All this changed in the 19th century. Napoleon explored the idea but it was when the Lombard-Veneto kingdom came under Francis I of the Austro-Hungarian empire that plans accelerated and works were started on the Stilfser Joch to use the then German name. This was a military project to enable troops to be moved and horses to haul cannons. Carlo Donegani had overseen the construction of the Splügenpass and was hired for the Stelvio in 1819. By 1825 it was completed. About a century later it was tarmacked.
Italy’s post-war boom saw skiing and motoring become accessible to many and the Stelvio reflected this. While many mountain passes can be empty places with only a sign at the top, plenty of construction happened at the Stelvio pass with hotels, bars, shops, a ski school and more popping up. The Giro helped here too although visits are sparse, first in 1954 and today would have been the 14th time.
For a long time it was celebrated as Europe’s highest paved road until the Col d’Iseran in France was paved… seven metres higher. You’d think the Italian authorities could build up the pass to reclaim the record, maybe their French rivals would not respond as the Iseran isn’t a business location.
It’s a remarkable climb for the open space and enormity of the mountains but the buildings at the top are a defining feature of the pass. It’s like walking out of the Sahara and into a souq, only the waft of fried food from street vendors is a bit Germanic with sausage and cabbage. It even has Europe’s highest ATM, handy to pull out cash for the range of snacks and souvenirs on offer. It’s a strange place for the cyclist, a place where it can feel like you’ve longed to arrive but reach the Stelvio and you may want to get the hell out in the time it takes to pull on a windproof jacket. But at least what was once built for battle is now for reserved for leisure.
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A welcome rest day in the Giro for many riders after the hardest stage although spending it at altitude can make it a little less restful.
UAE look a rider short by the final climb. However the team was pulling so hard during the stage, especially in the valley to the start of the Foscagno pass yesterday that only Majka was needed for the final move… and of course Pogačar can finish the job, they just have to get him with range and he can move but it can mean no margin for error like a mechanical or a bike change… but he’s minutes up no so that’s covered. UAE’s Tour team will offer a lot more support which close down this small weakness come July.
Riders can follow Pogačar’s attacks, it’s what comes after that is impossible. An acceleration can create a gap but the onslaught of power makes the moves impossible to follow, once he’s made the jump he can sustain an effort at a rate that others cannot. Yet we’re also seeing the others racing each other, if Pogačar moves the best of the rest are watching each other. The positions behind are ossifying, the time gaps on Sunday morning were widened by the finish. There is still a duel between Dani Martinez and Geraint Thomas and Ben O’Connor is close for the podium too and it’ll be interesting to watch the dynamics here.
He didn’t win but Nairo Quintana could have won the stage yesterday had the breakaway cooperated better. Sure, “if this then that” but what’s notable that riders are openly saying they were in the breakaway but the move sabotaged its chances because of a lack of cohesion; we had this yesterday but also on the stage to the Prati di Tivo. With Pogačar grabbing so much, teams ought to have an added incentive.
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Romain Bardet’s attack saw him gain a few seconds but leaves him in a difficult place. Too high on GC to be allowed in the breakaway, too far from the podium to get a memorable result. But he’s not shopping in a gift store and picking which reward he’d like, it’s where he is. DSM will also not turn the points from a high GC finish; remember the UCI publishes weekly updates but the Giro results, from Stage 1 to 21 are only computed once the race is done.
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To points of a different sort and there’s a battle for the blue jersey. Tadej Pogačar leads the competition on 172 points, almost 100 points ahead of Simon Geschke but of course Geschke carries the blue jersey. Only we’re seeing Geschke going up the road to collect points and and Lilian Calmejane doing the same. In Calmejane’s own words wearing the jersey “by procuration” is valuable, it brings publicity to teams. How much value we can debate, pro cycling is the sport where sponsors pay to have teams branded in their image yet success comes when, in this case, swapping the Cofidis jersey for one reading Banco Mediolanum. Either way it shows riders are scrapping for the crumbs that fall from Tadej Pogačar’s table. Tuesday and Wednesday’s stages are for the breakaway and could see the mountains jersey become a direct contest.
At the back and Vadim Pronskiy did not start Stage 15 and Clément Davy did not finish the stage. All the rest made it within the time cut. These are set at the discretion of the organiser and the Giro seems generous compared to the Tour de France. Stage 15’s time cut yesterday worked out at 18%; the Tour rulebook would have stipulated 13% which, everything else being equal, would have culled four riders.
Talking of exits, few sprinters have bailed because of the mountains. Phil Bauhaus did not start Stage 15 but that’s it. With two sprint stages left there’s an incentive for many to stay, Jonathan Milan is in the points lead, Kaden Groves still hunting a stage and so on. Tim Merlier’s done the Giro and Tour before but never got over the Alps so he of all has an extra challenge.
Watching the Italian TV news bulletin last night the sports news came late – this isn’t Flanders where the death of the Iranian president might come second to Evenepoel – and RAI’s Telegiornale led with the tennis ATP Rome doubles before a 90 second report from the Giro, most of which was about fans picnicking roadside on the Mortirolo, complete with some seemingly obligatory newsreel footage of Marco Pantani… before ten seconds on Pogačar winning.
Looking wider and Pogačar is being portrayed as a rider apart. It’s notable how the contest is less with rivals on the road but comparisons are made with greats of the past. Take La Gazzetta, whose front page proclaims “Pogačar alla Coppi”.
Forecasting the winners is proving easy so far but the weather? The race has an official sponsor in 3B, an Italian weather website that has a deal with RCS for its newspapers and with La7, the TV channel owned by race organiser boss Urbano Cairo. It’s normally – ok, anecdotally – the best outlet for weather in Italy but still surprisingly prone to announcing sunshine only for it to rain and vice versa.
All eyes are on tomorrow’s weather forecast with snow expected at the top of the Stelvio and if the Giro won’t reach the 2,757m pass, it turns off just a couple of hundred metres below to take the Umbrail. However it’s more a story of grim discomfort, than alarm and snow ploughs. Snow here means a light dusting that may not settle higher up. It’ll just be very wet and cold but this could still be sufficient for a third revision. There’s also a yellow weather warning (red is worse) for later in the week.
The post Giro Rest Day Notes first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Enjoyed the Giro so far? Whatever we’ve thought of the race so far today is a big change with the distance, high mountains and also the arrival of bad weather… although Pogačar could just extend his lead.
Stage 14 Review: Filippo Ganna won. Predictable… but there was suspense. Magnus Sheffield started fast but began to fade, and then crashed. Tadej Pogačar was matching the Italian champion on the course for the first half but the second half suited the bulkier specialist and the race leader finished second.
In the “fight for pink” Pogačar extended his lead by a minute, with Geraint Thomas now his closest rival at 3m41s as the Welshman surpassed Dani Martinez. Thymen Arensman was third on the stage and the big gainer on GC, overtaking climbers to go from 10th to 6th overall. This hardly puts him in a winning position but he’s back as a second card to play for Ineos when it comes to the podium or even a long range move to scare UAE.
If the outcome was expected, the win was special to Ganna, his first Giro stage win since 2021; he was beaten by Evenepoel in the opener last year and then left the race. He broke down in tears on TV trying to explain what it meant to him and the gratitude to the crowd and his team was sincere.
The Route: 220km, the longest in the race and 5,400m of vertical gain. On paper today is the biggest stage of the race although the way the climbs are spaced apart makes it a marathon, a test of endurance.
Up the valley up the start before the climb to Lodrino, “only” a third category climb today but a mountain pass all the same and the Cocca di Lodrino has some steeper sections midway to help the breakaway go clear.
The Colle San Zeno is a tiny road whose road isn’t the steady slope the profile suggests, it’s irregular and hard going. The descent is a bit wider and more regular and leads to the valley floor and then there’s 60km up the valley.
The Mortirolo is tackled via the “easy” side from Monno but it’s still a very tough climb and this means the harder side has to be descended. The climb is often with double-digit gradients and twists and turns up. The descent is steep and irregular but this far out from the finish hopefully nobody feels compelled to risk things.
The comes more valley roads and then the Foscagno climb. This is a very regular climb on a wide road, the odd one out among the climbs today.
The Finish: The 2026 Winter Olympics are officially “Milano-Cortina” but Livigno is in on the games too and the freestyle ski and snowboard events will happen here, more precisely on the Mottolino ski piste. Once at the Passo di Eira theren’s a turning onto the ski run. Is it a road? There’s tarmac but it looks like a truck fell over spilled asphalt spilled down the slope, the steep pitch brings to mind the Planche des Belles Filles but at over 2,000m and on the flanks of the mountains there’s a touch of last year’s Tour finish on the altiport at Courchevel.
The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is the obvious safe pick today, a stage win today leaves him going into the rest day in a very comfortable position. However his team won’t have it easy to control things all day and the breakaway has a great chance of making it to contest the win.
Climbers with a shot at the win include Michael Storer (Tudor) who can ride for himself but he’s 11th overall so Bahrain and others might chase if he starts to pull away, even more so for the likes of Romain Bardet, just eighth at seven minutes.
Valentin Paret-Peintre (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is half an hour down on GC but could be saved for helping leader Ben O’Connor. J-P Lopez (Lidl-Trek) has been ill but is feeling better now. Giulio Pellizzari (VF), Jefferson Cepeda (EF) are climbers with an outside chance while Edoardo Zambanini (Bahrain) is the local pick hailing from the start but his team are fully committed to Tiberi’s cause so he may not be able to play his card.
| | – | | | Pogačar, Storer | | | VPP, Cepeda, Rubio, Lopez |
Weather: sunshine at the start but rain forecast for later. 17°C in the valleys, colder higher up.
TV: KM0 is at 10.40am CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. This could be a slow burn day but tune in from the start and think of having it on in the background.
Postcard from Livigno
Livigno is often used for altitude training camps by a range of athletes from footballers to swimmers but for cyclists it’s the summer only given the wintry weather from November to May. Tadej Pogačar came here to prepare for the Tour de l’Avenir while an amateur and he’s been back with the UAE team since.
Sitting at 1,816m above sea level Livigno is roughly at the useful starting point needed; there are higher hotels to stay nearby and a range of roads above 2,000m including some flat ones for time trial training.
Altitude training is still an inexact science. The original thinking was that altitude creates hypoxia from the “lack of oxygen” or more accurately the reduced partial pressure and so the body responds by producing more red blood cells. This allows an athlete to transport more oxygen and so their aerobic abilities increase. This is still the case, but these gains can take three weeks and once the athlete leaves altitude the stimulus stops and the precious red blood cell count drops off. These gains vary too, some respond more than others.
However the altitude training is now seen to have much wider benefits. The ability to handle “lactate” or hydrogen ions can be improved by altitude training. There are efficiency gains too in the muscle cell’s ability to handle the reduced amount of oxygen available, the body learns to do more with less. Also riding at altitude trains riders for racing at altitude as well, the ability to deliver efforts at altitude improves. This matters as a the key moments in grand tours, particularly the Giro and Tour de France, are often at altitude.
This helps explain why altitude training camps play an important role even if riders can use “altitude tents” at home (although they are banned in Italy). Tents can help boost red blood cells but the wider benefits from altitude and can last longer than the blood values which explains why doing a camp weeks long a grand tour can pay off in the final week of the race. Camps also mean riders are under direct supervision and the ascetic environment means there are few distractions. So while Pogačar races to Livigno today he could well be back in June as part of his bid for the Tour de France.
The post Giro Stage 15 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The second time trial and two races today: Filippo Ganna’s bid to stay in the hot seat for the afternoon and the contest among the GC contenders for the podium and beyond.
Stage 13 Review: a third sprint win for Jonathan Milan. With 60km to go the peloton split during the stage and Milan and his team were on the wrong side and forced to chase with Milan himself taking turns but the gap was never big, the problem was just closing the final metres.
In the streets of Cento Fernando Gaviria went for a characteristic long sprint, then Milan jumped with 200m to go. Nobody got close. Stanisław Aniołkowski finished second precisely because he was on Milan’s wheel, there was no point leaving the slipstream of the Italian colossus and riders came in in a line rather than across the road. Both Merlier and Groves were out of the sprint after being caught in traffic, with Groves brushing the barriers and having to ease up. Thanks to this Milan now leads the points competition by over 100 points meaning the closest rider Kaden Groves would have to win two stages and an intermediate sprint without Milan scoring anything for the jersey to change; put another way the threat to Milan’s ciclamino jersey is gravity in the Alps.
The Route: a 31km time trial. It starts with a small climb out of town. There are few secrets to the course but the first half uses more rural roads, these twist and turn, rise and fall a bit, it can interrupt the pacing a bit: do you power over that drag or surrender with a gear shift to keep something for later? The second half is on wider roads before finishing on the shores of Lake Garda.
The Contenders: Filippo Ganna (Ineos) blitzed the flat part of the time trial to Perugia last week only to lose out on the climb to Tadej Pogačar. Today there’s no climb so it’s Ganna’s stage to lose, surely something will have to go wrong, illness or such like for him to be beaten.
The question for all the GC contenders is how hard to push it because tomorrow’s stage is a humdinger. Go big today or keep something back in reserve?
| | Ganna | | | – | | | – |
Weather: sunny and 21°C with a light easterly wind meaning a headwind for the first half of the course.
TV: the first rider is off at 1.40pm CEST, Ganna goes at 2.35pm and Pogačar at 4.43pm and he should finish by 5.15pm CEST.
Postcard from Desenzano del Garda
Lake Garda is known for its crystal waters, to gaze into it is to feel thirsty. It’s a swanky place where teak-decked motorboats chug between private villas with their own jetties, some even with their own harbours. If you’re watching the time trial on TV and see a helicopter shot of a large house with big swimming pools with about 3km to go there’s a good chance it belongs to Igor Makarov, the now Cypriot founder of the Katusha cycling team which had its HQ just down the road.
Born in Turkmenistan, loyal readers will remember past posts about Makarov’s rise. As a racing cyclist he’d travel to events and using whatever meagre resources he had he’d buy some jeans to take home and sell. One day jeans, another day natural gas. He started piping gas from Turkmenistan to Ukraine in barter deals that saw him repaid in cereal. It made him a billionaire and his business ITERA became a key player in the global energy market. In time he’d start the Katusha cycling team.
Russia around the turn of the century was a business wild-west. This was something an American investor called Bill Browder discovered, he’d backed the Russian energy company Gazprom but found it was selling off assets on the cheap. For example Browder says Gazprom sold 32% of a gas venture called Purgaz to Makarov’s ITERA for $1,200. No missing million or billion suffix here, we’re talking the kind of money you could spend to heat a home for a year. Only Purgaz had 380 billion cubic metres of gas, enough to power Europe for a year. You can see why Browder had concerns and Makarov got rich. Makarov though was hardly fleecing Gazprom, its own managers and others were in on the ruse.
Flush with cash Makarov bought a villa in Desenzano on the shores of the lake, other Russian billionaires did too because it’s one thing to make money in Russia, to keep it better put it abroad. The local press says he’s rarely seen in the villa; one article from a few years ago says his Boeing couldn’t land at Brescia airport because of fog so it was diverted to Milan.
Only these days no more Boeing, you might spot him on an orange-painted Airbus A320… because he’s had to travel with budget carrier Easyjet. Many of his assets have been frozen, his private jets grounded, yachts seized. The UK cited him among those “supporting or obtaining benefit from the Government of Russia and operating in sectors of strategic significance” but he’s since been taken off the UK sanctions list. He’s been lobbying hard, even renounced Russian citizenship, quite a turn for the man who bankrolled the “Russian cycling project” a decade ago.
There’s still a cycling connection as he’s on the UCI’s Management Committee, effectively the board of cycling’s governing body. But perhaps real interest is the way his career has told us so much about the changes in Russia over the years whether the economy, energy, business and politics but that’s all for someone else’s blog or a historian.
The post Giro Stage 14 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The traditional Emilia-Romagna sprint stage. There’s not much to preview as you can surely already tell from the preview above that it’s a sprint stage and Jonathan Milan is the pick.. but we can review as well.
Al commando: an anarchic stage saw many attempts to get in the breakaway. No soon had the main move established itself did the attacks fly as the group was too big.
Julian Alaphilippe and Mirco Maestri took off with 127km to go. Madness? On paper yes but behind the group was so big and chaotic that every chase attempt doomed itself. If Filippo Ganna took a long turn to help Jonathan Narvaez then others were sitting on for free. If riders attacked hoping to form a smaller group of more committed riders, others closed it down. This chaos went on for hours all while Alaphilippe and Maestri shared the work ahead, often with just a minute’s lead but enough to be clear of the chaos behind, a gap they couldn’t close.
Further behind Bahrain towed the peloton, again to defend Antonio Tiberi’s fifth place as Jan Hirt was up the road and gaining time. At one point they accelerated hard to try and exploit crosswinds but it didn’t last. It shows the slim pickings behind Pogačar have their value.
On the final climb of the day, the hardest, Alaphilippe rode away from Maestri while the chasers were closing in, including Jhonathan Narvaez. Alaphilippe crested the climb solo and stayed away for the win and now has a stage in all three grand tours, among all his other wins. It was a masterpiece of a ride but also marked a change, the rider once able to leave rivals drowning in their own lactic acid up short climbs went long. Peter Sagan’s raid to Tortoreto in the 2020 Giro came to mind; ditto Philippe Gilbert’s Paris-Roubaix win.
It was a lively day with end-to-end action, but no movement among the GC contenders needed to make it a stage for the age. Pogačar’s weakness, if he has one, is to come in the very high mountains.
The Route: 179km and 150m of vertical gain, a number boosted by bridges over railways and the autostrada. It’s as flat as a piadina, the local dish.
The Finish: flat of course, but with a series of corners. They’re not the kind where anyone has to stop pedalling, even braking might be optional but they’ll line out the peloton in the streets of Cento.
The Contenders: a stage for the sprinters, there’s only Stage 18 and 21 left for them so their teams will be keen to get a chance today. Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) is the obvious pick, two stage wins and his team are providing a valuable assist. Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) and Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) are running him close and they’ll be queuing to be on Milan’s wheel. If Milan is one of the top sprinters here he could be the most valuable lead out rider ever with his speed and size but of course that would be a step back.
It’s hard to pick another name to get past all three but as ever things are hectic and we’ll have to see.
| | Milan | | | Merlier, Groves | | | – |
Weather: sunny and 22°C, almost no wind.
The race feels far away but northern Italy is struggling with heavy rain and the risk of flooding and the Giro is getting closer to the mountains.
TV: KM0 is at 1.10pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the sprint finish.
Postcard from Cento
Cento is not famous for much but it does have the Fava factory. Fava? It makes industrial pasta machines, the kind where flour and water go in one end and out come dried fusilli, penne or conchiglie. In the case of Fava, 12 tonnes per hour from their biggest unit. Chances are if you’ve bought pasta in a supermarket it went through a Fava machine.
Cento is a pleasant town, nothing fancy but charming. It’s one of those places where if the sun is shining and you add some pink decoration it looks just great. It’s the place take a stroll around town, buy a copy of La Gazzetta Dello Sport and stop at the Piazza Guercino to sit down and soak it all in, literally with a coffee.
Gazzetta is the house newspaper of the race, owned by RCS which organises the Giro. The maglia rosa is pink because Gazzetta is printed on pink paper. Yet despite all this, coverage in the Gazzetta is brief, typically three or four pages, although today has five. It can take longer to leaf through the thirty or more pages of football coverage to get to the Giro bit than it does to read about the race once you get their. Plus their chief reporter Ciro Scognamiglio tweets all the transfer gossip so you don’t have to buy the newspaper to read the scoops.
All this is wistful lament. It’d be ideal if La Gazzetta was required reading and an essential part of the Giro routine for two reasons. First as a definitive account of the race written on the ground, but second because La Gazzetta is the most widely read newspaper in Italy. If the Giro had ten pages then this would signal greater popular interest in the race.
It’s a subject discussed in yesterday’s post-stage Processo alla Tappa show on Italian TV: why did France’s L’Equipe put “VPP” on the front page but when Milan wins he didn’t feature on the front page of two of the three sports newspapers in Italy, and on La Gazzetta he just got a small mention (screengrab above). So buy a copy of La Gazzetta but if you order a coffee to accompany your reading, perhaps make it an espresso.
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Want to win a stage? Are the sprint finishes and high Alps beyond reach. Well today is the day. All the peloton knows it and half the peloton wants to exploit it.
A Seagull on the Coast: a second stage win for Jonathan Milan, named Jonathan by his mother after she read Richard Bach’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” during pregnancy. 23 years later he wins another scary sprint in the beach town of Francavilla. Not that Milan did anything wrong, it’s just the impression that at any moment his stem could snap, a pedal axle will shear or some other catastrophic failure will happen under the sheer force. It’s a double triumph for Trek, both a win and product stress test.
The other news from the sprint was Tim Merlier’s relegation. He drifted right and closed the door on Juan Sebastian Molano before moving back to the middle. It wasn’t wild but it wasn’t correct.
The big story earlier was Cian Uijtdebroeks not starting meaning Visma-LAB are down to four riders. There’s a virus doing the rounds but his team were quick to rule out Covid. Feedback from other teams is just a respiratory illness. Stefano Oldani was also out, he’d been ill for a couple of days with similar symptoms. So Antonio Tiberi is in white and he told RAI’s Processo alla Tappa show he’s already had the virus so is hopeful of continuing to Rome. It makes you fear who might be next.
The Route: 193km and 2100m of vertical gain. Today’s stage has four marked climbs but more that are not. These are the “walls” of the Marche, steep roads climbing to hilltop towns but the race has avoided the most severe versions. However the defining feature of the road is their exhausting changes in gradient, they’re not just steep but variable and this irregularity makes them hard. The last one up Monte Giove is narrow too.
The Finish: the race twists around Fano but it’s largely flat, a dip under the railway line first and then a bridge over it before the flamme rouge.
The Contenders: the breakaway stage of the Giro. Some names stand out. Jhonathan Narvaez (Ineos) is in obvious form and has a fast sprint, he smoked Pogačar after all. Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) is in great form too but this has been sufficient to get clear but not win, he will need to be more crafty today. Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) is versatile. Michael Valgren (EF) came close the other day but said he wasn’t feeling good. Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco) will be up for the stage but how to win?
Sprinters Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Caleb Ewan (Jayco) can have a chance today if the tactics work out, they’d need to get in the breakaway and play cards carefully.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) can’t be ruled out but we’d probably have to see a spectacular stage for him to come in with a small group to contest the win.
| | – | | | Narvaez, Vendrame, Alaphilippe | | | Schachmann, Groves, Bagioli, Sanchez, Valter, Pogačar |
Weather: sunshine and 23°C
TV: KM0 is at 12.30pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. This could have sport from start to finish.
Postcard from Osimo
Today’s stage is in the Marche region, it as plenty going for it with mountains, coast, food, wine and a pleasant climate. Now you can probably tell there is a “but” coming… and it’s the roads. Italy has a vast network of roads which is great for cycling as you can find plenty of routes with very little traffic.
Only this is about the superficial as while the roads are fantastic, plenty are cracked and potholed in a way that they just aren’t in, say, France or Spain. This varies by region and over the years Marche has tended to have a lot of bad ones, although it’s hardly exceptional.
Sometimes it can’t be helped. Italy’s geography is a big factor, clay soils and schist rocks mean hillsides are subsiding and roads slide with them. Most regions have a climate that has torrential rains ice and above all heat. The technique of using asphalt also means the road is even more likely to soften. But it’s also a question of resources, even bigger infrastructure like bridges are at risk here.
In recent years wider tires and rims have helped a lot, what would once tear tires and ruin rims on a a recon ride is now passable. Although it does mean the road cyclist is often scanning the road ahead like a mountain biker on the trail rather than gazing at the scenery. Anyway, rather than get into a blogger’s rant let’s give the last word to the local press in Italy…
The Giro can often see roads repaired ahead of the race, watch and you’ll see regular portions of fresh blacktop. I can’t remember if it was The Cycling Podcast or the Gironimo podcast but just the other day one cited an amusing newspaper article in a local newspaper from Calabria. The headline above is “No Giro in Calabria, relief for tire-fitters”, as in garage repair shops can rest assured of business thanks to rough roads ravaging vehicles. Here’s more of the amusing piece (my translation):
There is no fan of cycling that does not love the Giro d’Italia and there is no tire-fitter or mechanic that does not hate it, at least in Calabria. In fact for a long time the mythical stage race organised by [La Gazzetta Dello Sport] has not been synonymous with sport but with resurfacing…
…the roads in Calabria are always a mess, except when there’s a stage of the Giro. Thanks to the TV coverage of the race route, local councils seem to turn into their efficient Japanese counterparts. Every hole, like magic, is filled in an flash, including those that had been there for years; the asphalt suddenly resembles that of a Swiss canton. For those who make a living repairing tires this is trouble.
Mechanics and tire-fitters can, however, breathe a sigh of relief: no Giro d’Italia in Calabria in 2024. The collapse of business recorded as a result of the stage between Palmi and Scalea will not be repeated. It is not known if it was these two powerful lobbies, or that of the spare parts industry, that convinced [La Gazzetta] not bring the race south of Campania. But it is likely that in several garages, when the official route for 2024 was unveiled, they were uncorking champagne.
– “Calabria, niente Giro d’Italia 2024: sollievo tra i gommisti” by Camillo Giuliani in I Calabresi, October 2023
The post Giro Stage 12 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
A sprint by the sea.
A Fond La Forme: it felt like no move was ever going to get away and UAE would just have to do a few turns on the front and voila, they’d reach the foot of the Bocca della Selva with only a small deficit on the riders away and could launch Pogačar.
Only a bigger group fought harder to get away. Behind a decision was taken. Pogačar and others, both his team mates and rivals, stopped to urinate and that was it, the breakaway was going to be allowed to stay away. Name another sport where stopping for a leak is a tactical component.
Up ahead Jan Tratnik attacked after the Intergiro sprint with 37km to go, using the descent to build up a lead. He’s not the ideal climber with a 20km summit finish coming up but all the more reason to use the roads before to construct an advantage. The final climb suited too, especially if he had the same climbing form on the slopes of Mount Fuji in in the Tokyo Olympics. Five riders chasing were Filipo Fiorelli, Marco Frigo, Andrea Bagioli, Romain Bardet and Valentin Paret-Peintre but Fiorelli vanished to leave four.
UAE returned to the front to ride tempo but soon Bahrain took up the chase. This was an important moment because it shows they are out to defend Antonio Tiberi’s sixth place and his shot at the white jersey. The San Marino Sharpshooter is 12 seconds behind white jersey Cian Uijtdebroeks and he can hope to put him Uit de trui in this Saturday’s time trial. Beyond Bahrain and Tiberi’s plans it shows a whole extra team is ready to take on the race.
Onto the Bocca della Selva and Frigo couldn’t sustain the pace. With 13km to go with Tratnik’s lead at one minute Bardet and Paret-Peintre exchanged words and seconds later “VPP” attacked with Bardet following. This distanced Bagioli but only just but probably had a psychological effect with the French tandem taking turns and slowly eating into Tratnik’s lead. With 3km to go VPP attacked Bardet to ride down Tratnik and go solo for the win, his first.
The best stage so far? Certainly no quiet moments with attacks from the start but for a great day we would have had the “two races for the price of one” with some GC action. Not with Pogačar here though, just the subplot of Tiberi vs Uijtdebroeks.
If Decathlon-Ag2r team boss Vincent Lavenu pinched himself while checking the weekly UCI rankings out yesterday morning to see his squad sitting second behind UAE, having even increased their lead on the rest, you wonder what he thought by the end of the day?
The Route: a stage of two parts, there’s a hilly section inland which contributes to the 1850m of vertical gain before a long run along the Adriatic coast past endless beaches, campsites and seaside resort towns.
The Finish: flat. After riding north-west along the coast and reaching Francavilla there’s a U-turn in town or rather two right hand bends that take the race onto a 3.5km long finishing straight.
The Contenders: with a stage win and two second places Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) is the deductive pick, these results helped by both his raw speed and a strong leadout which further boosts his chances today. Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) should be close but has been less consistent, a stage win but his best other result so far is fifth and he’s smarting from a crash in the time trial, even if he’s had time to recover these things can accumulate too during a stage race with lost sleep and inflammation.
With the sprinters each having one stage so far, including the now-absent Olav Kooij who finally jumped the waterfall last Sunday in Naples but fell ill and is out. It could be Kaden Groves’ turn, especially if his Alpecin-Deceuninck team can concentrate their work in the final kilometres of the stage instead of the early part. Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain) is often close but has yet to win a grand tour stage.
There are more chances but time is running out for Fabio Jakobsen (DSM) and Caleb Ewan (Jayco), star names but in the difficult position where repeat defeats create more doubt. However they have a chance and this supplies more teams to chase today.
| | Milan | | | Merlier, Groves | | | Bauhaus, Jakobsen |
Weather: sunshine and 23°C. Once by the coast there’ll be an onshore wind but cooling breeze rather than angry crosswind.
TV: KM0 is at 12.15pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.10pm CEST. Tune in around 5.00pm to catch the sprint… but check in case they’re ahead of schedule.
Postcard from Termoli
The Giro goes past Termoli on the coast. Caleb Ewan won here in 2021. The race also visited in 1987 and the story of that year’s Giro was Stephen Roche’s win, beating his own team mate Roberto Visentini after a bitter internal team battle that makes Cane-Abel sound mild and Simoni-Cunego in 2004 look courteous.
After the Giro Roche would win the Tour de France and then Worlds in the same year… something Tadej Pogačar wants to try too although arguably the Irishman had it a little easier the Worlds were held in August back then.
That year the stage victory in Termoli went to Paolo Rosola, a solid sprinter who took 11 Giro stage wins during a road career between 1978 and 1990.
But that wasn’t the end of his cycling career as he switched to mountain biking. Today plenty of riders retire from the World Tour and turn to the gravel scene but Rosola did this decades ago, even moving into mountain biking at time when the name itself wasn’t even settled. As you can see from the card above he joined the “ATB Bianchi Team”, ATB… as in All Terrain Bike. He might be the first top-level road cyclist to have made the switch… but informed readers might know better.
Just like today’s gravel scene, in 1990 mountain biking was booming. You probably know the sport started out with a few riders adapting cruiser bikes, sometimes with motorbike parts, to race downhill in California at the end of the 1970s. By the end of the 1980s this had become big business. To open a road cycling magazine from 1989 or 1990 is to see plenty of road cycling in the reports but it’s all juxtaposed by adverts for mountain bikes and off-road equipment, not dissimilar from today where a road magazine has a lot of gravel bikes. These companies presumably started to need proven athletes to compete on their behalf and Rosola was ready-made.
He rode for Bianchi and even competed in the Downhill Worlds in 1991 where his sprint might have been handy. Once he stopped pinning a number he stayed in the sport, lately as a manager on the Gazprom team. Despite plenty of wins on the road and beyond, he’s arguably the underachiever in his household as he’s married to Paola Pezzo, the mountain biker who won gold in the Olympics and Worlds many times.
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The Giro swings north. Today has a short mountain stage in the Matese hills with a summit finish. A chance for the breakaway or does Pogačar eat their lunch again?
The Route: flat as the race skirts around the menacing Mount Vesuvius with 50km on the plains. It’s awkward terrain for the climbers who want to win, they’ll have a roll a big gear to get in the breakaway, ideally they have a team mate to help. The first sprint at Arpaia looks like an unmarked climb and it is a mountain pass – the Forche Caudine – but it’s just a gentle drag up the valley for the race today.
The Camposauro climb is harder, first a gentle slope through some villages and then steeper once on the flanks of Monte Taburno. The descent is longer and riskier, a small road that is not used very often. The Intergiro sprint comes after a long drag up through the olive groves.
The Finish: a 20km long climb? This includes the descent out of Cusano. It goes up in three parts, separated by small descents and recovery sections. 14%? The inside line on a long bend perhaps but the road is regular and wide. Some 8% sections towards the top make it harder though.
The Contenders: a breakaway? Every team except UAE has an interest in one going clear because if there’s a summit finish sprint among the contenders Pogačar is very likely to take the spoils. So all the other squads will want a rider up front for two reasons: to get an option on the stage and to make life harder for UAE. Will UAE chase today? Possibly because the course suits and there’s no nailed-on Pogačar day until Sunday’s mountain road to Livigno but at the same time keeping a maxi breakaway at two minutes is asking a lot of the team. Would letting a move stay away help the politics and tactics? Possibly too but there will only be one stage winner, everyone else will try just as hard in the mountain stages to come; the benefit comes from saving riders.
The Bocca della Selva isn’t a pure climber’s first choice, a little bit of punch can help here too, someone who can take time early on the climb might find the flat sections allow them to defend it. Michael Storer (Tudor) seems in good form but he’s 11th overall which means if he gets time he’ll worry others after a high GC finish, likewise Filippo Zana (Jayco) who is 13th and the same for Romain Bardet (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) at 14th. Georg Steinhauser (EF) was a neo-pro to watch here after he won a stage of the U23 Giro Valle d’Aosta up a long climb that was never too steep but a Giro win would be a breakthrough, team mate Esteban Chaves is going well too. Einer Rubio (Movistar) is a pure climber who has been in the breakaways already.
| | – | | | Pogačar, Storer, Rubio, Bardet | | | Vansevenant, Zana, Steinhauser, Chaves, Rubio |
Weather: sunshine and 23°C.
TV: KM0 is at 1.15pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in from 4.20 to see the final climb from Cusano Mutri.
Postcard from Pompeii
Famous for its archaeology, Pompeii is the southernmost point of this year’s Giro d’Italia. While no grand tour can ever visit the whole country in one edition and some areas are visited more often than others, the Giro’s course is arguably a mirror of Italy’s economy with its skew to the north. This is also true for Italian cycling as whole. The further south you go the fewer races there are. Likewise with the distribution of pro cyclists.
The map above shows the birthplaces of the Italian riders who started the 2024 Giro. It’s an illustration of the distribution of Italian cycling. Why is this so? The south today is poorer than the north which is still a factor: a racing bike is expensive, a local club is not as well-funded, a bike race can’t attract sponsors so easily. But there are wider factors like the greater mechanisation and industrialisation of the North which saw workers pedal to their workplaces a century ago and once they got a bike and a taste of commuting, some went riding more at the weekends and in turn cycling’s popularity grew, try Pedalare! Pedalare! for more. However what is true for cycling is also the case for other sports: football, basketball and more all have more presence in the north.
It’s a self-reinforcing problem. Vincenzo Nibali (Messina) tells how he would travel with his father for hours in the car on the eve of an amateur race and sometimes they’d even sleep overnight in the car. Domenico Pozzovivo (Policoro) has similar stories. If they made it, others did not, perhaps they were too tired on race day or just unable to justify the fuel and autostrada tolls for long journeys. Both Nibali and Pozzovivo would migrate north to amateur teams as a stepping stone to turning pro.
Ideally the Giro could step in here with some more stages to the south. The terrain is suitable but easier said than done. The accommodation options more sparse and host towns ready to bid harder to find. And if the Giro shows up for a day it’s nice but this can’t resolve a structural problem. However as you will probably see today there are plenty of glorious roads to enjoy.
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It’s back to Napoli for the third time in three years and an urban finish.
Pink Panther Purrs: it took a lot of trying but finally a big breakaway got away with some GC outsiders like Romain Bardet. No threat to Pogačar but still able to do a “snakes and ladders” Giro, losing time one day only to gain it the next.
Pogačar said post-stage that he asked his team mates if they were up for riding for the stage and they replied yes. It wasn’t a revelation given UAE rode hard during the stage and kept the breakaway at two minutes before catching them the foot of the climb to Prati di Tivo, even if Valentin Paret-Peintre stayed away for half the climb. After the stage several riders from the breakaway said it was also on them for not riding hard enough.
Pogačar’s win felt inevitable yet he didn’t land a knock-out blow. Worse for his rivals as he was toying with them. The pink panther cosplay as a cat playing with a mouse. Sated already by a comfortable lead, he didn’t need to devour his rivals. They were bracing for the attack but that never came. So Antonio Tiberi started the fireworks in the final two kilometres but each time he or Arensman jumped, Pogačar clawed them back. As the group marked each other, Rafał Majka rode back to them and was able to give a lead out to his boss. Finally in the space of 200m Pogačar had time to finish, pocketed the ten second bonus and a third stage win. On paper the margin of victory might look small but this was his most certain result so far.
The Route: over a week in and the first ride beyond 200km. There’s little to note about the course for the most part. The bump on the course after 60km isn’t even a mountain pass. It’s mainly flat roads and long straight sections, there are hills and mountain parks to the sides but they’re avoided today, a surprisingly modest stage for a Sunday.
Just as the race is going to Napoli for the third year in a row, the course returns to Monte Procida on the Flegrea peninsula again too. If you remember the racing from 2022, Procida was the gentle climb. There are two more bumps on the course but the difficulty isn’t the climbing and more the bends which can line out the bunch, which makes positioning even more precious.
The Finish: flat and by the sea front, the same course as 2022 with a U-turn at the flamme rouge before the finish by the sea.
The Contenders: a likely sprint, who to pick? Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) and Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) have a stage each and can easily repeat. Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Olav Kooij (Visma-LAB) look the most likely challengers.
| | Milan, Groves | | | Merlier, Kooij | | | Ewan, Bauhaus |
Weather: sunshine and 23°C
TV: KM0 is at 12.15pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the sprint finish in town.
Postcard from Napoli
With about 2.5km to go the race passes close to the Piazza Eritrea. Piazza is doing some heavy lifting here, don’t picture a large square with a fountain in the middle and cafes in the arcades, think instead of a seedy parking lot between two buildings. Apparently it once had a fountain but this was a functional trough to water horses hauling goods to the port. Either way it’s a hook to bring up the subject of Eritrea and bike races, even if Biniam Girmay has gone home when he might have hoped to win today.
As competing European powers rushed to take colonies in Africa during the 19th century, Italy occupied Eritrea and the borders established then have roughly stayed the same since. The colonial history is told better by experts rather than a sports blogger but one tangential result was the cultural significance of bike racing brought by the Italians. This helps explain why there are four Eritreans in the World Tour, more than any other African country.
You might see many Eritrean flags at bike races and when Girmay won Gent-Wevelgem he was treated to a hero’s welcome in Asmara, the capital. So far so good, but the country is sometimes referred to as the “North Korea of Africa”. It’s a clumsy comparison but evokes the authoritarian government, the lack of human rights and almost zero media freedom in a country where internet use is low and the few media outlets available are all run by the Ministry of Information.
So when Girmay is feted it can be a popular delight… but also propaganda for the regime. Likewise with the flags at races in Europe, there might be some proud members of the diaspora but there can also be regime supporters from the local embassy or consulate sent out to fly the flag.
Further to this is the “diaspora tax”, an semi-unofficial levy where those living abroad can pay 2% of their income to the local Eritrean embassy, even if they already pay tax in their country of residence. Those who have fled for good can refuse but people with family in the country, or those wanting to maintain access to the country and consular services including having a passport for travel have to pay. This might includes the pro cyclists, given they need passports. It is a significant source of revenue for the government.
So while the emergence of African cyclists brings much to celebrate and enjoy, when it comes to Eritrea things are more complicated.
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A real mountain stage and a good day for the breakaway, unless Tadej Pogačar wants to eat their lunch.
Peru-gia: Tadej Pogačar crossed the line with a victory celebration, knowing he won the stage. He beat Filippo Ganna by 17 seconds and even if the Italian had gone faster Pogačar would have still won the day because the likes of Geraint Thomas, Dani Martínez and Ben O’Connor were two minutes adrift.
Pogačar built his victory against his GC rivals on the flat, taking time on them all at the two early time checks, then speeding uphill into Perugia to eject Ganna out of the hotseat. The result stands for the day but the gains per kilometre – more than 1s/km against Thomas on the flat part of the course suggest the second time trial by Lake Garda means there’s more time for the taking.
Spare a thought for Ganna, resplendent in his Italian tricolore and once an invincible but now with Pogačar reduced to finishing second. Close, but sport is a winner-takes-all domain. Being the best time trial specialist used to be a very valuable niche, much less so now although of course we can revisit this as the sun sets on Paris late in July.
Back to the moment and to look at the GC now is to see the same tea leaves we saw on the eve of Torino: Pogačar leads, Martínez and Thomas are next, then Ben O’Connor because he blew himself up on the road to Oropa. Luke Plapp had a solid day after his breakaway and is up to fifth, Alexey Lutsenko is sixth but you wonder for the high mountains. Cian Uijtdebroeks loses ground but arguably had his best time trial ever so seventh is solid and Antonio Tiberi makes a leap up to eighth. These are all relative comforts in a day when Pogačar started the day with seconds on his rivals and finished it with minutes. Already.
The Route: A hard day, a real mountain stage with 3,750m of vertical gain. It starts with an unmarked but very real climb out of Spoleto to help the breakaway go clear.
The Finish: Prato di Tivo’s been a regular in Tirreno-Adriatico and featured just the other day in RCS’s freshly revived race, the Giro d’Abruzzo where Alexey Lutsenko won, muscling his way past several UAE climbers. It’s a long climb on a wide road, a ski station summit finish but with a wild feel as it’s remote. The middle-section is the steepest but just, the overall feel is of a very regular climb.
The Contenders: Tirreno-Adriatico came here in 2021 and the winner that day? Tadej Pogačar (UAE) took the stage after a solo move but he was “only” six seconds ahead of Simon Yates, a win and not a rout. He can obviously win again today but this depends on whether the UAE team want to ride all day to keep the breakaway in check. They can try… but really don’t have to.
So this opens up space for the breakaway. The climb suits riders who can muscle their way up and either dance away or sprint from group. Aurélien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) has the sprint, Michael Storer (Tudor) the jump. Others like Alexander Kamp (also Tudor), Simone Velasco (Astana), Jefferson Cepeda (EF), J-P Lopez (Lidl-Trek) come to mind but it’s an open stage.
Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) lost in Rapolano but impressed for the way he was making move after move to get away so some form is there. Team mate Jan Hirt is almost the opposite, no turbo but he can grind the pedals over to a result. Mauri Vansevenant sits at the Lagrangian point between the two, even if he rocks on the bike.
| | – | | | Pogačar, APP, Storer, Zana | | | Kamp, Hirt, Alaphilippe, Velasco, Lopez, Vansevenant, Pellizari |
Weather: sunshine but a cool 18°C inland for much of the stage.
TV: KM0 is at 12.45pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the final climb at 4.30pm.
Postcard from Prati di Tivo
It’s too much to call Prati di Tivo a ski resort, “prati” is Italian meadows and green pastures abound while a handful of hotels, each spaced hundreds of metres from each other, offer accommodation amid the Gran Sasso mountains. For what? It’s a small ski resort, apparently once popular with Belgians but customers are dwindling today.
There are only a handful of pistes to ski, it’s more a destination for locals at the weekend if the conditions are right. And if there is snow the lifts don’t just have to cope with the ice, howling winds and high energy costs but court cases with the operators involved in a legal saga.
This is an issue all over Europe for small ski resorts at mid-level altitudes. Snow is increasingly intermittent and the operators, often local or regional government, are having to think about the future. Plough money into them or deploy it elsewhere? This is where cycling comes in because rather than see Prati di Tivo as a “ski resort”, many places want to rebrand as summer locations where, to borrow from Lee Perry, if the city is too hot people can cool out on the hilltop.
Today’s Giro stage helps put the place on the map but while cycling can help revive and promote these places, their decline means fewer funds to bid for races. As ski resorts pour funds into promoting the summer season the likely outcome is a “rich get richer” scenario where the big high altitude resorts can have a busy winter and summer program with bike races of all kinds, ski competitions and much more. Prati di Tivo might just revert to grassland.
The post Giro Stage 8 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The first of two time trial stages in the race and a crucial day to reshape the overall classification.
Stage 6 Review: a non-stop stage and self-fulfilling action. This was the “gravel” stage but most of the action happened on the tarmac. The sterrato sections were needed through, just enough to raise the tension and spice up the stage.
Anyone tuning in after two hours might have thought nothing had happened since the bunch was all together. Only there was raging battle to get in the breakaway that day and the fight went on so long that it was almost too late because any move would not have enough space to get away from UAE and Ineos.
The climb to Volterra finally broke the proverbial elastic. Kaden Groves was instrumental and Julian Alaphilippe went again with Luke Plapp, Pelayo Sanchez, Filippo Fiorelli, Matteo Trentin and Andrea Vendrame. Groves was the surprise as a sprinter but Plapp was the curiosity as a GC rider on the move, riding himself into the virtual maglia rosa.
On the Grotti sterrato section Plapp attacked and had Alaphilippe and Sanchez for company and the trio would stay away for the day. But only just with suspense to the end as to whether the peloton would get them, Ineos’s work took a minute out of their lead on the last sterrato sector to leave it close.
Heading to Rapolano and Sanchez was caught out by a roundabout, forgetting to the round part. He’d survived the dirt sectors and climbs and this would have been an ignominious ending as Plapp was untroubled and riding away. Alaphilippe was delayed by Sanchez here and as they chased he seemed to be turning into Thomas Voeckler with his vocal outbursts and exaggerated body language but this worked, it got Sanchez to help close down Plapp.
On the final climb the trio’s fortunes kept changing, each looked in peril on the steep climb which once would have been Alaphilippe’s springboard to victory but he couldn’t shake the others. He kept pulling though as the fine lead meant the trio had no time to play poker. In the finish Sanchez came around Alaphilippe to take his biggest in.
With Sanchez, he’s not a star name, having risen gradually up the ranks, a contract with BH Burgos at first – his local pro team as he’s from the Asturias and where he won a stage of the Vuelta Asturias – and he had very solid Vuelta last year. Now with Movistar this year he sacked Julian Alaphilippe and Luke Plapp from the breakaway in a straight uphill sprint.
Among the GC contenders no change except for Damiano Caruso who was already losing ground but conceded 15 minutes. The other point is trivial by comparison, but Tadej Pogačar looks increasingly tired by the post stage interviews, probably inevitable after the repeat questions from many media outlets but the boyish delight of the past is starting to have tones of the teenager told to tidy his room. We’ll see how he can regain the story today.
The Route: the profile says plenty, there’s not much more to add. The roads are flat and wide, there are few tricky corners. After the second time check at the crossing of the Tiber river, the climb to Casaglia begins including 1.5km at 10% and it’s often steeper, it’ll sting but riders have to keep something for the further climb up to Perugia.
The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) and Filippo Ganna (Ineos) are the obvious candidates. Pogačar is just riding that bit better than everyone but he hasn’t taken a TT win outside of Slovenia since Laval in the 2021 Tour de France. Ganna is the specialist who can stop him but he hasn’t won a time trial this season and he’s not the certain pick of a few years ago when he seemed invincible against the clock.
Can Geraint Thomas go better than Ganna? He has been climbing well so he should be time trialling well too, a year ago he was one second short of the win against Remco Evenepoel and it’ll be interesting to see his time splits on the way to the climb and then up.
Any outside contenders? A third Ineos name in Magnus Sheffield but this could be on too long a course for him. Mikkel Bjerg (UAE) won the Dauphiné stage last summer but like Sheffield it’s hard to seem him upstaging his leaders on the team.
Josef Černý (Soudal-Quickstep) can get results in time trials but his form doesn’t look sparkling and that’ll cost him on the climb at the end. Lorenzo Milesi (Movistar) is the U23 TT World Champion and so worth watching but the win looks elusive.
There’s also the contest for GC so as much as the stage win it’s all about seeing who has a good day and viewing their performances both relative to the leader board but also to expectations. Luke Plapp (Jayco) has the TT background and should be high up… but he might feel his efforts yesterday although nobody had it easy.
| | Ganna, Pogačar | | | Thomas | | | – |
Weather: 22°C and sunshine with a 20km/h NNE wind which means a three-quarters headwind for much of the course.
TV: Filippo Ganna starts at 2.37pm CEST and Tadej Pogačar off at 4.24pm and due in around 5.15pm CEST.
Postcard from Assisi
After a week with three sprint finishes, the Giro arrives in Umbria, a region famous for its famous hilltop towns like Perugia, Gubbio, Orvieto, Spoleto and Assisi. The list of places reads like a UNESCO heritage list. These are places both picturesque and big enough to host a Giro stage.
Imagine the scene: the race storms uphill, thundering over the ancient flagstones to pass through the old portico before a finish in the medieval piazza. Only today we get a time trial.
These uphill finishes though the castle walls ought to be part of the Giro, no? Yet they are probably as rare as mountain time trials. Defining such finishes is be more art than science but the last sharp uphill finish in the Giro by a castle? Visegrad in the Hungarian start but that was more a spiral road uphill, it certainly wasn’t urban.
How about 2018 and Stage 11 to Osimo won by Simon Yates. Before that? Maybe when Joaquim “Purito” Rodriguez won in Assisi in 2012. Either way these “medieval” finishes of the Giro are almost mythical whether in Umbria or beyond. When the race has visited Umbria there’s often been a time trial instead.
This feels a pity as given the Giro trades on images and even clichés of Italy and uphill finishes in these towns supply tourist appeal by the barrel-load and they offer great sport so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. It’s something that hasn’t been missed by the Tour de France as Stage 2 will finish by the Basilica di San Luca in Bologna this July.
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The “strade bianche” gravel road stage even if there’s only a few kilometres of the dust roads. Today’s stage suits the breakaway.
Lucky Lucques: so much for the sprint stage, the course with the finale that suited the sprinters most in the opening week saw a breakaway take the win. Alpecin-Deceuninck drove the pace up the Passo Bracco to sap other sprinters but it reeled in the day’s early breakaway which meant there was open road for fresh attackers.
A quartet went clear with 70km to go… and stayed away with the chasing teams coming up short. You could see riders taking a pull on the front of the peloton and theatrically looking over their shoulders for the next rider to come through, only nobody was. Alpecin’s activity earlier probably left a lot of sprint trains and workers rinsed.
In the streets of Lucca Andrea Pietrobon attacked the quartet just before the flamme rouge and got a gap and Enzo Paleni seemed to be the first to crack and chase which got Michael Valgren in touching distance of Pietrobon only for Thomas to come around like a crafty fox, the kind of skills he’s honed on the track for years. He told the Bidon podcast the other day his dream would be to “play” for a stage from the breakaway. It came true.
It’s also overdue. Thomas is a talented and versatile rider but without the palmarès or impact on the road so far, even if he’s been French TT champion. Today he got Cofidis’s first win of the season. If someone had to lose, spare a thought for Michael Valgren who got his best result after a horror crash in 2022, the final stage of the Route d’Occitanie where he came close to needing a hip replacement and endured a long rehab to get here.
The Route: 180km and 1900m of vertical gain. There’s 70km to the first climb, a procession but increasingly scenic and the climb to Volterra marks the change in terrain but little more.
The first gravel sector is approached by a gentle downhill and by itself the 4.4km section is nothing scary, it’s flat and regular in surface, with even a tarmac portion along the way. The difficulty is moving up, anyone out of position here is going to struggle to recover as the road isn’t wide and everyone will be thinking of what is up next.
There’s only a brief passage on the main road before the second section begins and this is very different, the road plunges down and then rises after and it is much more technical and twisty, it’s the Bagnaia sector from Strade Bianche.
Once the gravel is done the roads are hard going, plenty of unmarked climbs that pitch up steeply and twisting roads, it’s not easy for dropped riders to be towed back. The final section of gravel isn’t so bad and runs along top of a ridge.
The Finish: a tough wall to tackle 4km from the finish including the Via dei Poveri, a steep and narrow road that does get close to 20%, a real “leg breaker” before a gentle descent and into Rapolano for the finish.
The Contenders: let’s start with Tadej Pogačar (UAE) because while a breakaway is probably going to win, if things work out such that the move doesn’t work or the GC teams are stressed to the point of trying to out-ride each other for position then he’s the obvious pick to clean up in a sprint from a small group.
However today should suit the breakaway and many riders will have marked today as such, there should be a good fight to get in the move as opposed to some riders from wildcard invitees floating away.
For the breakaway most of the field are over four minutes down so a move can go without even posing a threat to Pogačar’s maglia rosa and of course he and his team can always “lend” it to the best placed rider up the road if they don’t look much of a threat for the overall win. Is Filippo Ganna (Ineos) allowed to go away or is he going to be reserved as a luxury bodyguard for Geraint Thomas and resting for the TT tomorrow? Jhonatan Narvaez is a good match for the course here.
Christophe Laporte (Visma-LAB) looks suited but the form is unknown, plus he had a hard crash yesterday, likewise team mate Attila Valter. Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ) is a classics kind of rider with a fast finish but he’s making his grand tour debut after a long spring campaign so no pressure to win. Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) will like the climbing. Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is a crafty rider who was looking strong in Romandie recently. Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) will be up for today but his win rate is low these days. With no sprinter and no GC contender EF Education-Easypost will want to be in the action today so after Valgren yesterday, perhaps it’s Andrea Piccolo today.
Wider range picks include Kevin Vermaerke (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) who is due a result, Nicola Conci (Alpecin-Deceuninck) who was fifth in Torino and because Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis) was going to be a pick today, maybe team mate Stefano Oldani doubles up instead?
| | – | | | Vendrame, Narvaez, Pogačar | | | Schachmann, Alaphilippe, Pithie, Conci |
Weather: sunshine and 22°C, a NE breeze will be a headwind at times in the finish.
TV: KM0 is at 12.55pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in by 4.00pm for the sterrato, earlier to watch the fight for position.
Postcard from Rapolano
Thanks to the Eroica cycle ride and the Strade Bianche the dust roads of the Sienese hills have a vintage feel about them. One dusting and today’s riders are teleported back to the good old days.
Yes they are romantic but there’s nothing too special about the sterrato roads. They are just roads with the usual Italian nomenclature, like Strada Provinciale 46. They maintained by municipal road crews rather preserved by volunteers tasked with protecting cultural heritage. School buses pick up kids every morning, commuters drive home on them in the evening and all with normal cars, no 4x4s required.
They’re not limited to this corner of Italy. Just to the south the Marche region has as many if not more of these roads but you can find them all over Italy, in the Veneto to the north-east we have the late-season pro races as a promotional pitch to attract gravel cyclists. Piedmont, the host region of the start has plenty, both amid vineyards but also into the Alps with old military roads like the Via del Sale and the Strada dell’Assietta – which includes the Finestre pass – although these are very different, “old military roads” rather than everyday things. Either way there are a lot of options in Italy for gravel and we’ll see if future editions of the Giro can embrace this, or does organiser RCS have a duty to promote the Tuscan versions because it owns the Strade Bianche race?
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Day 3 of sprint finishes with a hill before, today’s variety is the climb is longer but it is further from the finish in the walled city of Lucca.
Milan without Sanremo: Filippo Ganna rolled across to the day’s breakaway trio and seemingly startling them as they clocked his arrival. Minutes later he, or the team car, thought better of it and he left them to it.
Away again for the day Lilian Calmejane collected some mountain points, enough to take the mountains jersey on loan. But not lead the competition because he’s still behind Pogačar on points. Perhaps in this age that’s worth settling for? In his own words yes, the publicity is valuable for his team he told Eurosport. Job done after the climb he sat up for a jacket for the wet descent while companions Stefan De Bod and Franciso Munoz carried on to the finish.
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On the same descent into Savona Biniam Girmay crashed twice and quit the race. He looked sore after the first fall, the last rider to get going and then slid out again on another bend.
Filippo Ganna attacked on the Capo Mele. He’s good over four kilometres but holding off the whole bunch on a wide open road was too much and he was pursued by Italian track team colleague Simone Consonni, who then led-out his colleague and track team mate Jonathan Milan.
Milan launched another raging sprint. In recent years we’ve seen riders getting lower in a bid to make themselves more aerodynamic, head down below the shoulders. Not Milan the muscleman, he is all brute force, head bobbing, arms flexing, his front wheel weaving left and right, it looks wild like any minute a crank is going to snap or his handlebars will bend. Yet it’s also subtle, the very slight wobble in the front wheel might have made riders hesitate about passing, this time Bauhaus to the right and while Groves was closing he couldn’t close. Il Biondo di Buja took his second Giro stage after last year’s triumph.
The Route: what’s Italian for déjà vu? After yesterday’s Sanremo redux some more familiar roads with the Passo de Bracco, this time taken in the opposite direction to the 2023 Giro and then past Carrara – more below – and to Camaiore which has its own pro race.
The Montemagno climb is gentle and on wide roads.
The Finish: flat but not without challenges, the finale has been designed with help from local Alessandro Petacchi. First come the cobbles, urban pavé but they’ll rattle and then the course spits the riders out onto to the road that encircles Lucca’s walled city. It’s all big boulevards.
The Contenders: the flattest finish so far. Who wants to bet against Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek)? He was the fastest yesterday and convincingly powerful two days ago too although Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) won and he’ll find today easier with the run to the finish. Still many others will fancy their chances, Olav Kooij (Visma-LAB) is regular, Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is up there and Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain) close too. Fabio Jakobsen (DSM Firmenich-Post NL) should be fast but the showing yesterday in the hills is a concern as it’s not just gravity but form in general while Caleb Ewan (Jayco) seems to be finding his sprint train not to his liking.
| | Milan | | | Kooij, Merlier, Groves | | | Bauhaus, Jakobsen, Ewan |
Weather: sunny and a pleasant 23°C with a light tailwind for much of the stage.
TV: KM0 is at 1.00pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the Montemagno climb by 4.40pm.
Postcard from Carrara
Italy is a big exporter of marble and the Tuscan region here uses plenty, whether palatial buildings, ornamental statues or just kitchen counters. It’s because it produces plenty and you can see it from afar, a literal mountain of marble.
There’s a bike race to celebrate it, the Gran Premio Industrie del Marmo, as in the “Marble Industry GP”. Held in May – the next edition is in 10 days – it’s one of the top races on the Italian Under-23 calendar and many a top racer has taken part, in recent years the likes of Caleb Ewan, Luke Rowe, Matteo Sobrero and Patrick Gamper have stepped on the podium on their path to greater things.
The GP Marmo isn’t loosely connected to the industry, it rides past many stone works where blocks of marble the size of a bus are waiting to be cut and carved and parts of the course are white with dust.
The race goes to the next level though as it rides through the quarries. The promotional picture illustrates this. Further still it takes a long tunnel between quarries, it has lighting but it’s narrow and slathered with a damp paste. Even if the course is original the race is tough and very much not a circus show. Did the Giro miss a trick today? Maybe as mid-stage the tunnel would be feasible but all the more reason to look out for the U23 event.
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A sprint stage with the finish in Andora, not that one, the one four metres above sea level on the Ligurian coast.
Merlier earlier: RAI’s journalists were on strike for the day but the lack of audio commentary on Italian TV wasn’t disastrous given little happened for 98% of the stage. Nobody attacked at the start, even the invited wildcard teams have house sprinters to back.
The bunch let the sprinters contest the intermediate sprint in Masio only for 30 or so to get a gap and press on, prompting panic in the peloton. But the move was too big to be cohesive, many top sprinters were up ahead but this meant the group was loaded with riders wanting to sprint at the finish but not drive the pace there.
With 4km to go Mikkel Honoré attacked the regrouped bunch on the climb up to Fossano and Tadej Pogačar went with him, then Geraint Thomas too. Soon Honoré couldn’t hold the wheels on the flat and the two GC contenders were away going past the flamme rouge. So much for Pogačar saving energy but both he and Thomas were in the right place thanks to their teams and so why not?
In the sprint Tim Merlier switched trains from the left to the right of the road and this was probably the winning move, he jumped onto the right wagon and while others led out, including Tobias Lund Andresen and Jonathan Milan both from a very long way out. Merlier was able to make his final sprint later and was half a wheel ahead on the line.
The Route: 190km and if the profile looks pointy goes beyond 1,000m above sea level it’s still a gentle stage. Acqui Terme has a Latin name that means thermal waters and is still known 2,000 years later for its gushing “boiling spring”.
Its into the hills but for the most part via the main road and alongside a railway line, it’s all gradual climbing. The defining feature of the Colle del Melogno is the fort at the top and the way the road rides through it.
The Finish: another day, another 1.5km climb at 5% with 3km to go. This time it’s around the Capo Mele, the easiest of the three capes that feature on the coastal road to Sanremo. One difference today is the climb doesn’t have the same bends to help string out the bunch; another is that it’s downhill into town, all on the Via Aurelia road.
The Contenders: yesterday’s sprint can help hone today’s picks but only so far, it’s hard to extrapolate too much from one outcome. Still Tim Merlier passed the climbing test yesterday, likewise Jonathan Milan. While Olav Kooij was in the mix as was Tobias Lund Andresen but team mate Fabio Jakobsen wasn’t.
| | – | | | Milan, Kooij, Merlier | | | TLA, Girmay, Vernon |
Weather: cloudy and rainy at times inland with 13°C, then warmer temperatures, sunshine and a tailwind on the coast.
TV: KM0 is at 12.35pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the sprint finish.
Postcard from Cairo Montenotte
Text from the Giro describes today’s stage, writing “the gentle ascent of the Val Bormida leads through charming towns and villages”. True but today’s route passes through Cairo Montenotte in the same valley. Once a village amid a large plain used for farming, in the early 20th century it was quickly transformed into an industrial base with a giant coking plant and large chemical works.
With no coal or iron underground, what happened? They built the world’s longest ropeway in 1912 to take coal from the port of Savona, traversing the mountains for 17km. Today the tall pylons rust while cables and buckets dangle idly in the air surrounded by birdsong and babbling rivers. If the improbable supply of coal from the sky supplied Cairo with raw materials problem is that most of the activity, including the cables, has stopped today. The coke plant, Italy’s last, still works but only a few hundred workers are employed. Much of the land and buildings around it lie derelict. This isn’t in the guidebooks.
No more so than with nearby Ferrania, a company that made photographic film and cameras. It’s not one building but a complex of factories, offices and even apartment blocks for workers. You might imagine a gradual story of decline, think Kodak faced with digital cameras and smartphones. Only here things seemed to have halted one day in the mid-1990s.
The factory gates have a sign saying biciclette a mano (“cyclists dismount”), ok. Peek into the office by the factory turnstiles and cards are waiting for workers to punch. Push… and the heavy door opens. A file rests on a reception desk, perhaps with the day’s appointments. Dusty sofas opposite allow guests to wait for a manager who will never show up.
If a picture is worth a thousand words then local photographer Samuele Silva has visited, documented the site with plenty of pictures and written up more of the history at samuelesilva.net where you’ll get the vibe.
There are some broken windows and kids have got in and left their marks but this is place where time has been frozen from one day to the next. The electricity is cut but you half expect an TV to be flickering as Jan Svorada and Fabio Baldato contest an intermediate sprint in the 1994 Giro. While the Giro speeds toward the coast today, something stopped in Ferrania.
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The first of three consecutive sprint stages, each day has a climb towards the finish to derail sprint trains.
Oropa Express: there was a fight to get in the doomed breakaway with Ineos and UAE filtering the riders trying to go clear and then leading the chase. After Filippo Fiorelli did enough to defend his ciclamino points jersey. Andrea Piccolo took off solo but was caught at the foot of the Oropa climb.
If Ineos pulled for most of the day, UAE had taken over late in the stage but Tadej Pogačar punctured, then crashed and chased to get back. It was all rather reminiscent of Pantani in 1999 with the team time trial chase before the solo effort up the climb.
Sure enough Majka pulled over and Pogačar launched with 4.5km to go and Ben O’Connor went with him. It wasn’t that mad for the Australian as the slope would ease and if he could have followed he’d have got a first class ticket to the finish. Only couldn’t hold the wheel and alas the O’Connor’s epitaph for the day was “tried to follow Pogačar” and he’d lose a minute.
Pogačar was clear and once again left everyone thumbing their thesaurus in search of new superlatives.
Dani Martinez was the best of the rest, led in by work from a sparkling Florian Lipowitz with Geraint Thomas pacing himself in a way that O’Connor had not. Only ten riders were within a minute of Pogačar.
Is the Giro over? RAI’s pundits were asking this aloud on TV. In one weekend the likes of Arensman, Dunbar, Bardet, Tiberi and Plapp have lost minutes. Each an individual setback, collectively a change in the balance of the race already.
The Route: 166km across the plains. There’s not a lot to write home about here but let’s note the intermediate sprint in Masio of all places. A bend in the road, a sprint point today… but also where RCS boss Urbano Cairo, introduced on Stage 1, grew up. A coincidence? Probably not.
The Finish: Fossano isn’t really a hilltop town but the race crosses the Stura river and then starts climbing for 1.5km at around 5%. It’s all on a wide road, this is no charge through the medieval ramparts. This can still cause problems for some sprinters. Once in town there’s a 270° bend which leads to the final straight on a big wide road.
The Contenders: there are so many sprinters it’s hard to pick between them but the climb before the finish can help with the triage. Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease A Bike) has the sprint and the athleticism; but he crashed yesterday. As we saw in Paris-Nice a few hills don’t trouble him and his speed on the flat can rival anyone. He’s also got a very solid lead out train which should help but today’s climb will cause problems for all, this is where the likes of Christophe Laporte comes in as normally he’ll survive the climb, indeed he’s a sprint option of Kooij is done for.
Still this is an open finish, run the stage again and again and there would be several winners. Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceunink) has won uphill sprints. At his best Caleb Ewan (Jayco) can thrive in a finish like this. Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) was beating Mathieu van der Poel at his own game two years ago. A year ago Ethan Vernon (IPT) was winning sprints in Romandie when many sprinters were dropped.
On paper Fabio Jakobsen (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) could the fastest rider in a normal sprint but he was going backwards on the climbs of Turkey 10 days ago; team mate Tobias Lund Andresen was both quick and at ease on the climbs.
It’s a test for Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) and Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) as they pack the speed but their build is a penalty for the climb. And there are many more sprinters in the race today.
| | – | | | Kooij, Ewan, Groves, Milan | | | Vernon, Milan, Merlier, Lund, Girmay |
Weather: some sunshine, 20°C.
TV: KM0 is at 1.25pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the finish to see trains jostle for position ahead of the climb into town.
Postcard from Alba
Places like Monferrato and Asti are on the route today and on wine menus all year. The race also passes through Cinzano which shares its name with the vermouth drink but this brand was first produced by the Cinzano brothers of Turin. There’s a cycling connection of sorts as the brand features in the 1979 film “Breaking Away” as the sponsor of an Italian cycling team.
Vermouth is produced with wine as the main ingredient and then blended with alcohol and various herbs and spices including wormwood, Wermut in German, from which the drink gets its name. It’s been a way, whisper it, to get rid of unwanted wine, a technique used in many places.
Now winegrowers in the region are uprooting vines to plant hazelnut groves. It’s all because of demand from the confectioner Ferrero, whose HQ is in Alba on today’s route. It makes Nutella and other delights where hazelnuts are the key ingredient. Demand for Nutella has gone global and while the company sources a lot of nuts from Turkey, the effect on the countryside today is notable, look for the rows of young trees. Ferrero used to be a big sponsor of Italian cycling, and the Giro, too.
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The first summit finish of the race.
Turin Test: a stage rich in sport and information, particularly in the last hour. The early breakaway went clear and the UAE team took up the reins behind. No poker, no mind games, they just got to work. Lilian Calmejane was among the six up the road and held out solo long enough to take the mountains jersey for the day.
UAE kept on setting the pace including up the Colle Maddelena. The good news for them was their pace ejected riders like Romain Bardet and Luke Plapp who’d both lose a minute while Thymen Arensman who lost two minutes (his team mate Tobias Foss lost eight). Their GC bids are not over but all the same derailed by one short, regular climb in mild weather and with Arensman especially it means Ineos can’t play the 1-2 attack already. Yet the bad news for UAE was that if they’d boiled the group down to 30 riders they evaporated too, only Rafał Majka was left with Pogačar.
Several riders went clear on way to the finish but they were swept up on the San Vito climb. Majka pulled over to launch Pogačar. The Slovenian was out of the saddle for longer than La Redoute but this time he couldn’t shake the field off his wheel. Jhonathan Narvaez was straining but held on, while Max Schachmann was within range and the trio cleared came into Torino to sprint for the stage.
If Pogačar could replay the sprint he might launch later but as good as he may be he doesn’t get these abilities. Narvaez was quicker for the stage win and if Gianni Bugno might be smiling because his 1990 feat of leading from start to finish stands, Pogačar takes 14 seconds on his rivals and UAE don’t have to work as much today.
For Narvaez a triumphant return after crashing out of Gent-Wevelgem, and Ineos get the win and the maglia rosa and it’s welcome to see Schachmann back too after a long spell where each recovery from illness seemed to see him struck down by a new virus.
The Route: 100km around the Canavese plains, a land of cornfields to supply polenta dishes. Then into the Alpine foothills with some climbing but nothing severe, wide roads and gentle bends for the most part but they help to soften up the field. It changes the character of the stage compared to 2017, when the race last visited Oropa and sped across the plains straight to the foot of the climb.
The Finish: an Alpine summit finish. Listed as 11.8km at 6.2%, it’s got a gentle start and a flat but cobbled section in the middle so the typical gradient is steeper. The obvious launchpad is marked with the warning triangle above, this time it’s not the inside of a hairpin bend as there’s short section that is steeper.
Back in 2017 riders came in almost one by one, with only 23 riders within two minutes of the winner Tom Dumoulin. So it’s selective but the tactics today could be different. It flattens out just before the line.
The Contenders: us bloggers have it easy thanks to Tadej Pogačar (UAE). He can pick his place on one of the climb’s steeper portions or just win the sprint from a group. But this is conditional on his UAE team wanting to control the stage all day, arguably the mistake they made yesterday. That said perhaps precisely because Pogačar was beaten he and they want to win today.
The last three riders to win here are Bruseghin, Battaglin and Dumoulin so do we look for Sutterlin, Grondin, Trentin? They don’t climb that well so Alex Baudin (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) fits but he’s riding high on GC already in the white jersey. Today’s climb is normally too long for Narvaez but he has to give it everything and the finish can suit Max Schachmann.
Picking among other famous names is hard because if they are there, so is the little cannibal from Komenda. Still Julian Alaphilippe and Mauri Vansevenant (Soudal-Quickstep) are not immediate GC threats to Pogačar, likewise Esteban Chaves (EF Education-Easypost) can be great on short climbs and
A breakaway could try to hold out for the stage and 120 riders are now already four minutes down on GC so are not a priority to close down. “Wheel of fortune” picks are Simon Carr and Jeferson Cepeda (EF), Alexander Kamp (Tudor) and Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels).
| | Pogačar | | | Vansevenant | | | Carr, Chaves, Cepeda, Alaphilippe, Narvaez |
Weather: mainly sunny, 20°C
TV: KM0 is at 1.05pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in for the final climb around 4.40pm.
Postcard from Oropa
A regular issue for Italian cycling during the Giro is to get noticed while the football season is still on, easier now Inter have already won the Scudetto. Then if people do talk about cycling, the next challenge is to go beyond Marco Pantani.
Today the Giro does to Oropa, which in the (translated) words of La Gazzetta is “written Oropa but reads Pantani”. The Giro has been here several times but the visit in 1999 gets all the mentions. The manner of Pantani’s win that day was remarkable: distanced with a mechanical at 9km to go, he then got paced back by team mates before riding through the field like a chainsaw through mozzarella (youtube here).
Triumphs at Oropa by Vito Taccone, Piotr Urgumov, Marzio Bruseghin, Enrico Battaglin (pictured) and Tom Dumoulin are footnotes. This is testimony to the indelible presence of Il Pirata and nostalgia for the days when he was winning and seemingly untroubled. Just, as it was a matter of days until his downward spiral began when he was ejected from the Giro following a blood test.
While English-language outlets might have anniversary pieces to commemorate his death or Giro-adjacent features, in Italy he’s regularly cited in the sports pages and beyond; new conspiratorial angles surrounding his death appear in magazines; there are numerous books, including many recent and new editions.
Pantani is a persistent reference point, the denominator of Italian stage racing. When up-and-coming Davide Piganzoli gets profiled in a newspaper the title incorporates Pantani. Pogačar doing the Giro-Tour double? “Like Pantani” proclaim the headlines. Not to say we should forget Pantani, just to point out just how large he still looms.
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Is the Giro going to be a cakewalk for Tadej Pogačar, a three week passeggiata? We’ll have to wait for Rome but today might tell us plenty about how he and his team want to race and what the others have in store too.
The Route: a tough stage for 140km. 1850m of vertical gain is hilly but Vuelta sprint stages can have more, the trouble for the sprinters today is the climbing is concentrated late on.
The Superga climb is famous in Italy for its hilltop chapel where the Italian royal family was buried, and for the air disaster in 1949 which saw the entire FC Torino football team perish when their plane crashed into the hillside, a theme you may have heard before and will probably hear more about today.
The Superga is famous in cycling as it’s been used by the Giro and Milano-Torino alike. Climbed today from “the other side”, it’s still 4.7km at over 9% and so hard going for non-climbers. The race drops down into Torino on the main road, the bad news is it’s got some blind bends; the good news is the same descent is used later off the Maddalena so it’ll be more familiar when it counts more.
The Intergiro sprint for 3-2-1 bonus seconds comes before the unmarked San Vito climb which climbs up the hillside amid some of Torino’s most swanky homes – the Agnelli villa is just off the route – on a steep and narrow road.
The Colle Maddalena featured in 2022 on the hectic stage mid-race won by Simon Yates but this is the main road up out of the city this time and more steady, it’s served by a bus route. If it’s 7km at 7% it’s got some descents you don’t see on the profile so in turn the slopes up are steeper. They take the main road back down too, safer but it’s full of blind bends all the same.
The Finish: into Torino and along the river but the San Vito climb again – by now riders will know the 16% is only if you take the wrong line in a hairpin – before dropping back to the city for a flat finish.
The Contenders: did you know Tadej Pogačar (UAE) can get over the climbs and he sprints well from a small group? We’ll have to see how much he and his team can control things, everyone will be looking to them and one opportunistic attack could work; or if there’s a stand-off on the Maddalena some dropped finisseurs can get back on during the descent.
Suitable rivals include Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) who can still win sprints but look to see if he’s still got the descending skills. Andrea Bagioli (Lidl-Trek) is handy but the form is questionable. Aurélien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) can win sprints from a small group, Dani Martinez (Bora-hansgrohe) isn’t just a mountain diesel as he’s won sprints too. Christophe Laporte (Visma-LAB), Biniam Girmay (Intermarché) bring doubts about form if they can get over the climb.
| | Pogačar | | | Alaphilippe, Vansevenant | | | Bagioli, APP, Martinez, Lutsenko, Vendrame, Vallter |
Weather: sunny and 20°C.
TV: the start is at 1.55pm and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in at 3.30pm if you want to see the Superga, 4.30pm for the Maddelena.
Postcard from Torino
Torino, Turin in English, is Italy’s fourth city by population. It was briefly Italy’s first capital city. It’s been seat of the defunct royal family, the city of car maker FIAT and the birthplace of grissini breadsticks and plenty more.
It has two top-tier football clubs in Juventus and FC Torino. Juventus is famous worldwide and you might hear more about FC Torino today given today is the 75th anniversary of the air disaster where almost the entire team died when their plane crashed into the Superga hill where the race passes today.
FC Torino is alive and kicking, currently 10th in Serie A… and the club is owned by Urbano Cairo. He also owns RCS, organisers of the Giro. Cairo began work as a protégé of Silvio Berlusconi and ended up with a criminal conviction but got a pardon thanks to a plea bargain. Undeterred, and likening himself to the Count of Monte Cristo, he launched himself into media and advertising. He bought FC Torino in 2005 and then set about buying public TV Channel La7. In 2016 he took control of print and publishing company RCS, a deal with landed him a media empire among which was the right to organise the Giro. Today sees him with two hats, taking “his” Giro to commemorate the loss of “his” football club.
As well as La Gazzetta Dello Sport – Italy’s most widely read newspaper with news and editorial on the back pages – RCS publishes national newspaper Corriere della Serra. Owning newspapers and TV channels gives Cairo sway. He’s tayed out of politics so far, often saying he’s interested – his politics are on Italy’s centre-right – but he knows the risks. But he’s increasingly visible and audible. This could be where the Giro d’Italia comes in.
For Cairo and Italy alike the Giro is rare event of national unity in a land of campanilismo. It’s given Cairo a vehicle, literally, to tour the country where he can appear on TV, be in newspapers and meet politicians. Indeed Cairo and the Giro go so well together that he attended last month’s G7 gathering in Capri to give a speech to foreign ministers about the ambassadorial role of sports, and gifted them with a maglia rosa each. The Giro is quite the asset for Cairo.
Now let’s not exaggerate, the race isn’t a platform to run to office, roadside fans are not exactly waving pro-Cairo banners. All the same as someone from the Torino area who lives in Milan it’s given Cairo added range and once you consider he might be building up for a political launch some Giro press releases – subtext: forza Italia! – take on an extra meaning differently. He comes across more as a chatty dealmaker rather than the TV or social media character that thrives in politics today. Anyway, for cycling fans if he did go into politics then what would the Giro look like?
The post Giro Stage 1 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Who is going to win the Giro d’Italia? The answer today feels obvious, almost certain although plenty can happen in the next three weeks. The harder questions are how might Tadej Pogačar win and who else is going to finish on the podium?
Route reminder
You can see all the stages on one page here. This is not as mountainous as usual and there two time trial stages totalling 70km. If it’s a gentler Giro, it’s relative as there are still three weeks and tough mountain stages, especially in the third week.
The Contenders
Tadej Pogačar is everyone’s pick. He’s finished no lower than third in a grand tour and the few riders who can challenge him directly are not here. Just look at the recent Volta a Catalunya where he ran away with the race, likewise Liège-Bastogne-Liège. He’s more than capable in the time trials and the sterrato stage is no worry for the Strade Bianche winner.
If Pogačar seems certain to win then remember in 2019 Simon Yates promised he was better than the rest and got sacked in the third week; Geraint Thomas’s bid buckled because of a bidon in 2020; in 2022 few predicted Jai Hindley’s triumph and last year Remco Evenepoel was DNF. The Giro supplies surprise although this is a race preview rather than mysticism so we won’t go too far with speculation about Covid or errant dogs. Today, in a straight sporting contest, Pogačar is far ahead.
His team look solid but not scary. They’re all lined behind him, no Plan B or deputy; they even come with a sprinter in Molano. Rivals will look to them to take on the race which could leave them tired towards the end.
If he’s here for the Giro, it’s worth asking how much does Pogačar want to win the Tour de France? The original plan was he’d be all in to win his first Giro then see what happens in July. Now the talk is audibly of the Giro-Tour double so he might aim for more economy during the Giro but that remains to be seen, as we saw in Catalunya if he’s able to win he’ll just go for it.
If we can all see Pogačar winning, how might he do it? Smash the opening weekend and keep the maglia rosa to the end? His team would be on the ropes, it might be better to try and “loan” the race lead to a breakaway. Paradoxically the gentler route may be less tiring in totality but it this doesn’t make it easy to build an impregnable lead going into the third week. So wait until late before delivering a knock-out in the third week? He might not be so far ahead to insure against a jours sans during the third week, his team could be tired by then too. He was dismantled in the 2022 Tour by Jumbo-Visma playing the old 1-2 and rival teams here have multiple options to play.
The Rivals
Who else is here to win? Many might think “second is no bad result and if I’m up there during the third week, who knows?” and if so then they’ll have in mind the last two years where the Giro has been decided right at the end.
Amid a bloom of budding talents, Geraint Thomas, second last year after being overhauled on the penultimate day, is more like an old oak tree and assuming he stays upright he’ll celebrate his 38th birthday during the race. He should be a dependable rider for the Giro although his form in the recent Tour of the Alps though didn’t look sparking; it wasn’t last year either but he was playing catch-up after illness then and says he’s more ready now. Third in the 2022 Tour de France, he seemed oblivious to the Pogačar-Vingegaard duel and can diesel around to a steady finish and the long time trials suit.
Thymen Arensmen is another GC contender who was sixth here last year and can hope to improve on that but recent riding in Romandie didn’t look special. Tobias Foss brings more options but is likely to be deployed as a helper. Crucially with Thomas and Arensman means Ineos start with options. Imagine Stage 16 with the Stelvio early in the stage and Ineos get to work and dismantle UAE to leave Pogačar exposed. Fanciful? Maybe but a scenario and having finished second last time Thomas is here for a result rather than a repeat and could be open to tactical risks.
Bora-hansgrohe say they want to develop young talent but they’re happy to make big hires too and in comes Dani Martinez. Fifth in the 2021 Giro while jobbing as Bernal’s motivation coach, the challenge is to improve on this, the Colombian is more than capable based on past results but leadership with a new team, well we’ll see. He’s due to ride the Tour de France as well and so can function as pest to Pogačar for the benefit of Primož Roglič. Florian Lipowitz starts his first grand tour after climbing with the best in Romandie, translating this into success in the Giro is a big ask but worth watching all the same as he is a rider on the up.
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Ben O’Connor (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) has finished fourth in the Tour de France. He won a mountain stage from the breakaway that year to take time but kept hanging with the front group through the rest of the race and has learned plenty and improved since, he’s now surprisingly good in time trials. He’s an aggressive rider who can get restless in the front group and this is enjoyable to watch but it can cost him too. There’s a brittle feeling to his challenge, very strong in one week races for the podium but a Ming vase contender in a grand tour where one slip in the next three weeks could see the challenge shattered. He’s bolstered by a strong team for the mountains with Aurélien Paret-Peintre capable of a decent overall result too.
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Romain Bardet (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) looks in great form after Liège-Bastogne-Liège. His challenge is the time trial stages, 70km looks prohibitive for the podium. Put Pogačar aside and if he loses two seconds per kilometre to rival GC riders that’s a handicap of over two minutes to make up in the mountains. He can still climb to a high GC finish and if he wins a stage along the way he can complete the set of a victory in all three grand tours.
Luke Plapp (Jayco) is the antithesis to Bardet, a strong time trial rider who maybe prone to losing time in the mountains. Aggressive in Paris-Nice and Romandie, he’s shown he can climb with the best at times but doing this after multiple climbs and late into three weeks of racing is the new test, in Romandie he found the stage with more than one mountain pass harder. The course suits but this Giro is journey rather than make-or-break. Eddie Dunbar was a revelation last year, fourth on GC in the final week before sliding to seventh but this year his form isn’t so convincing and he won’t like all the time trials.
Visma-Lease A Bike have had a rotten April but Olav Kooij has been delivering sprint wins and his presence can take some pressure of Cian Uijtdebroeks who still goes in as the team’s GC contender. Eighth after a promising Vuelta, the 21 year old is going to be interesting to follow this month to see how he performs but is a project rather than a finished product, an undergraduate under the tutelage of Professor Gesink. Look to see how he fares in the high mountains and time trials alike.
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Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain) has long been tipped as a talent for the future, in their Segafredo years Trek nurtured him only for him to slay a government minister’s cat with an air rifle which in cost him his job, an incident so far more remarkable than his palmarès. He’s out to change this and can climb and time trial well. Having finished third in the recent Tour of the Alps the form is there and starts his first Giro with high hopes after banking two editions of the Vuelta. There’s little pressure, this week’s editions of La Gazzetta Dello Sport contain more references to Marco Pantani than him. From the Lazio region, the 22 year old is surely Italy’s best hope too although veteran team mate Damiano Caruso has been second and fourth in the last two years, largely by racing his own race.
Nairo Quintana (Movistar) is a previous winner… a decade ago. Two years ago his results were waning and his return to the World Tour this year has seen him nursing a ligament injury and chasing stage wins.
Juan Pedro López (Lidl-Trek) had a great Tour of the Alps, winning the race by matching everything his rivals could throw at him during each mountain stage. But this shows he wasn’t saving energy for the Giro and how to win here with 70km of time trials? If he’s a form pick it’s for a mountain stage maybe and a top-10 and one of several contenders for the mountains competition.
| | Tadej Pogačar | | | – | | | – | | | – | | | O’Connor, Thomas, Arensman, Martinez |
The post Giro d’Italia Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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The Tour de Romandie has been and gone and first some notes from the race starting with the winner Carlos Rodriguez.
Romandie is often a race where teams give young riders leadership, it’s not quite the purpose of the race but it suits many given the slot on the calendar: post Ardennes, pre Giro. The almost retro course design helps with set-piece strategic points such as two time trials and two summit finishes, a course with no traps or surprises. The paradox is a race that isn’t necessarily gripping to watch but whose outcome can be significant.
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In 2018 Egan Bernal was the Big Thing in cycling having just signed for Team Sky after winning the Tour de l’Avenir the previous year and Romandie was his first World Tour test and he thrived, taking the mountain time trial stage and duelling with Primož Roglič on the mountain stage, although they marked each other and Jakob Fuglsang beat them for the stage win. This year he was playing domestique for Rodriguez but late in the mountain train and making moves he could not a year ago and now seems within touching distance of the performances he made before.
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Rodriguez gets his first stage race win and presumably not the last as Romandie winners tend to go on to greater things. If he can ride high in the mountains and time trials alike then he can build this into grand tour success. No revelation given his performance in the Tour last summer and more of course but still a step up. He was due to go to Movistar only for Ineos to realise the mess they’d made in recruitment and bid to retain him. He’s the winner from this, presumably well-paid but with the kind team in his service that Enric Mas doesn’t have, Carlos Rodriguez was riding the Ineos mountain train with a first class ticket and with Bernal. Ineos will take a lot of delight from this.
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The “loser” of Romandie if we can call him that was Juan Ayuso, in the yellow jersey for the last mountain stage but then deposed, falling to fifth place overall. Relative of course as he had more than a solid race and one bad day is just that. Local newspaper Le Temps wrote that UAE were conscious of putting all their eggs in the basket marked Pogačar and using Romandie as a dress rehearsal for his deputy or even co-leader this July.
Ayuso and Rodriguez make for natural rivals as two Spaniards chasing stage race success. Like many rivalries of the past the media can try to expand differences and form caricatures but so far there’s no clash and the pair are friendly and spurring each other on.
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The surprise of the race was Dorian Godon winning two stages although the lack of sprinters meant he had a good chance and he was fourth in the prologue, a sign of his form. He’s an interesting character. He moved to Girona, not for the sunshine but because he could study to become a physio at the same time as being a pro cyclist. It’s helped Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale move up to third on the UCI team rankings as of this morning. Godon was asked what the difference is for this year and he’s been at pains to play down any big changes. He could have cited the new bike but not really, more talking of a virtuous cycle with riders coming good although after some reflection last winter on their poor results with more work done by team staff on nutrition and other organisational work. In other words the team under-performed last year and is now over-performing.
Watching Romandie on local Swiss channel RTS all week was instructive. Local channels on the ground have lots of info and gossip:
- No scoop but they reminded viewers how teams stay in the same hotel all week. This means daily transfers for the stages but a “base” and no need to pack up the suitcase every morning
- Each stage has decentralised organisation, one day could be organised by a local cycling club, the next by town council committee; presumably with plenty of central input but a different model
- The event’s future was in doubt because of financial difficulties and race director Richard Chassot was making public appeals for support a year ago. He seems to have got more than an audience and the event is secure thanks to sponsors and donors
- The women’s race is later this year, but next year’s route for the men was also mentioned on TV, it’s rare for a stage race to have the course in place a year out but 2025 will start in the watch-making village of Saint-Imier and finish with a time trial in the watch-selling city of Geneva
- The slow motion summit finish of Thyon 2000 will be back as well
- As well as English, Carlos Rodriguez also speaks French. It’s not fluent but he gets by alright and maybe it’ll come in handy this summer?
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The revelation of the race was Florian Lipowitz who finished third overall. The 23 year old German rider was all over the race, looking strong in the mountains and almost too much as he could have raced more precisely at times. But he has only been cycling since 2020 after switching from biathlon where he was on the German national team. He won the Czech tour last year but this was a step up, he was making moves when the likes of Ayuso and Yates were dropped. Bora-hansgrohe could field their own winter sports team with Lipowitz, Palzer and of course Roglič. Lipowitz rides the Giro next.
Elsewhere now and one person who isn’t doing the Giro is Emanuel Buchmann. After Bora-hansgrohe published their roster he went public with frustration at being told earlier this month he wasn’t going to be picked. It’s rare to see public criticism like this and more so from Buchmann who is by many accounts polite and shy. One thing to note is that if a rider is moving teams then their current team often sees them as an ex-rider even if they have months or the best part of the season left on the books. Plans together, investment in training it all goes out the window. So by extrapolation – a fancy word for guessing – Buchmann could be signing elsewhere for 2025. It’s tempting to see this in the light of Lipowitz’s recent results but again Buchmann was told weeks ago and presumably the decision goes back further.
To the opposite story now and Isaac Del Toro has a contract with UAE through to the end of 2029, the longest deal in pro cycling. They, like everyone else, have been impressed by what they have seen from the 20 year old. Indeed the only concern here is how much he is racing, he’s done 32 days already including World Tour events like Tirreno and Itzulia but he’s handled it all well of course. So far UAE have handled their busy team well, outwardly everyone is getting a chance.
Finally Cofidis and Total Energies look to be jostling to sign Julian Alaphilippe. Both have obvious reasons, Total Energies is struggling for results and visibility and in a vicious cycle where invites are drying up so they have fewer chances to score points which might qualify them for invites. The Total CEO himself has said aloud he’d “break the piggybank” to sign Alaphilippe, the team wants popularity as much as results. Alaphilippe could swing some invitations and by extension keep the team on the road because otherwise their chances of being at the Tour are drying up. Cofidis would be a good match but perhaps not for the reasons you think, the sponsor does consumer credit and payday loans, it’s customer base are by definition those struggling to get by so signing a rider down on his luck hoping to turn things around… it fits. What team suits him is another issue though, more should be interested and we’ll see how the Giro goes, a stage win is within reach although the course doesn’t present abundant chances for a rider best in the mid-mountains. For French speakers L’Equipe now have a monthly cycling podcast called Echappées and so it’s excellent, the second episode covers Alaphilippe’s career path… and outlook plus mentions in passing he used to be able to do 1,000 push-ups.
The post Tuesday Shorts first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Here’s the Giro d’Italia guide. You’ll find all the stage profiles together on one page here and summary of each stage.
Route summary
In one word: gentler. It’s shorter as the average stage length is 173km, down 20km from last year. It’s flatter, with about 43,000m of vertical gain which means 8,000m (15%) less than 2023, the least amount since 2010. If there are six summit finishes some of these are “big ring” types of climbs.
Two time trials totalling 70km make the overall win tricky for pure climbers and there could be up to nine bunch sprints.
Stage 1 – Saturday 4 May – 1850m V+
An gentler Giro but no soft start. This is a short, crunchy stage and possibly the chance for Tadej Pogačar to take the maglia rosa… and keep it to Rome. A feat not achieved since Gianni Bugno in 1990 but would it be wise to try? The stage win, yes but defending the lead in the coming days is another matter. He’ll find plenty of rivals at least for the win in Torino.
Stage 2 – Sunday 5 May – 2300m V+
A scenic ride via the “Zegna Oasis”, a park created by the eponymous fashion designer. The Oropa summit finish is no walk in the park, listed as 11.8km at 6.2%, this includes the easy roads out of Biella that lead to a fierce 7km section that almost never goes below 8% as it winds up through the woodland with steep hairpins, this is a big day for the GC contenders.
Stage 3 – Monday 6 May – 750m V+
Monday and a sprint stage as the race crosses the plains. There’s more food and wine than sport as it passes risotto rice fields and plenty of vineyards before the climb to Fossano which could sour things for the sprinters.
Stage 4 – Tuesday 7 May – 1700m V+
A start in Acqui Terme, famous for its “boiling spring” that has gushed out steaming water since Roman days but the race won’t reach boiling point until late as it crosses over the Ligurian hills to the Mediterranean and then takes up the Milan-Sanremo. Like the previous day a short climb, this time the Capo Mele, the easiest of the capi triology, is there to disrupt sprint trains before the finish.
Stage 5 – Wednesday 8 May – 1700m V+
After the previous day’s Milan-Sanremo déjà vu, more familiar roads with the Passo del Bracco, this time taken in the opposite direction to the 2023 Giro and then a finish in Lucca in one of the regional heartlands of Italian cycling and here the Montemagno climb is gentle. This is the third sprint stage in a row.
Stage 6 – Thursday 9 May – 1900m V+
The sterrato or strade bianche stage with three sections totalling 11.6km to the south of Siena. It’s a more gentle day than the Giro’s 2021 stage to Montalcino but there’s still 1,900m of vertical gain here, and packed in the second half. The gravel gets the headlines but there are plenty of twisty tarmac roads with steep ramps to make the going hard too.
Stage 7 – Friday 10 May – 400m V+
The first time trial stage and the profile says it all, flat for 34km before the climb to Perugia including some steep parts. Two time trial stages in this race are an invitation to hulking homeland hero Filippo Ganna.
Stage 8 – Saturday 11 May – 3750m V+
A hard day, a real mountain stage. An unmarked but very real climb out of Spoleto will help the breakaway go clear. Prato di Tivo’s been a regular in Tirreno-Adriatico, eg 2021, and hosts the second summit finish of the Giro. It’s a long climb on a wide road, a ski station summit finish but with a wild feel as it’s remote. Once again near the Gran Sasso, RCS will be praying there’s no headwind so as to avoid last year’s anticlimactic outcome at nearby Campo Imperatore.
Stage 9 – Sunday 12 May – 1300m V+
The Giro is back to Napoli for the third year in a row and this time a possible sprint finish but with some tricky roads in the finale, this is no dragster finish. First via the volcanic campi flegrei – said to be more risky than Vesuvius for a disastrous eruption – then into the urban streets where the peloton has its own risk. At 206km it’s the longest stage of the opening week.
Stage 10 – Tuesday 14 May – 2850m V+
A start in Pompeii and the Giro reaches its southernmost point for the three weeks before heading north into the Matese hills and a summit finish on the Bocca della Selva, a long climb but rarely steep, a big ring kind of climb or what is called pedalabile, “pedalable” in Italian, and a probable breakaway day but only 141km.
Stage 11 – Wednesday 15 May – 1850m V+
A sprint stage on the coast.
Stage 12 – Thursday 16 May – 2100m V+
A fun stage with some of the “wall” climbs from Tirreno-Adriatico, but none of the wildest ramps. There are six categorised climbs and more unmarked ones.
Stage 13 – Friday 17 May – 150m V+
A sprint stage.
Stage 14 – Saturday 18 May – 100m V+
The second time trial stage and flat. It’s on rural, twisting roads where a good line saves seconds.
Stage 15 – Sunday 19 May – 5250m V+
The tappone. In a Giro of shortened stages this is the longest stage of the race. A 220km marathon and over 5,000m of vertical gain. The Mortirolo is mid-stage and if it’s climbed by the easy side that means they descend the trickiest slopes. Mottolino, not so much a ski resort as a ski piste, for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Livigno. It’s via the main road to the Passo Eira, then a turn onto a small service road with sections from 9-17%. As a one way road up, the rest day after is planned to allow more time to get the race infrastructure down the mountain.
Stage 16 – Tuesday 21 May – 4350m V+
Two mountain passes but no points then Stelvio from Bormio and the Cima Coppi high point, a big day for the mountains competition as it’s in the stage and the springboard for a breakaway. Then a long procession into South Tyrol and Italy’s German-speaking corner ending in a summit finish above Ortisei with gentler gradients to start before 3km at over 10% on the Panastraße.
Stage 17 – Wednesday 22 May – 4100m V+
If stage 15 was the tappone, this is another claim to royalty. The Dolomites and 4,100m of climbing compressed into 159km with the famous Selva and Rolle passes before the “new” Passo Brocon, climbed here twice: once from the north then a descent to the south before climbing back up another version of the southern flank. The stats on the profile say the first time is easier but the second time up is more uneven and has some steeper parts. Neither side is savage but combined they’ll be selective.
Stage 18 – Thursday 23 May – 550m V+
A sprint stage as the race exits the mountains via the prosecco vineyards. Arguably more importantly it’s an active rest day for the GC contenders who can recover a bit for the upcoming days. Watch out for the corners in the finish through Padova.
Stage 19 – Friday 24 May – 2850m V+
A day for the breakaway? Surely that’s the base case on a stage with 2,700m that’s open to many types of rider but it’s also ambush territory on the off-chance a rider has a slender lead and a rival with a strong team wants to hammer things.
Stage 20 – Saturday 25 May – 4250m V+
Two ascents of Monte Grappa, 18km at an average of 8.1% is tough but that’s with two brief downhills on the way so it’s more often 9% and more, especially on the upper slopes. The descents matter as much as the climbs, tricky in places.
Stage 21 – Sunday 26 May – 300m V+
A copycat stage of last year’s finish with a start in the Eur district and then the Rome criterium finish.
The Rules and more
The Giro has published several versions of these profiles and the ones above are the latest and hopefully final version: look for the “I” in the green circle each day to denote the new “Intergiro” points competition which will also offer 3-2-1 second time bonuses.
The announcement of the extra Intergiro competition a few days ago has seen all the race profiles redrawn but we don’t know what it means for the traditional points competition. In the coming days we’ll get the race rulebook and more on the various in-race competitions. So for now it’s just the stage profiles and mini-previews.
Once the rulebook is published in the coming days available all the useful bits will be shared here.
As ever you can read this post but there is a permanent page at inrng.com/giro which can also be found via the menu at the top.
The post Giro d’Italia Stage Guide first appeared on The Inner Ring.
In a spring classics campaign dominated by a couple of big stars, a few others made a name for themselves and caught the eye.
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If there was a draft system where teams could pick neo-pros after the classics then Laurence Pithie would probably be close to the top. The Groupama-FDJ is in his second year (so technically a neo-pro under the rules) and did well last year to win the GP Cholet, the day after finishing second in the Classic Loire Atlantique too.
This year he swapped Coupe de France racing for the World Tour and thrived. Perhaps a surprise winner of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, he backed this up with plenty more results, had a spell in yellow during Paris-Nice and was riding in the breakaway with Wout van Aert in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, then with Mathieu van der Poel in Gent-Wegelgem. If he’d crack each time with the distance he looked the part, elegant on the bike and smooth over the cobbles, including on his way to a top-10 in his Paris-Roubaix debut. It’s an open secret he’s joining Bora-hansgrohe and it’ll be interesting to see what kind of rider he becomes because the choice is on him, there’s a range there to suggest a cobbled classics contender but also beyond for hilly finishes.
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Luca Mozzato probably became famous for finishing second in the Ronde van Vlaanderen but he did win the Koksijde Classic before that this spring, taking the sprint ahead of Dylan Groenewegen and Gerben Thijssen. He’s been quietly tipped here a few times in passing because he’s a crafty sprinter, able to cope with some climbing and has a good sense of positioning, this got him his first win in last year’s Tour du Limousin. When the B&B team folded he was one of the best riders to sign and Arkéa did well to get him as they need him for his ability to place in all kinds of one day races and score precious points. So far so good but how to progress is the challenge next, he’s not the fastest sprinter and the niche of being a sprinter who can manage a short climb or two is busy with the likes of Jasper Philipsen and Wout van Aert.
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Laurenz Rex (Intermarché-Wanty) won Le Samyn, an important win for his team as it’s their home event but with hindsight even more crucial given the squad have had a relatively discreet classics campaign, Thijssen and Biniam Girmay in the mix but not much more. Rex is a German speaker and just a big rider, when he collided with the sign in Paris-Roubaix they might have had to replace the metalwork. He looks made for Paris-Roubaix and if not a solid bodyguard for the flat.
Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny) has had a great spring, if we discount his crash in Catalunya his worst result was 20th in the Amstel. The rest of the time he’s been in the top-10 and often on the podium, think the Strade Bianche (pictured) and the Flèche Wallonne. Lotto-Dstny still crave a big classics win and he is now up there with Arnaud De Lie as capable of delivering it. Lennert Van Eetvelt gets a mention too, the UAE Tour winner also placed 11th in Strade Bianche, another “Dstny’s child” as he rolls off the Belgian team’s development conveyor belt.
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Matteo Jorgenson doesn’t count as a revelation because he was handy last year. But his rise this year saw Decathlon-Ag2r management getting some flak for not signing him when he was on their feeder team but instead hiring the likes of Paul Lapeira instead. Jorgenson wanted to turn pro right away but they wanted him to do another year in the U23s so he went to Movistar. Anyway Lapeira came good this spring. First he bettered Pithie’s second and first places in the Loire-Cholet weekend last year with two wins, then took a stage in the Tour of the Basque Country. A slender rider he packs a mean sprint and seeing him on the attack in the Amstel this year showed depth as well.
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It’s not been a spring to write home about for Visma-Lease a Bike, if they did it might be to ask for more bandages. Still they’ve had wins, we’re comparing results to expectations. Tim van Dijcke and Mick van Dijke both had a solid classics campaign. As twins they’re hard to differentiate, and if Mick emerged from the Arenberg forest in the company of Mathieu van der Poel and Mads Pedersen it was because he didn’t puncture while Tim did.
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Joseph Blackmore (IPT Development) gets a mention in passing for his ride in the Brabantse Pijl, promoted to the IPT team for a day he looked as strong as leader Dylan Teuns. The Londoner will join the main team next year, logical but also a surprise that other teams didn’t get there first as he’s been winning plenty outside of the classics, like the Tour of Rwanda
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19 year old Jan Christen had been on the the longest contracts at UAE until Isaac Del Toro signed a deal taking him to 2029. Famous for signing such a long deal straight out of the juniors and being the grandson of a Tour finisher and the son of two pros, Christen is now building a palmarès. He was second in Milan-Torino and fifth in the Trofeo Laigueglia and got his first win from a stage in the Giro d’Abruzzo. He was once asked if he’d like to win a classic, the worlds or the Tour de France and he replied “all of them”. Time will tell.
Does Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) count as a revelation? He certainly progressed this spring as in the action. Likewise Oier Lazkano is literally the Spanish champion but was on the rampage in the cobbled classics, his challenge is to convert visibility and presence during the final hour into a result but he’s been a rare light for Movistar. 23 year old Kevin Vermaerke (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) didn’t get any breakthrough results but he’s been consistent right into long races, he was in the group sprinting for third in Liège and is his team’s third scorer of UCI points after Romain Bardet and Oscar Onley.
He didn’t win a classic but Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quickstep) won a round of the Majorca races and is notable because in training he was beating Tim Merlier, this got him the leadership, the leadout and the win. Similarly others like Vito Braet (Intermarché-Wanty), Pierre Gautherat (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) were visible in tough races. Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) needs no introduction but he was impressive in Gent-Wevelgem precisely because he wasn’t a sprinter but because he was bossing the Kemmelberg.
Any more picks? Share some suggestions in the comments please.
The post The Classics Revelations first appeared on The Inner Ring.
No need for too much analysis, Tadej Pogačar attacks early on La Redoute. Richard Carapaz gives chase but can’t stay in contact and the Slovenian solos away for the win. It really was that simple.
Is there more to write home about? A massive crash saw the field split just inside the 100km to go point, on the approach to the first of the climbs after Bastogne. A road block of tangled bodies and bikes meant and caught behind simply could not get past including Mathieu van der Poel, Tom Pidcock and Romain Grégoire. You could blame them for sitting at the back but it wasn’t too much of a rookie mistake given the weather and many riders sitting up to remove clothing before the race heated up. Among those injured was Kévin Vauquelin.
Up ahead the lead bunch didn’t wait with Israel-PremierTech moving to the front and upping the pace, within no time they’d reeled in the early breakaway and had Van der Poel and company at almost a minute. Things would regroup but those delayed lost some of their plumage in the chase, it might explain why Pidcock didn’t feature as much as expected but the cold probably froze many out of action too.
UAE led the bunch across the Ardennes with Finn Fisher-Black and Domen Novak setting the pace. Having asked yesterday where Pogačar would attack, La Redoute or the Roche-aux-Faucons, we quickly got the answer as he launched on La Redoute.
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The interesting thing was he went early. It made sense, the longer the climb the more his advantage over many of the others, especially Mathieu van der Poel. Still, this was on th3 the opening section that runs parallel to the express road. Novak finished his pull and Pogačar attacked. A quick burst out of the saddle, maybe 12 pedal strokes, and he was away Behind everyone else was bobbing and weaving on the pedals.
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Richard Carapaz was the best of the rest but the contrast in styles was flagrant, Pogačar seated and spinning while Carapaz had his chain in the big ring and was jerking about trying to recruit every sinew.
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Pogačar was away and quickly taking time. At one point he was racing in the dry while the chasers behind were being blasted by hail, even Mother Nature was supplying the symbolism. Marc Hirshi was behind but was hardly needed to dampen the chase. Race over? Not quite as there was a lively contest behind. Ben Healy made several attacks and on his third move he was joined by Romain Bardet. The pair had Benoît Cosnefroy and Romain Grégoire join and would stay away until the Roche-aux-Faucons.
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The quartet never had much more than 20 seconds and Bardet persisted on the climb, he only had a few seconds on the chase led by Egan Bernal and Maxim Van Gils. Each attack from the group though couldn’t quite reach Bardet’s slipstream and he persisted, visibly on the limit yet never giving up.
As the descent into Seraing began Van der Poel bridged across to the chase group and the second inevitability of the day cam into view: he’d be on the podium with his sprint. Bardet held for second and sure enough Van der Poel was fastest in the finishing straight to finish third.
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The Verdict
A clear win for Tadej Pogačar in a race with few surprises. His team set the pace for much of the day and once his last helper pulled over he attacked and went solo to the finish. All so simple but a demonstration of a ride, comparable to Van der Poel’s wins in the Ronde and Roubaix for the way he was separate from the rest of the field in the final hour.
Some riders complain in private that their team’s pre-race briefings can be an hour long, an information overload. UAE’s plan was simple as they took turns to set the pace before their leader finished off the job alone in the final 30km. For Pogačar this wasn’t just another win. Two years ago he didn’t start this race after his partner’s mother died and he pointed to the sky crossing the finish line today in tribute; a year ago he crashed and broke his scaphoid.
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The race for second place was entertaining. On the one hand they were beaten and only trading moves within the final 30km… but it was only last year that we were wowed by the audacity of Remco Evenepoel launching on La Redoute. Before the race often only came to the boil on the Roche-aux-Faucons. Romain Bardet’s catch-me-if-you can act was a thrill and satisfying to see him get his best result after a decade of trying to win here, Egan Bernal was active in the final. Ben Healy has been very strong in the Ardennes but couldn’t get a result.
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Van der Poel’s podium is probably the best result for him: he can see a route to victory but how to engineer a bunch sprint on the banks of the Meuse? He also becomes the first rider to finish on the podium in the Ronde, Roubaix and Liège in the same season… since his father Adrie.
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The post The Moment Liège-Bastogne-Liège Was Won first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Tadej Pogačar is the big favourite to win. What if the weather was harder to forecast? Cold, wet and wintry conditions are due for the run down to Liège with the chance of snow. If so then just last Wednesday’s Flèche Wallonne this could change plenty and wardrobe choices and upcoming goals can weigh on the results as much as form.
The Route: 254.5km and 4,000m of vertical gain, as much as a mountain stage in a grand tour so if the y-axis doesn’t look severe it does add up by the end. The route isn’t identical to last year because the run to Bastogne is different but once the turn back is made the route is the same to the finish.
The route is familiar with the unrelenting procession of climbs where it’s one every few kilometres. Most of these are 1-2km at typically 10% but they’re irregular and make riders pay for being in a bad position. This in turn makes the descents risky, most are not too technical but riders jostle for position ahead of the next climb making for little recovery time.
Last year saw novelty where La Redoute was chased by an extra unmarked climb. It’s back again. So we have the same approach to La Redoute and the steep open climb as usual, 2km at close to 9%. But unlike past years were there was a left turn at the top, a false flat – where Evenepoel launched in 2023 – and the descent to Sprimont, here the race turns right. It goes over to Hotchamps and there’s more climbing, 1km at 5.5% with a middle section at 7%, this is where Evenepoel rode Tom Pidcock off his wheel. Then comes an exposed section and then comes the Côte des Forges, added back this year, a steady on a wide road but more vertical gain and then a fast descent to the Ourthe valley.
The Côte de La Roche-aux-Faucons is next, first used in 2008 but very selective and now a staple. Listed as 1.5km at 10%, this is hard enough but after a brief descent of a few seconds it starts rising again to the village of Boncelles and this second section is 1.6km long with a gradient of 5.5% which isn’t steep but with all the climbing before, both cumulatively in the day and the sharp effort just before, it’s a difficult moment and where the winning move often forms and those beaten can’t or won’t chase. You can see this second part of the climb on the profile below. As the final climb it’s the make-or-break moment for many.
The Finish: it’s hard to close any gaps over the top of the climb and down the tricky descent into Liège, arguably the most scenic way to town as the woodland avoids views of the dilapidated steel works. The comes the flat quay road beside the river Meuse.
The Contenders
Where will Tadej Pogačar attack? The simplest scenario is his UAE team set a tough pace on the climbs and then he picks his moment to launch and nobody can follow. La Redoute? The Roche-aux-Faucons? Victory isn’t inevitable – see last year where he crashed out and ruined his summer – but a triumph does feel like the most likely outcome, and by a long way. If anything the weather is a serious factor and for him and everyone else, a potential rival so he’s only a four-chaining pick below. He can outclimb riders and if anyone does arrive in Liège with him he can smoke them in a sprint. Marc Hirschi is in good form and can be a second card to play from a team that is strong but not intimidating.
Tom Pidcock (Ineos) was the second pick last year after Evenepoel and is as convincing today. He’s good on the punchy climbs, in form and we saw him win the Amstel thanks to his sprint. How to beat Pogačar though? He and Ineos can let UAE do the work all day and try to exploit this and hope for a crafty sprint. Egan Bernal as one to watch too.
Mathias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) was last seen shivering after quitting the Flèche Wallonne. Suitably defrosted he’s good for a course like this but faces tough conditions again. Even if he can float over the climbs, his sprint isn’t reassuring especially compared to some of the rivals he has got.
Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) has the sprint, it’s just being able to wield it for the win. Was the Amstel an off day? He says the batteries are recharged but 4,000m is a lot to ask, he can handle separate five minute uphill efforts but hauling his musculature as they say in French over the climbs will take its toll. Sixth here in the past suggests he can be close but to better this he’d need some way of neutralising attacks on the Roche-aux-Faucons and his team don’t look set to ride tempo this late into the finish. He’s a contender still and if he did win it’ll be fascinating to see how.
Flèche Wallonne winner Stephen Williams (IPT) made the Mur look easy, picking his moment and surging away. Liège is a different race but he’ll be in the mix and is aggressive.
Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) is having a good spring and was recently second in the Flèche Wallonne. He doesn’t have a podcast but think of him as a French Geraint Thomas, a time trial rider who can climb, a versatile no-nonsense rider to point in the direction of a finish line.
Continuing the podium from Huy brings us to Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny) who is the archetypal Ardennes rider and coped with the cold, he’s got a fast finish but would prefer an uphill sprint.
Tough conditions suit Tiesj Benoot (Visma-LAB) but as ever it’s hard for him to win a sprint, he’s apparently the rider without a win but the most World Tour top-10s since 2019, as in he can place but it’s hard to see him winning
Simon Yates (Jayco) has only ridden this twice and never shone, he’s had other goals but still this ought to suit. Team mate Filippo Zana is coming into form for the Giro and makes his debut.
Bahrain fly in from a strong Tour of the Alps with past winner – in the snow – Wout Poels but he won in the uphill finish, the flat finish isn’t as ideal. Santiago Buitrago and Antonio Tiberi join, with Buitrago a podium finisher last year.
Ben Healy was a revelation a year ago; he was a worker a week ago when pulling what was left in the peloton for his EF team. Likewise Richard Carapaz but both can play their own cards here and Healy especially is wildcard if he can get clear before others like Pogačar go.
David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) quit the Flèche Wallonne but normally handles cold conditions better, or perhaps he just doesn’t like the heat and while he’s worked at being a GC contender he’s suited to relatively shorter climbs like this, it’s helped on get on the podium here before. Romain Grégoire is worth watching too.
Romain Bardet (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) comes of a strong Tour of the Alps to a race that he’s thrived in but as ever his win rate is low so he can feature and has the experience – he’ll start for the tenth time tomorrow and has three top-10s – but a win would be a surprise.
| | – | | | Pogačar | | | – | | | Pidcock, Skjelmose, Williams, Hirschi, Healy | | | Gaudu, Carapaz, Vauquelin, Buitrago, Van Gils |
Weather: updated Sunday morning – very cold with wet roads on the run to Bastogne and 4°C. The temperature will go up a couple of degrees on the way back but all this wintry weather is being delivered by a northerly wind. So the riders face a headwind of 25km/h for the return leg which could gust to 50km/h.
TV: host channel RTBF lists coverage of “Liège-Bastogne-Liège à bicyclette” from midday CEST and the men’s race live video should begin around 12.30pm on Eurosport or the channel you watch the Tour de France on. The series of climbs begins around 2.00pm, tune in from here on to see if Pogačar attacks from afar… although it’s more likely he lets his team soften up the field first. The finish is forecast for 4.30pm CEST.
Women’s Liège: it’s Bastogne to Liège and the novelty this year is the men’s race has been brought forward so the women can finish at 5.50pm CEST, a double bonus as they no longer have the early start in the cold and they should enjoy enhanced TV ratings. This blog’s preview is the Flèche Wallonne podium but with Vollering on the top step and for a more informed and fuller preview, click for ProCyclingUK’s version.
The post Liège-Bastogne-Liège Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
What do you see in the picture above? Three cyclists on a podium? The Flèche Wallonne podium? Right now some team managers see 400, 320 and 260 UCI points as they and their teams aim for promotion to the World Tour or worse, stress about relegation.
An update on the promotion and relegation standings as we’re now about halfway through the three year cycle. The relegation contest is raging and if it’s not front page news, well you’re already reading a niche blog about the sport so you’ll probably be thinking of this contest when looking at results in the coming months…
Relegation reminder
It’s a three year process between 2023-2025 based on the sum of each team’s rankings for each year. The top-18 teams qualify for a World Tour place, a World Tour team below 18th place faces relegation. Riders score UCI points with race results and a team’s ranking is based on the total of its 20 best scorers.
Here are the current standings for this week. We’re almost exactly halfway now in the three year promotion/relegation cycle because the season is lop-sided with more points in the first half of the year than the second half thanks to a denser calendar and more World Tour events. The red line signifies the promotion-relegation barrier.
Let’s start with a quick look at the top of the table. UAE lead to the point of distorting the chart, if they weren’t so far ahead on the x-axis the gaps between others lower down would look wider. So here is the scoring for 2024 only, WorldTeams in blue, selected Proteams in red:
We can see Visma-Lease A Bike’s relative woes here, last spring all that was missing was the Ronde and Roubaix and they rightly made plans to fix this, now they’re well short of rivals UAE and instead scoring similar to Lidl-Trek and Alpecin-Deceuninck, top table but not table-topping. Bahrain start the year with a big cushion but have not been scoring much.
Promotion candidates
Lotto-Dstny and Israel-PremierTech scored well in 2023 and have kept on doing so, even if the Belgian squad didn’t score big with Arnaud De Lie this spring because of injury and illness. Both are consistently scoring more than some World Tour teams.
Uno-X are the best of the rest and have expressed ambition to move up but start from behind this season and need to score more, they’re roughly 3,000 points short of the red line today.
Relegation battle
Going to the relegation battle Arkéa-B&B Hotels and Astana are below the line. Both started the season in 19th and 20th place but Astana have scored few points since, Alexey Lutsenko won the Giro d’Abruzzo but it’s a 2.1 race and his GC and stage placing haul brought 150 points; team mates Christian Scaroni and Simone Velasco have scored more placing here and there. Collectively they don’t yet have 20 riders with UCI points.
Arkéa have picked up speed lately, this year they’re they 11th best team but hampered by last year’s bad start. New signings Arnaud Démare and Florian Sénéchal haven’t been scoring much, instead Luca Mozzato is their big winner with over 1,000 points today with 640 from finishing second in the Ronde.
DSM Firmenich-PostNL is only 500 points above the relegation line. Two of their three top scorers Oscar Onley and Warren Barguil are now out with injuries. After Astana they’re the other team not to have 20 riders scoring. It’s not a big deal if a team has a 20th rider with 1 point, it’s more about the top scorers but shows how they’re all finding it hard going to score. They need a good Giro, with Fabio Jakobsen, Romain Bardet and Max Poole able to score. The Firmenich corporate merger and the arrival of PostNL has come with talk of budget increases so they could buy themselves out of trouble too.
If Astana have the lowest score this season, of the current 18 World Tour teams next come Cofidis. They look only have a small cushion above DSM and ought to be worried. Top scorer Bryan Coquard’s had a more discreet start to the season but you can see in races he’s having to do more work for himself, the team has lost engines (and scorers) like Max Walscheid. Guillaume Martin is picking up pace.
Movistar can’t be sitting comfortably either. On paper Enric Mas should score in the summer but his traditional Tour-Vuelta combo is risky, a window to score big but it means he often doesn’t score much before and then it is subject to him avoiding illness and injury. Ivan Sosa should pick up some points too.
Outlook
There’s still a year and a half to go but Lotto-Dstny and Israel-PremierTech look like solid promotion candidates, they did well last year and have kept this up. If anything they’re improving, Lotto are uncovering more talent like Maxim Van Gils and Lennert Van Eetvelt.
Promotion of two teams comes at the expense of two others and here Astana though have the proverbial uphill battle and to extend the metaphor, not enough climbing power to win it. They looked doomed although Lotto and IPT show relegation isn’t the end of things: if we can see Astana sent down to the ProTeam ranks, the question is really about their long term stability, do there sponsors settle for this? If they can sit 19th or 20th and harvest invitations thanks to some marquee riders it’s a sweetspot.
The other relegation spot is not easy to call from this far out. Arkéa are below the line so the obvious candidates but starting to score wide, DSM ought to have the quality to stay up but sport can be unjust while winless Cofidis look weak all round. So there’s a contest to watch in the coming months.
The post World Tour Promotion-Relegation Rankings first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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Marc Hirschi attacks on the Geulhemmerberg, his third big attack of the day. Tiesj Benoot and Tom Pidcock follow, as does Mauri Vansevenant. Hirschi might have been the strongest on the day and his work helped the move go clear but the fatigue might have cost him and Pidcock would get the better of him.
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The early breakaway had just four riders. Tosh Van der Sande (Visma-Lease a Bike), Enzo Leijnse (DSM Firmenich-PostNL), Alexander Hajek (Bora-hansgrohe) and Zeb Kyffin (TDT-Unibet). It’s been a theme this spring that the early break doesn’t get time. Four minutes is the World Tour limit, some unwritten rule that the break and bunch can’t go beyond. Ineos and Alpecin-Deceuninck holding the gap before the breakaway was caught with 80km to go.
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There’s always a fight for position and riders sprinting into corners but the intensity went up a notch just inside 60km when Soudal-Quickstep’s Louis Vervaeke attacked and he was joined by Mikkel Honoré (EF) and Paul Lapeira (Decathlon-Ag2r). It looked like a ruse to force to chase and trio were often looking back to see where the bunch was. The answer was “in sight”.
The Gulperbergweg climb came with 44km to go and Michał Kwiatkowski took a few metres going into to the climb and then launched. Mathieu van der Poel chased in person and it looked like an attack was coming. Only here was a different beast. Floating on pavé a week ago, suddenly he seemed less agile, his upper body and legs didn’t seem to be one unit; if he was dancing on the pedals this was more someone’s uncle at a wedding than last weekend’s exhibition. As soon as Kwiatkowski sat down, so did Van der Poel and what was left of the bunch spread across the road.
Onto the Kruijsberg and Alpecin-Deceuninck had two on the front for Van der Poel. Only the climb came and went. It can be where a major selection happens and everyone seemed to be waiting for Van der Poel to attack, bracing themselves for the effort. But nothing, niks. Likewise on the Eyserbosweg although Richard Carapaz surged – Honoré was still, just, up the road – with Van der Poel marking him. Again more riders were dropped but no flamboyant attack.
Instead of waiting for the next climb Marc Hirschi made a serious move with 35km to go. Many of the main climbs in the race are small even if some sting but the Swiss rider launched on an unmarked rise and was joined by Roger Adria, Bauke Mollema and Valentin Madouas. Mauri Vansevenant bridged to them. Pello Bilbao too. More floated across with Kevin Vauquelin, Tiesj Benoot, Quentin Pacher and Tom Pidcock and they caught the breakaway on the Keutenberg with Benoot surging and taking Hirshi, Pidcock and Vansevenant clear – the same quartet as we’d see later – but Honoré helped bring things back. Pidcock’s presence here was the big deal although Bilbao, Madouas and Benoot were co-leaders too.
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It left a simple matter of subtraction: 12 riders from 11 teams were up the road. With 24 teams in the race that equalled 13 teams left to chase, or 12 since because Cofidis were not there (all DNF as it happens, a rare feat but Astana did it in the Tour of Flanders too). Given some squads only had a tired rider hanging on, the arithmetic favoured the group and more so since they had team mates behind to sap the chase.
Hirschi attacked the break on the Cauberg where Paul Lapeira matched him and the rest came back, except for Honoré. Behind the peloton accelerated and chomped twenty seconds lead with Lidl-Trek’s Mattias Skjelmose making a big move that suggested few were counting on Mollema up front. But the breakaway was still clear and Bilbao attacked the descent but Hirschi and Pidcock, them again, covered him.
Hirschi made another big move on the Geulhemmerberg, third time lucky for him as it’d stay away to the finish. Benoot was there with Vansevenant and Pidcock. Benoot’s long pull over the top helped prise them away. With his partner due to give birth any day now, Benoot wasn’t even sure to start the race, perhaps he was in a hurry.
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As a quartet they all had a clear motivation to get to the finish to contest the win or at least the podium, they looked committed. The chase from the group behind was working but the classic stand-off, the group had more riders but because of this some were missing turns or taking an economy pull. Sensing this Bilbao tried to bridge but couldn’t make it.
Behind EF chased hard with Richard Carapaz and Ben Healy working for Marijn van der Berg. They didn’t get much help and so couldn’t bring back the breakaway. Van der Berg would crash on a corner soon too but it was over for the peloton now, just UCI points left.
Pidcock made a move on the last climb of the day which surprised as it suggested he didn’t fancy his chances in a sprint but Benoot drove across. Lapeira tried to get across but couldn’t. Benoot tried a late attack but if some riders are explosive he’s inert, powerful in gradual efforts but he couldn’t get a gap. The quartet could see the chasers and Vansevenant started the sprint with 300m to go and Pidcock went with 150m to go while Hirschi was behind. There was a headwind but Hirschi could neither find the opening or the speed and Pidcock was clear to sit up and celebrate, no photofinish worries this time.
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The Verdict
A lively edition that forced viewers to watch until the end. Time gaps were tight, there was suspense but it wasn’t a full thriller, that needed more attacks and reversals of fortunes were needed. This was a good edition, not a great. But it’s most interesting to compare it not to other years of the Amstel but to other races this spring. Here it was entertaining because it was like watching racing from a different era, no galatico, no extraterrestrial who we may admire but who bends the race to their will and turns the final hour into a victory procession. Likewise no single team was in charge.
Marc Hirschi looked the strongest, his three attacks shaped the final result but Pidcock proved quicker in the sprint and was able to match him in the hills. For Pidcock it’s his first win on the road in over a year. He’s potentially a star rider – he won the Strade Bianche with a solo move that we normally think on Pogačar can pull off – but his win rate and the fact that he had to snipe Hirschi in the sprint shows why he isn’t in the same bracket as Van der Poel. He rode a tactically astute race: efficient, always in the right moves, his late attack was the surprise but otherwise it was out of the Kwiatkowski handbook. Benoot was strong throughout and that’s his hallmark, a haul of top-10 results but very few wins among them while Vansevenant was a ray of sunshine for Soudal-Quickstep who will give the team more confidence for Liège.
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Rival mountain biker Van der Poel didn’t have a Sunday to write home about, often so visible thanks to full white shorts and rainbow jersey but also because he was always near the front. Yet he barely attacked, his chase of Kwiatkowski was as far as things went with talk that he did one ride too many during the week. His focus is still on Liège but that’s looking harder as his team were harassed by rivals and he’ll find even hillier terrain. But he’s got nothing to lose.
Two wins in France, a Basque stage make it hard to say Paul Lapeira was a revelation but it was still a further breakthrough in a long race, on the attack 60km to go and still making moves in the final.
We start Ardennes week officially with Flèche Wallonne, the most scripted finish of the season but perfect for a Wednesday afternoon, before Liège on Sunday. The Tour of the Alps starts today to provide us with sport and clues ahead of the Giro too.
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The post Amstel Gold Race Review first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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He’s on form, he’s on home soil and he’s a past winner but Mathieu van der Poel won’t have it easy here as the hilly terrain and a long list of challengers should make things harder.
The Route: unchanged from last year, 253.6km and all in Limburg, the hilly part of the “low country”. It’s relative as the race rarely gets beyond 200 metres altitude but there are 3,200 metres of vertical gain spread across 33 marked climbs.
One difficulty you don’t see from the profile nor map is the mix of narrow roads and tight corners. Those at the front get to chose their line while anyone beyond, say, 20th wheel is stuck in a cycle of braking and sprinting. This whiplash effect is huge, it’s probably the defining feature of the race and being able to save energy by staying up front helps build the win. Local knowledge and a couple of strong team mates help here, arguably more than the Ronde and Liège.
The climbs are bunched towards the end of the race. The Eyserbosweg with 38km to go is where Tadej Pogačar forced a selection last year, the Keutenberg with 29km left is where he went solo.
The Finish: The finishing circuit is not so technical, a wider road and well-known. It’s via the Keutenberg and then the Cauberg to cross the finish line. Then it’s out into the apple orchards and and the Bemelerberg climb, a soft gradient but sometimes just enough to split the field. Over the top it’s via Mathieu van der Poel Allée and to the finish on a big wide road.
The Contenders
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Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is on a roll after wins in the Ronde and Roubaix. A past winner here, he seems the obvious pick but the hilly terrain doesn’t suit. It’s hard to see him take a flyer with 40km to go – he might try – and his advantage over others is his sprint. Also while his team have been very solid that’s because they are solid types, this time they’ll struggle to boss rival squads.
UAE come with six riders who could win, and Sjoerd Bax who is going to be busy fetching food and drink for them all. Juan Ayuso is the form pick and while his lean build makes him look like a pure climber he’s won time trial and sprints (pictured winning the Faun Ardèche Classic). Marc Hirschi is a Flèche Wallonne winner but from 2020 and if he’s had plenty of wins since, nothing in the World Tour so far. Many teams will look to UAE to control the race.
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EF Education-Eastpost bring a very strong team. Richard Carapaz is form unknown but building up. Second here last year, Ben Healy was remarkable in the recent Pays de Loire stage race, doing the work of three riders as he towed Marijn van den Berg to the win. Their problem is how to combine their strengths, with Healy not suited to the flat sprint so he’ll have to try and go solo while Van den Berg is on the limit with all the climbing.
Tom Pidcock (Ineos) is back to a race where he was less photogenic than Wout van Aert who beat him to the line and were Tadej Pogačar beat him last year, two podiums in three goes. Previous winner Michał Kwiatkowski has got the race craft and could surprise, if not he’ll be there to guide Pidcock.
Visma-Lease a Bike have a home race and have Tiesj Benoot and Matteo Jorgenson as leaders, both on terrain to suit but at risk of being picked off by rivals in case of a sprint.
Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) looked himself again in the Basque Country after two seasons of illness and injury, a lot of lows and few highs. Matteo Sobrero should be worth watching too.
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Benoît Cosnefroy (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is in form having just won the Brabantse Pijl and with ease, floating across to the breakaway before out-sprinting them. A runner-up here before this showed his challenge as he’s great on short hills but in a flatter sprint things are harder. Basque stage winner Paul Lapeira is in form too and could try a flyer.
Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) and Romain Grégoire give Groupama-FDJ two good chances, Madouas bravely stated he was all in for the Ronde but never featured while Grégoire looks custom-built for the Ardennes races.
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Lotto-Dstny bring Andreas Kron and Maxim Van Gils. Kron is one of those assassin-type riders with one bullet to fire but he’s capable of a surprise. Van Gils can keep firing, he’s not finished outside the top-10 this season except for Catalunya where it was feared a crash caused a broken wrist.
DSM Firmenich-PostNL race on home soil. Their motto is “keep challenging” only they’re being challenged by a tough start to the season. Warren Barguil brings experience, Kevin Vermaerke has quietly had a good season so far but Oscar Onley looks their best bet, the Scot is climbing with the best.
A hilly race for a punchy Dutch climber? Bauke Mollema (Lidl-Trek) can make a crowd-pleaser move but how to stay away? Mattias Skjelmose has made the Ardennes his goal for the first half of the year but he might prefer Liège next Sunday with more climbing. Andrea Bagioli is one to watch too.
Michael Matthews (Jayco) can get over the climbs and packs a sprint of course but how to convert previous top-10 places into a win? He’s going to struggle to match the best climbers so he’ll have to hope they mark each other out.
Astana have had a dire start to the season but Alexey Lutsenko supplied some cheer this week winning in Abruzzo. He’s resting but the squad looks decent on paper with Samuele Battistella due a big win and backed by Christian Scaroni, Ide Schelling and Anthon Charmig.
IPT have Dylan Teuns and Stephen Williams for the climbs and maybe Corbin Strong as a sprint card to play although if he is there for the finish, so is Van der Poel.
Uno-X bring Tobias Halland Johannessen and new signing Andreas Leknessund, outsiders again.
Soudal-Quickstep are orphans without leader Remco Evenepoel but William Junior Lecerf is promising although converting that into a win on a trick course like this is tough. Mauri Vansevenant can feature, he is always easy to spot thanks to his “pecking chicken” style
| | – | | | Van der Poel | | | Ayuso, Cosnefroy, Healy | | | Van Gils, Pidcock, Williams, Hirschi, Bilbao, McNulty | | | Battistella, Grégoire, Matthews, Van den Berg, Schachmann, Kron |
Weather: cloudy and 15°C.
TV: the race starts at 10.45am and the finish is for 4.50pm CEST. It’s on NOS locally and Eurosport for most other territories.
Ardennes? we often label the Amstel an “Ardennes classic” because it’s hilly, not far from the Ardennes and on at the same time as the real Ardennes races. It’s a heuristic but it’s a wrong one. The Ardennes are a western part of the larger Eifel mountain range and are to be found far to the south of this race, think Liège of Limburg. The hills this weekend are mere clay and sand deposits rather than part of a genuine mountain range.
Flanders Gold: this is the last edition of the race as an independent event as the race will be taken over by Flanders Classics next year, although still with Amstel Gold title sponsorship.
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Women’s Amstel: this starts at 10.15 CEST and finishes around 2.20pm with TV coverage from midday onwards. It’ll be a climbing test for Lotte Kopecky and team mate Demi Vollering, they got the 1-2 last year but this week Vollering was dropped by Elisa Longo Borghini in the Brabantse Pijl to make the Italian the form pick with Marianne Vos the local hero. For a good preview, see procyclinguk.com’s Amstel picks
The post Amstel Gold Race Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Seeing so many riders on the ground in Dwars Door Vlaanderen and then the Tour of the Basque Country was grim. The fact that so many star names were involved has invariably given these incidents more prominence; more than the huge crash in the Roue Tourangelle a couple of weeks back. Unjust but if it leads to more debate and eventual safety measures than it might benefit all.
Safety improvements have been a regular topic, rightly so. Changes are coming but they can’t come soon enough. And they won’t solve everything, far from it.
There are more rules and regulations on safety than ever but the feeling in the peloton is that races aren’t getting any safer at all. Roads are more perilous thanks to more street furniture; racing more intense with riders wanting to go into a corner or a climb ahead of others and it’s not just a variation of the “there’s no respect these days” refrain from senior riders, neo-pros remark on the intensity of a World Tour peloton too, of just how difficult it can be to maintain position in the peloton.
It’s hard to know if there are more crashes these days but the UCI is now keeping a “race incidents database” that logs most crashes with accompanying details. It might be where UCI boss David Lappartient got his line last week that 50% of crashes are caused by riders.
Instead of UCI rule tweaks here and there from the top down there’s a new collective procedure designed to get riders, teams, organisers and the governing body together. This project, presented on the eve of last year’s Tour de France (pictured), is called “SafeR”, as in Safe Road cycling. A UCI press release about SaferR says:
SafeR will be funded jointly by the organisers, riders, teams and the UCI. The entity will be responsible for:
– analysing the risks relating to the routes of UCI WorldTour, UCI Women’s World and UCI ProSeries races;
– providing safety advice to stakeholders in professional road cycling, in particular to the UCI;
– carrying out safety audits on race organisers and teams (including their riders);
– publishing quarterly safety reports.
Analysis, audits, advice, quarterly reports? It sounds like corporate jargon and it’s for 2025 and beyond while an anxious peloton wants a more urgent response today.
SafeR though sounds promising, there are gains to be had from better information and analysis. One idea is “never waste an accident”, so any crash can be informative and helps to prevent the next one. In some domains, take aviation, and accidents just can’t happen. Pro cycling is a difficult arena as risk-taking is part of the competition, we implicitly tolerate a degree of crashes. A brief look into the world of downhill skiing sees similar concerns, and also arguments raging over proposed safety measures. In pro cycling SafeR can help here as it brings together all sides and puts safety on the agenda from the start. But it’s more a process than a solution.
If SafeR is for 2025, we’re set to see a football-style yellow and red cards this summer. A rider that pulls a bad move will get a warning, do it again and they can be suspended. Bans happen already, you might remember Filip Maciejuk’s move in the Tour of Flanders last year that got him a one month suspension. Here the idea seems to be to give more warnings for smaller, risky moves that may not cause immediate harm or danger and to make them visible: calling out dumb moves. A bit like the UCI’s moves to clamp down on littering, this could cause teething problems if riders are singled out while others act similar but aren’t sanctioned, and it might take a few months and even suspensions for attitudes to change. The ban of the “supertuck” position was similar with noise and misapprehension in the moment and now quietly accepted.
Part of the plans including making safety more standardised, like adopting the same signage for all races so that visual cues about danger ahead can be processed quickly rather than open to interpretation, also shared standards for crash barriers. The big operators like ASO, RCS and Flanders Classics are cited as examples for other races to follow – they are not perfect either – but this means having their resources and networks. How to ensure smaller races are as good? Or put simply: who pays? There is a common interest for everyone. Race organisers want a safer sport as a Ronde without Van Aert isn’t as good, ditto a Tour sans Vingegaard, Roglič and Evenepoel. Riders have an interest here too, they literally have skin in the game. Coordinating the politics of all this is a delicate mission to put it mildly but there is a collective gain to be had.
Speed is one factor blamed for the incidence and severity of accidents. Bikes are faster, true; but they also stop quicker and grip better than ever. This is paradoxically part of the problem as these gains are banked such that if stopping times are shorter you can ride closer to the wheel in front and brake later: there is less precaution. Only there’s surely no going back, it’s hard to make bikes slower for racing in practice; sure it might be safer to supply every rider with one of those Airhubs that increase resistance but would the peloton and public buy in? Bike brands are a team’s second source of income after the title sponsors and it’s hard to tell the industry to back off on marketing faster equipment given the sport functions as a shop window for the industry. Theoretically there could be some you could try to get the peloton to slow down by adding even wider tires. Why not rule a return to jerseys and shorts instead of speedsuits? Marginal, and someone reading this at a clothing company will already be thinking how to make the fastest jersey-shorts outfit. Which again brings the collective dilemma: the peloton might want more safety as a whole but the moment the new rules appear, individually riders are incentivised to arbitrage the rules to get the jump on their rivals.
One topic regarding speed is limiting the gears used. Not long ago 53×11 was the top gear. Now a 54 chainring is standard and 56T, even 58T are not uncommon. Several riders have mentioned how this is adding to the risks, the peloton can speed through towns littered with street furniture like never before; descents can be raced hard when they were freewheeled before (even if still cornered fast). Philippe Gilbert raised gearing during his tenure on the UCI’s Road Commission, active pros have cited it on social media recently too. But where to set the limit, a 54T? This feels an indirect way to address speed, if the incentives to attack on a descent still exist would we not see riders bobbing frantically at 120rpm? Still, it might be worth trying and to see what the feedback from the peloton is.
One of the perils here is the responses are some kind of Rohrschach test which reveals preoccupations. If you think race radios are spoiling racing then you might want them banned, in the name of safety. If you think TT-style helmets in road races with riders racing behind visors is making the sport look too remote then you might suggest banning TT-style helmets, for safety of course in order to reduce speeds. Likewise for disc brakes, power meters and GPS devices, even carbon frames have been cited in recent days as blame-worthy.
One idea is keeping race radio but with one common channel for the peloton to sharing course info and give urgent updates so that riders tackling a route can be informed of troubles ahead. Only surely this still prompts everyone to get up front and out of trouble? Or if the device becomes less useful riders might save weight and forget it.
Last week riders mentioned the use of finish bottles and caffeine, the suggestion that jittery riders are more crash-prone. Pro cycling led the way in banning tramadol because one of the effects its abuse was having was said to be rise in crashes. This was hard to prove and it made sense to ban anyway. A caffeine ban would hard to enforce, how to allow a cup in the morning versus a finish bottle laced with 300mg of caffeine? Here some sort of agreement among teams and riders could work if it was agreed to be a problem.
Incidence vs harm
So far, the ideas doing the rounds seem to be about reducing the number of crashes, limiting the incidence rate. There are other angles to explore like reducing the harm and severity of crashes. Some go together, for example if the peloton could be slowed then perhaps the rate of crashes might go down and so would the extent of the injuries.
Seeing Richard Carapaz and Enric Mas suffer wrist injuries of the opening day of the Tour last year invited ex post thoughts of why not at least start the hectic opening days of a grand tour with some added body protection? More recently, reading Het Nieuwsblad lately (€) has seen the use of an airbag suggested, something that is going to be adopted in skiing. Here a rider wears a sort of collar which can suddenly inflate to cushion a fall. You might have seen helmet versions but this is to protect the neck and upper body. Similarly wrist protection, the rigid kind used by beginner skaters could help and other sports use various types of body armour. But in a sport where riders jettison empty gel wrappers to save weight for a summit finish this would probably require regulation and compulsion. Unthinkable? Well you’re now thinking about it here. If it’s a cultural change, helmets were long unthinkable in competition and now the reverse is true.
Conclusion
Reducing the incidences of crashes is one aspect to explore and the sport is trying to do this, there have been many rule changes over the years. The SafeR joint-initiative is the next part of this and offers the possibility of more comprehensive cultural change. Reducing the severity and harm from injuries could be another angle to explore too.
Exploring the issues around SafeR and ideas raised by riders in recent days in a blog post is one thing. But having done the walk-through it feels like a sidestep too: we’re not addressing the root causes. Pro cycling is inherently dangerous and the radical position is to ask how many crashes are acceptable and what level of injuries and worse is tolerable? It’s a tough question to ask, and harder to answer even given so much is out of control.
The post On Risk and Safety Improvements first appeared on The Inner Ring.
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Mathieu van der Poel goes solo with 60km to go. His moved looked telegraphed but there was nothing his rivals could do, because when they tried Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Gianni Vermeersch made sure they could not.
A fast start that saw Dries De Bondt (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) draft the lead car like a lead-out in order to get away as soon as the flag dropped. He would be reeled in soon but it set the tone. It took almost an hour for the right move to go. The seven clear were Kasper Asgreen (Soudal-Quickstep), the promising Per Strand Hagenes (Visma-LAB), Marco Haller (Bora-hansgrohe), Liam Slock (Lotto-Dstny), Gleb Syritsa (Astana), Kamil Małecki (Q36.5) and Rasmus Tiller (Uno-X).
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Kasper Asgreen looked like an outside danger but alas while EF had a special retro jersey for the Ronde last week, Quickstep’s kit evokes their better days. But like the Ronde last week at least they made the move. Many hadn’t but struggled to chase, the breakaway was an efficient team time trial. De Bondt and Dušan Rajović (Bahrain) chased and would get across but the effort cost them and they’d be dropped later.
Back in the bunch there was a big crash in Ham that felled several, including a slew of contenders. Some were out instantly, with others left chasing but it wasn’t their day, like Jonathan Milan and Tim Merlier. In a week where crashes have been the dominant news story, this proved to be the worst collective crash in the whole race.
With the race covering 54.7km in the first hour – for anecdotal purposes only: faster than Bradley Wiggins’ hour record – thanks to the tailwind and the strong group, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek deployed Silvan Dillier and Tim Declerq to keep the breakaway in check. The “tight leash” policy didn’t even allow the breakaway two minutes and is why the romantic idea of the early breakaway making all the way to Roubaix is wilting. That said it provided options, for example Małecki would ride to 18th place in part thanks to hauling himself ahead of events.
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As soon as the cobbles began the mechanicals followed. Christophe Laporte punctured and from then on race radio was crackling with emergency news. As the course turned north-west after 100km it started to catch a stiff crosswind and splits appeared in the peloton. Paris-Roubaix became giant elimination race as one by one riders were undone, some by punctures and broken kit, and some by being out of position. There was little chance to get back, the second hour of racing averaged 52km/h.
Having crashed already in Ham, Laurenz Rex collided with a road sign. Sadly he did an “Offredo“, looking backwards rather than at the sign in his way but a decade on this object was padded so hopefully the injuries are mitigated. With 140km to go the breakaway was caught. Moments later Joshua Tarling got a bike change followed bye very “sticky bottle”, cycling’s euphemism for cheating by holding onto the team car. Live on TV and right in front of a moto regulateur, his expulsion was inevitable.
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The Arenberg forest’s chicane has to be mentioned, if only because it was a sizzling nothingburger. The addition of three corners to the course prompted a lot of noise during the week but the only crash came from a lot of pre-race hot takes falling into the bin. Nobody crashed and the Arenberg was raced like it usually is: the riders and pavé decide. It was at this same spot that a tribute to François Doulcier could be seen. The late President of the Amis de Paris-Roubaix, the charity that did so much under his guidance to not only preserve the pavé but promote it too. When the race revisits on a revised approach next year hopefully Doulcier gets the limelight instead.
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Exit Arenberg and Mathieu van der Poel was clear with team mate Jasper Philipsen, Mads Pedersen and Mick van Dijke. Too soon? You wondered if it was possible to press on but Philipsen punctured to leave a trio who thought better of it. Pedersen himself punctured next. More moves would come and go, including one from Nils Politt, Stefan Küng and Gianni Vermeersch that lasted 15km. Just like the Ronde, Vermeersch covered the breakaway where his presence allowed Van der Poel to sit tight and stay out of sight, despite his pristine rainbow jersey. Tim Wellens and Mads Pedersen made moves but they were closed down before you could say “Alpecin-Deceuninck”.
On the approach to the Orchies sector Alpecin-Deceuninck hit the front. Only there was nobody up the road to chase and Van der Poel was already in a good position. Were they setting up an attack? Sure enough Van der Poel launched on the pavé, and as he went clear Vermeersch was able to dip into his slipstream and deprive Mads Pedersen of the space, helping to create a gap that nobody could close.
It wasn’t all over. Ideally the chase would have kept Van der Poel at twenty seconds, stewing like a carbonade flamande while the group behind worked together, biding their time. They had the numbers, they had the power but not the collective will. So easier said than done. Within no time Pedersen sensed the lack of will. He sprinted clear but Vermeersch, him again, had the move covered. Each of the individual pursuit efforts were got neutralised by Van der Poel’s denim deputies. The gap kept growing and with it the sense that there was a race for second place.
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The final hour the race became a giant advert for Brustor and with it, the chance to go and learn that Louis Brustaert founded the company that makes blinds (stores in French) in 1965. Bru + store = Brustor. Probably all over France and beyond attention was turning to other things too. Tables were being cleared, toilets flushing, dogs bouncing excitedly as their owners headed for the door brandishing leads and so on. By now Van der Poel was so far ahead you could measure it not by seconds, but cobbled sectors. You could see it too, he carved corners that cut up the others, even Tom Pidcock was starting to look ragged behind.
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While he was getting handed up food from the team car, behind the chase split on the Mons-en-Pévèle cobbles as Nils Politt, Jasper Philipsen, Mads Pedersen and Groupama-FDJ tandem Stefan Küng and Laurence Pithie rode away with 45km to go. FDJ’s luck was running low, first Pithie crash hard on a corner, then Philipsen accelerated on the Gruson cobbles and Küng was dropped.
This left Politt, Pedersen and Philipsen as a trio hunting for the two podium spots. Politt doesn’t have the sprint but he couldn’t or wouldn’t move. Sure enough in the final Pedersen went one way around him, Philipsen the other and it was Philipsen who finished second. A 1-2 for Alpecin-Deceuninck like last year.
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The Verdict
A fine race with constant change and surprises, an outdoor elimination race… until the final 90 minutes where Van der Poel personally relegated the field. His attack was incisive and bold, he left them with 60km remaining. There was still a large group behind but his team had every move covered behind, especially Gianni Vermeersch. From here on the finish lacked suspense and even the race for second place wasn’t that lively, neither Küng nor Politt were able to put the sprinters under pressure. After a week dominated by reports of musculoskeletal trauma the consolation here was uninterrupted racing and a predictable outcome rather than crash carnage.
Van der Poel wins but Alpecin-Deceuninck were formidable all day, he’d do well to watch the video again and see just how his colleagues rode like prison guards to close down any escapees. While some teams have a flat hierarchy to the point where their riders are incentivised to go clear before a team mate does to get an option on the win, the Belgian team is much more traditional with an alpha leader supported by the rest of the group. Both options can work, the race missed Wout van Aert but also Lidl-Trek didn’t come with their full squad either.
The Amstel is next for Van der Poel, home soil but more awkward terrain. Then comes Liège-Bastogne-Liège, possibly out of his reach but he’s finished sixth before and might fancy his chances in a move that goes clear before La Redoute and La-Roche-aux-Faucons. He’ll have to play things very differently, he can’t count on his team in the same way. And Tadej Pogačar might have something to say about things too.
The post The Moment Paris-Roubaix Was Won first appeared on The Inner Ring.
The last of the cobbled classics and the most exceptional one, in every sense. And yet the obvious outcome is a repeat of last Sunday with Mathieu van der Poel going away for a solo win.
The Course: a 15 minute neutralised roll out and then 260km. It’s 96km to the first cobbled sector and this first section is no parade. The road rises and falls, it’s the hilliest part of the course and there’s plenty of exposed roads in the countryside and street furniture in the towns, especially Saint-Quentin.
The cobbled sectors come after 96km. The graphic above shows the ratings. Look closely and you’ll see there’s no #15 and #8 features twice and if you recon the route you discover there are also some brief unmarked cobbles too; this year’s ratings have three more stars than last year. Sectors are subjectively rated by difficulty but also a function of distance. So a short sector with stones jagged enough to puncture tires and dreams alike may not merit a diabolical rating. It’s always worth remembering that in this 260km race, roughly 80% is are on tarmac and 90% is tarmac and the one, two or three star rated sections.
The tarmac sectors are arguably as important as the pavé, riders sprint to get into position for the cobbles and once they’re on the farm tracks the fight for position backs off, the racing eases off from sprint to time trial.
The Arenberg Forest has long been a self-fulfilling strategic points as riders rush to be at the front in case of a crash… which heightens the crash risk. The previous section (number 20) is one of the toughest. The Arenberg’s traditional bowling alley approach altered with the “chicane” right-left-right turns onto the sector after the CPA rider union made an 11th hour request. The addition of these bends has generated a lot of interest but on race day the defining point is the 2.3km length and the jagged stones with their protruding edges.
Now the sectors come thick and fast as the route twists and turns across Le Nord, a corner of France that always gets grim portraits, take your pick from Zola, Varda or contemporary socio-economic data.
Mons-en-Pévèle is a five star brute, three kilometres and often where the race is lost by many. With 20km to go the crucial sectors of Camphin and then the Carrefour de l’Arbre arrive. This final one is five-star, two kilometres and the hardest part comes towards the end where it starts to climb and this is the crucial moment to make the difference.
The Finish: Held in the old velodrome, riders enter the 500m rough concrete track for one and half laps. The banking can be exploited by a rider lucid enough to remember how to sprint on a track, harder than it sounds after 260km.
The Contenders
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Mathieu van der Poel won it last year, he won the Ronde last week and each time with a confident solo win. It almost feels like a question of what can beat him rather than who can beat him, that a puncture or a mechanical could pose more of a problem than his rivals but even then he’s in the kind of form where he can reverse the situation. He’s got a good sprint, and if he’s lost sometimes in a sprint in the past it’s often because he’d made many efforts before; these days he is more measured and experienced.
The one weakness for Van der Poel is team work, Alpecin-Deceuninck look smart but not imposing. In Jasper Philipsen they’ve got last year’s second place finisher but if he rides its a helper less. He’s famously quick but resilient too which counts as the sprint in the Roubaix velodrome is as much a test of stamina as speed.
For all the rest it’s about how to get ahead of Van der Poel. Attacking before he does is necessary but far from sufficient. The right move has to go such that teams wanting to beat Van der Poel have cooperate. Not collude, there will be no alliance against the rainbow jersey, just the hope they can get riders up the road together and force Alpecin to chase instead of missing the moves and having to chase themselves.
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Lidl-Trek gave a textbook example of team work in Gent-Wevelgem to enable Mads Pedersen to beat Van der Poel. Now they’re diminished, no Stuyven nor Kirsch. Jonathan Milan is a battering ram but the real question is about Pedersen’s form. We got a rough answer last weekend where he was scattering energy around Flanders but at least he was able to do to this and should be fresher and more focused now. Can he afford to race patiently and hope Van der Poel is forced to work more; last week’s outing might convince him to sit tight.
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Patrick Lefevere said that if Remco Evenepoel won Liège then everyone who had been criticising him would have to eat their words about Soudal-Quickstep’s spring classics campaign. That’s alas not happening now. Still his team have won two semi-classics, more than most. It’s been thanks to Tim Merlier. His limits only come when there’s climbing but the hard part for him and the team is constructing the victory, to put him in a place where he can unleash his sprint in the velodrome for the win. Asgreen and Lampaert look made for the race but haven’t bloomed this spring.
Visma-Lease A Bike are having a tough time as well and the absence of Wout van Aert is worth dwelling on as this was supposed to be his big day, a chance to return to the roads where mechanical mishaps cost him the chance to contest the win a year ago. Dylan van Baarle is strong but how to win? Christophe Laporte is much more the archetypal rider, packs a fast finish and absent Van Aert has the keys to the team bus… but he’s been ill so form is unknown.
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Nils Politt (UAE) has been on the podium before and arguably he’s racing better than ever. As we all saw he lost a sprint to Jan Tratnik so it’s probably solo or bust. Tim Wellens adds depth but was probably better suited to last Sunday’s climbs while Mikkel Bjerg comes off fourth place in Flanders and gives more options.
Like Politt, Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) where has also been on the podium but the top step is a leap. This time he and Laurence Pithie can work together but all it takes is one crash or incident and things come undone, they have to hope fortune is on their side this Sunday.
Fred Wright leads Bahrain after Matej Mohorič is out. Movistar are visible with Oier Lazkano and Ivan Garcia Cortina, both muscular riders who be present in the final hour but how to win?
Uno-X have a cohesive squad and Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) looks to be made for the race but has actually struggled on the cobbles and only once made the top-10 while Søren Wærenskjold packs a sprint, Ramus Tiller is strong too. TotalEnergies need a result but a win would be more than an upset, still Dries Van Gestel and Anthony Turgis are their best cards to play.
Paris-Roubaix has sometimes favoured the long-odds riders, the early breakaways and the stalwarts, and supplied fairy-tale endings. Once more? It’s a romantic notion but runs up against the way the race is ridden these days with high speeds, teams not giving the early breakaway any space and the favourites being willing to launch early rather than waiting only to fade the finale. Florian Sénéchal (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) would be the local pick but his spring has been ruined by injury so a result would be even more of a story, instead Luca Mozzato and Jenthe Biermans can hope for a top-10. At 33 Oliver Naesen is getting into the grizzled category but said he had great form in the Ronde on his way to seventh place so look out for him on Decathlon’s home roads. John Degenkolb (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) is a past winner, was seventh last year despite a crash in the finish but he crashed on Friday so this isn’t going to be easy for the 35 year old.
As well old hands finally getting their reward for patience, Paris-Roubaix can also anoint young talent. Alec Segaert (Lotto-Dstny) and Josh Tarling (Ineos) are both are time triallists who can turn on the power while Ineos have Ben Turner too. Per Strand Hagenes (Visma-LAB) is in his debut too but might have less room to race for himself. Laurenz Rex (Intermarché-Wanty) won Le Samyn and is an outside tip for many at this race as he’s a strong rider with a big build and a mountain bike background.
| | Van der Poel | | | – | | | Pedersen, Philipsen | | | Politt, Van Baarle, Laporte, Merlier | | | Rex, Küng, Pidcock, Naesen, Milan, Pithie, Degenkolb |
Weather: cloudy and a top temperature of 19°C. Crucially a 25km/h wind from the SW which could gust to 40km/h. This means a tailwind for the first half of the race and then for the second half, a crosswind or at least in the general direction of travel as the race twists on its way northwest towards Roubaix.
This is the one race where climate matters as much as the weather. It’s been a very wet winter so the ground is soaked and muddy sectors can endure and over the winter the stones have moved, potholes have appeared in places. As importantly the sides are often soft and riders seeking relief from the pavé by riding on the dirt and grass verges can get bogged down.
TV: live from start at 11.10am CEST to the finish at 5.20pm CEST. Normally it’s on the same channel you watch the Tour de France on so France Télévisions for locals and VPN users, and Eurosport in most other countries. Arenberg starts around 3.00pm.
Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift: it’s today (Saturday) between 1.30pm and 5.30pm CEST with TV coverage for the final two hours, about where the first of the 17 cobbled sectors begins. This blog’s clumsy pick is Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) but it’s notable that the team isn’t winning as often this season and races are more open, we’ll see if Marianne Vos (Visma-LAB) can add this to her prolific collection and look out for Zoe Bäckstedt in her Roubaix debut. You’ll find a better informed and proper preview over at procyclinguk.com.
The post Paris-Roubaix Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.
Vuelta Skelter, by Tim Moore
A raucous tale of re-riding the 1941 Vuelta a España that has plenty of comedy… and a darker side.
Tim Moore is no stranger to grand tours. He started with “French Revolutions, Cycling the Tour de France”, later wrote “Gironimo! Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy” and both are hilarious accounts.
French Revolutions relied on the ineptitude of Moore as a cyclist as the crux, at times he was merciless with France but he was often the butt of his own jokes, a tirade of self-deprecation. With a bit of experience, Moore’s made things harder for himself covering the Giro’s 1914 route on a bike from the period too, no gears and barely any brakes either.
Now the slapstick continues with a lap of Spain. While at times mocking others along the way, Moore seems to know he is the outsider and is ruthless with himself. He buys some “golf trousers” on the advice of a cycling forum as they’re lightweight to pack and don’t crease meaning he’s got something elegant to pull out of his bike bag for the evenings but soon realises he’s not so much Rory McIlroy striding down the 18th as “Angela Merkel approaching a lectern”.
Moore’s journey around contemporary Spain, albeit during the 2020 Covid pandemic, wouldn’t be fun if it was easy. So he opts to ride a retro bike and do it in the heat of summer:
The road pitched up the drawn-out Cuesta de la Media Fanega. It wasn’t hideously steep, but it was hideously hot. My bidons, decontaminated overnight in hotel shower gel, were now as squidgy and flaccid as Dali’s floppy clocks: the merest squeeze dispatched a mighty jet of warm, soapy bathwater down my gullet
The old bike is a 1970s Berrendero with Campagnolo parts, a bike that proved hard to acquire, let alone pedal. It’s a tribute Julián Berrendero, winner of the 1941 Vuelta a España, and Moore sets off to ride the route of that edition and tell the story of Berrendero. He won the Tour de France’s mountains competition in 1936 only to get imprisoned at the end of the Spanish civil war, probably for no good reason. Moved from one internment camp to the next, a stroke of luck: a prison officer turns out to be a fellow cyclist and before long Berrendero finds himself nourished, freed and starting the 1941 Vuelta, the first after wartime hiatus.
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This event is organised by the newly-installed Franco regime for propaganda purposes and has just 32 starters, the country was almost closed to outsiders, and few wanted to visit given the dilapidated roads and food shortages. This is where Moore’s manic slapstick ends as the backdrop of the Spanish civil war and the establishment of the Franco dictatorship means he often arrives in town to Google the place name plus guerra civil to find what grim discovery awaits and also draws on British historians. Such is the brutality of the civil war that Moore often resorts to making light of it. Here’s Moore on General José Moscardó who was appointed to run the reprised 1941 Vuelta:
After Nationalist reinforcements broke the siege [of Toledo], Moscardó swiftly directed their attention to his Republican hostages. All 130 patients in the fortress’s hospital had their throats slit, including 20 pregnant women. A further 180 Republican militiamen were locked in the seminary and burned alive. As the indiscretions of a sports administrator, these rather put Sepp Blatter’s in the shade.
This can ease the horrors but it means the story goes from struggling with a derailleur one in one paragraph to civilian killing fields the next, interspersed by accounts of the 1941 Vuelta and often jolting effect.
Sometimes these three threads weave together. Riding past an idyllic castle as part of his 1941 route recreation, Moore makes a note to Google the place later… and finds it was requisitioned by the Condor Legion, the Nazi unit that bombed Guernica.
As we’ve all learned, the deadly influenza pandemic in 1918 was sometimes unfairly called “Spanish flu” because censorship restrictions meant the wave of deaths were suppressed in many countries, leading to reports coming from Spain. Whatever the label, more died from this virus than in the 1914-1918 war yet it was an episode almost largely forgotten from public consciousness until Covid appeared. It’s a reminder that memory, individual and collective, can be selective. Moore also evokes this, to mention the civil war in conversation brings “shrugs and mumbles, as that guerra civil omertà brought the shutters down once more.” This is just Moore’s account but his message is that many want to forget this part of Spain’s history. It’s understandable but there’s the sense today, even more than in 2020 when Moore was riding that to forget the past is to re-enable the conditions that led to the very things we want to attribute to the past. To read of the horrors in the book is one thing, the uneasy feeling that they can happen again is awkward and lingers longer than than the comedy, our smartphones might allow us to carry the world’s libraries about in a pocket but it can be more profitable for some if we deploy them as digital pitchforks.
However the further you read the more there is about cycle touring and Vuelta history, there are even stats that might be new to many. Amid the often merciless portrait of Berrendero as more than just a determined racer, Moore also displays some admiration and even ventures why the Spaniard was often so steely and thorny with others.
Moore does have his moments with people along the way and some Spanish readers could prickle but only just, the brief section about Italians might win some around… or see the book hurled away.
This book was published two years ago and I got a PDF review copy just days before my laptop developed a fault that many reports said would lead to it catching fire. Panicked like a hypochondriac diagnosing an illness online, I rushed the laptop off for repair and the book review didn’t make it in time for the Vuelta that year. Reading the book in 2023 lends an extra resonance, the pandemic Moore describes is a now memory yet authoritarian rule doesn’t feel like it quite belongs to history as populist politicians the world already rule and more might only be an election away from power in many places, and then they’re only a wardrobe change away from khaki uniforms.
The Verdict
Superficially the story of an idiot riding around Spain for comic effect, and enjoyable for this because no matter how hard a time you might be having on the bike, Moore has it worse.
The book covers plenty of the 1941 Vuelta and Berrendero’s career, including his brief but disastrous spell as Spanish team jefe for Federico Bahamontes. Yet it’s also about much deeper issues. Like a jester who uses humour to raise points in the royal court that other advisors to the king could not say aloud, Moore evokes a disturbing recent past, here it is Spain through the prism of the 1941 Vuelta but take your pick from many other countries.
- A PDF copy was sent free for review by the publishers Penguin.
More book reviews at inrng.com/books
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The sprint stage of the race, it’s a crucial day for the likes of Sam Bennett and Dylan Groenewegen otherwise their week is reduced a mountain training camp.
Alaphilippe sits up first in La Chaise : the stage started with a crash, after eight kilometres Romain Combaud, Stef Cras and Steven Kruijswijk (pictured moments before) were on the ground and out of the race. Kruijswijk was going to be a precious help to Jonas Vingegaard this week and during the Tour de France but he’s got a broken collarbone and pelvis; Wilco Kelderman is his likely substitute. The early breakaway never got more than two minutes with Jumbo-Visma keeping a tight leash. In the move again was Donavan Grondin who’d taken the mountains jersey on the opening day and extended his lead. But he’s no climber, he’s a track specialist – world champ in the Madison with Benjamin Thomas of Cofidis – and started cramping up and had to spend minutes sat beside the road before getting going and would make the time cut with seconds to spare. He’s French, and with an interesting back story as he’s from Reunion island in the Indian ocean.
A sprint finish loomed in La Chaise Dieu, literally “the Seat of God” and the name comes from the presence of monastery in the 11th century. The fast pace all day and hills in the finale left some sprinters floundering and lead out riders left behind. Jumbo-Visma led all the way to the finishing straight with Jonas Vingegaard again giving Christophe Laporte an impressive leadout, turning the power to do most of the last kilometre but crucially not all of it. A lull saw a late attack by Richard Carapaz but this proved to be a leadout for Julian Alaphilippe who sprinted to the stage win. Laporte stays in yellow but is tied for time (bonuses) with Alaphilippe.
The Route: 191km and over 2,000m of vertical gain, if today is The Sprint Stage, it’s like a day out of the Vuelta with some climbing along the way and the theme of this is the way the course rises out from the Loire valley. It does this at the start. Then later the Côte de Neulise is another climb out of the Loire valley but neither are steep, the hard part for the latter climb is at the start.
The Finish: Le Coteau is on the banks of the Loire, opposite the larger city of Roanne. It’s a flat finish with some roundabouts through the town’s zone industrielle before a tight bend to the left before the flamme rouge and then a tight bend to the right soon after with a 650m finishing straight.
The Contenders: on paper it’s a match between Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) and Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-Al Ula). Bennett seems to be climbing better but he’s erratic in the sprints but his team will hope Danny van Poppel can help here. Groenewegen has more speed but he’ll have to cope with the climbs.
Milan Menten (Lotto-Dstny) is making a name for himself as a sprinter. Lionel Taminiaux (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is probably his team’s quickest option and this also means two more teams to chase. As will others
| | Bennett, Groenewegen | | | Vernon, Menten | | | Taminiaux, Dversnes, Laporte, Trentin, Mihkels |
Weather: sunny, 27°C but a headwind for much of the stage including the run to the finish.
TV: the stage starts at midday and finish is forecast for 4.40pm CEST. There’s live coverage from 3.00pm onwards.
Another day, another lumpy stage with a hilly finishing circuit that will put some of the sprinters in trouble.
Chambon cuit: Five riders were clear including past opening stage winner Brent Van Moer, and Donavan Grondin who’d take the mountains jersey. The peloton wasn’t a safe place as downpours helped to provokwe two crashes with Ethan Hayter, one of the picks for the day, among those falling twice and out of the race.
With the peloton chasing the breakaway was down to two in Rune Herregodts and Dorian Godon. The pair seemed to be battling to last longest from the breakaway to get the combativity prize for the day and Herregodts won, only he found himself on twisting, wet roads that were descending to the finish and he exploited this to rebuild a slender lead on the peloton to set up a thrilling finish. Nervously looking back multiple times in the final kilometre as Jonas Vingegaard in person led out the bunch, Christophe Laporte sprinted past for the win ahead of Matteo Trentin with a cooked Herregodts holding on for third. With Vingegaard setting up the win, other GC contenders didn’t have such a good day with Enric Mas losing 15 seconds thanks to a split in the finish and Mikel Landa 22 seconds. Also worth noting was Maxim Van Gils in fifth place, the Lotto-Dstny climber amidst the sprinters, not tipped in the general preview for the win but an emerging talent all the same.
The Route: 167km and another hilly day in the Auvergne region, another course with a finishing circuit that avoids some of the bigger climbs.
The principal difficulty of the finishing circuit out of Saint-Paul-de-Senouire, aka Saint-Pal, and the Côte des Guêtes which climbs to the village of Connangles but it’s a regular wide road and just one of several climbs and drags on the circuit.
The Finish: slightly uphill under the flamme rouge and then a long finishing straight that’s slightly uphill.
The Contenders: another hard circuit but a few more sprinters could be in the mix this time. Christophe Laporte needs the win to keep his yellow jersey and Jumbo-Visma should be up for helping him out, quid pro quo he helps back in July. Ethan Vernon (Soudal-Quickstep) was among the last sprinters to get dropped yesterday, we’ll see today if he can hold on. Maybe Sam Bennett can stay too, his Bora-hansgrohe leadout Danny van Poppel showed his quality yesterday by making the cut to finish sixth. The finish isn’t steep enough, nor perhaps wet enough, but former downhill skier Axel Zingle (Cofidis) is knocking on the door for a big result. Too hilly for Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-Al Ula), surely but it depends how the race is ridden, his big chance is tomorrow.
| | Laporte, Vernon | | | Bennett | | | Zingle, Dversnes, Menten, Groenewegen |
Weather: sunshine at first but even the weather could copy yesterday, 20°C and a rising chance of a downpour in the afternoon.
TV: the start is at 12.30pm and finish is forecast for 4.40pm CEST and there’s live coverage of the final two hours.
The Critérium du Dauphiné begins with a hilly stage around the old volcanoes of the Auvergne, can any of the sprinters hang on for the finish?
The Route: a tour around the Monts Dore and the Puy de Sancy, the highest point of the Massif central mountain range. But it’s around rather than over, the course could have hillier but there’s plenty of mountain climbing to come. First comes an 88km loop, then three laps of a 20km circuit around Chambon sur Lac. The categorised climb is just a short sprint up to a viewpoint, but to get there there’s more climbing before.
The Finish: a flat finish by the lake.
The Contenders: it’s too hilly for some sprinters so the breakaway riders will fancy their chances and they get the consolation of five climbs for the mountains competition. Romain Combaud (DSM) is the local but he’s never won a pro race. Dorian Godon and Oliver Naesen (Ag2r Citroën), Mathieu Burgaudeau (TotalEnergies), Harry Sweeny (Lotto-Dstny) are long shot picks.
Ethan Hayter (Ineos) is a fast finisher who can handle these climbs. Sprinter Ethan Vernon showed in Romandie he climbs well too and Christophe Laporte (Jumbo-Visma) is a candidate here too. Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) ought to be the prime pick but he could find the climbing too much and he’s not a regular winner in bunch sprints either these days.
| | – | | | Hayter | | | Vernon, Laporte, Bennett, Fraile, Zingle |
Weather: sunshine but the altitude will keep the temperatures down, 19-22°C and the rising chance of a thundery downpour later in the stage.
TV: the stage starts at 1.00pm and finish is forecast for 5.00pm CEST. TV will cover the final two hours.
The summer stage race season is underway and the Critérium du Dauphiné is a major rendez-vous for many of the contenders for the Tour de France. The week ahead looks like it’s Jonas Vingegaard vs. the field with the Dane finding a route to suit and saying out loud he’s in top form already.
The Route
Stage 1
The opening stage takes place on the flanks of the Massif du Sancy, the area visited by the race last year when David Gaudu mugged Wout van Aert in the sprint and also on roads that the Tour de France will borrow in July when it will also use bigger mountain passes during Stage 10. All this isn’t a coincidence, the region wants to promote the area. First a big loop towards Le Mont Dore, then four laps of a finishing circuit. It’s a lumpy stage with some small roads but nothing fierce.
Stage 2
Another hilly day in the Auvergne region, another course with a finishing circuit that avoids some of the bigger climbs. Who ever won the previous day has a good chance of striking again today.
Stage 3
Recent editions of the Dauphiné have been so hilly that at least one well-known sprinter has arrived at the start, got a copy of the roadbook… and discovered there’s not a single stage for them; at least they got a week to work on their climbing ahead of the Tour. This stage though does suit the sprinters, if any attend.
Stage 4
A 31km time time trial, one third longer than the Tour’s TT quasi-mountain time trial stage. This is no dragster course but still suits the specialists with a 10km false flat up to the finish, all through rural farming country full of charolais cattle.
Stage 5
If it’s late into the Tour de France and you get a sense of déjà vu it could because of memories from this stage as it overlaps with the route of Stage 19 on the way to Salins-les-Bains, a spa town once renowned for its salty waters and today the kind of place you might ride through and remark on its charms but conclude that it’s seen better days. The final climb is hard, a forest backroad to Thesy that should select the winner before a fast descent on a wider road.
Stage 6
Out of the Jura and into the Alps, the graphic above suggests not much is happening until late but the route will sap the riders. The big question is will much happen later on? The Col des Aravis is a big ring climb but that just means the speed is higher before the finish to Crest-Voland, half way up the Col des Saisies with a finish at 1,218m. The final climb’s got a hard start but in avoiding the whole climb it’s a bit of a softer stage that’s open to all, someone from the breakaway will fancy their chances.
Stage 7
4,000m of vertical gain in under 150km and you can see the substantial flat sections, it’s really 4000m in 100km which is beaucoup. The Col de la Madeleine is a staple of the Dauphiné and Tour de France over the years leading the riders over to the Maurienne valley. Then comes the Croix Fer summit finish. But look closely and it’s via Albiez-le-Jeune, a “new” way up for the race and the road has about 45 hairpin bends – double Alpe d’Huez’s 21 in less distance – before picking up the main road to the Croix de Fer and a very hard slog to the top.
Stage 8
If life should ever bring you to Grenoble with a bike, this is a textbook ride to do in a day. Starting in the suburb of Pont-de-Claix, it’s up the Isère valley via the balcony road to the Col des Mouilles before dropping to the valley and then comes the glorious Chartreuse Trilogy with a side route up Mont Granier before the Cucheron and Porte and the descent back to Grenoble.
It’s here the race reprises the climb of the Bastille above Grenoble. It’s not a new road but almost as nobody in today’s peloton has done it. Used seven times before, the last occasion was a prologue in 2000 but it’s probably infamous for the finish in 1977 when Bernard Hinault got off his bike, shouting “I want to quit”. His manager Cyrille Guimard put him straight back on the bike and he won the stage and race.
The Contenders
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) is the clear pre-race pick. The Tour de France winner says he is in great shape, finds a course to suit with a 30km time trial where he can leave many of the other contenders trailing and he’s got a strong team all behind him, this time Wout van Aert isn’t here. So far, so obvious but this does suggest anything less than a win and something will have gone wrong or will require explaining. Yet he doesn’t need to win here while some of his rivals crave a stage race win at this level, doubly so if it’s ahead of Vingegaard.
Dani Martinez (Ineos) is a very solid all-rounder and that’s his problem as it’s hard to see him outriding rivals in the time trial and the mountains alike but he’s won stage races this way, taking the overall but without winning a stage… including the 2020 Dauphiné of course. Ineos have a second ace card to play in Carlos Rodriguez, the 22 year old is due a big win and can handle himself in a time trial, he was fourth in the Vuelta’s flat course last year, he’s said to be moving to Movistar next year although it’s surprising Ineos want to let him go and it looks like they’re counting on him here and probably for the Tour de France too. There’s also Egan Bernal who continues his rehab and work back to the top level and keeps progressing, but a top-10 here would be a result.
Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost) was probably the big transfer in last year’s market and he’s had a discreet season so far, 52nd in Catalunya, DNF in the Basque Country but a recent winner of the alpine Mercan’Tour Classic. He’s likely to lose ground in the time trials but he’s aggressive when it comes to taking it back in the mountains.
Adam Yates (UAE) can do more than limit his losses in the time trial but that still means it’ll be harder to win, it’s easy to see him on the podium but reaching the top step is the hard part. A support rider for Pogačar at the Tour, this is a chance for him to get a result with the team riding for him.
No more tridents but Movistar have a twin pronged attack with Enric Mas and Matteo Jorgenson. On paper Mas has the pedigree but so far this season Jorgenson’s got the better results, a win on Oman and second place in the Tour de Romandie. This could invert now though as Mas has always been focussing on the Tour de France this season while Jorgenson’s back to racing after his successful spring.
On the podium a year ago surely Ben O’Connor (Ag2r Citroën) would sign up for the same again today? He can do well in a time trial if he’s in top form so paradoxically we’ll probably get an early glimpse of how well he’ll do in the mountains from Tuesday’s time trial.
Many come for a pre-race test, a chance to race for week and keep up their reflexes of racing in a bunch before putting the finishing touches on their form for July. The relatively long time trial is likely to be a bittersweet day for several as it’ll undo their GC bids but since we all know this, nobody is expecting them to win outright anyway. As such they get a trial but without a punishing verdict. Mikel Landa (Bahrain), David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), Jai Hindley (Bora-hansgrohe), Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), Giulio Ciccone (Trek-Segafredo) should all lose time in the time trial but there’s a range, it’ll be interesting to see where Gaudu and Hindley are at and all will look forward to the Alps after.
Finally Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) rode the Ardennes classics as part of his return to racing but his mind’s long been on turning around his results for this summer with the Tour de France as his big goal. The outright win? Unlikely in July but we’ll see this week how he’s doing, he’ll turn 31 next Sunday and with age should be losing his legendary ability to jump on steep climbs and becoming more of a diesel, just a turbo diesel.
| | Jonas Vingegaard | | | – | | | Adam Yates, Carlos Rodriguez, Dani Martinez | | | Richard Carapaz, Matteo Jorgenson | | | Mas, Landa |
TV: it’s on France Télévisions for locals, GCN/Eurosport for many others and NBC Peacock and SBS for Americans and Australians. The timing varies with next weekend’s stages having early finishes so that France TV can clear the schedules for the Rolland Garros tennis tournament finals, their other annual sporting staple.
The profiles for all the stages of the 2023 Tour de France aren’t yet on the official race website but they’re been made available to the media and so if you want them all on one page or just to see one in particular, read on.
Stage 1 – Saturday 1 July
A series of sharp climbs that will thwart a sprint finish and stress out the peloton as riders jostle and joust for position going into these climbs. The final two of Vivero and Pike Bidea are staples from the Circuito de Getxo which will see most sprinters ejected and dejected before a flat finish in Bilbao.
Stage 2 – Sunday 2 July
The Clasica San Sebastian stage but only by approximation. The Jaizkibel climb is tackled from the eastern side, the opposite of the Klasikoa in August. It’s the longest stage of the race and as Christian Prudhomme quipped, the longest stage has never been this short. If the first two stages were announced long ago, it’s still worth dwelling on the prospect of fervent Basque fans and routes that invite racing from the start, even the polka dot jersey will be hard fought.
Stage 3 – Monday 3 July
A coastal procession to Bayonne for the first time since 2003 when Tyler Hamilton won after a long solo raid. This time it’s likely sprint finish but there are some climbs along the way.
Stage 4 – Tuesday 4 July
A tribute to André Darrigade who hails from Dax, the 93 year old was the best sprinter of his generation in the 1950s and still owns a newspaper and book store in Biarritz. The finish on the motor racing circuit means a likely sprint, dragster style.
Stage 5 – Wednesday 5 July
The first mountain stage as the race makes an incursion into the Pyrenees via the Col de Soudet and then the tough Marie-Blanque where the top part has 10% gradients. There’s the descent to Laruns, the same finish as 2020 where March Hirschi got caught and Tadej Pogačar won the stage.
Stage 6 – Thursday 6 July
The Aspin-Tourmalet combo is the hardest part of the stages. The climb to Cauterets, a summit finish? It does climb to a ski station but it’s 5% for a lot of the way as the road runs up a valley where the presence of an old rail/tram line proves the gradient isn’t too hard but it does tilt up towards the top.
Stage 7 – Friday 7 July
A start with a nod to former Tour winner, and tormentor of Eddy Merckx, Luis Ocaña, then stage for the sprinters as the race returns to Bordeaux after a long absence since 2010. It’s almost always a sprint finish because the terrain is flat and the city has those big, long haussmanian avenues.
Stage 8 – Saturday 8 July
A few hills along the way to sap the sprinters before a finish in the porcelain-making city of Limoges, last visited in 2016 when Marcel Kittel just beat Bryan Coquard in the uphill sprint. There’s another uphill finish, but it’s different one, slightly longer and with a tight turn at the foot.
Stage 9 – Sunday 9 July
Much is already being made of the Poulidor connection, the start in the town where he lived, the finish on the mythical Puy de Dôme volcano and there’ll be plenty more from the archives to come but it should be a good day’s sport to look forward to as well. Normally it’d be a 150km but the route has 3,600m of vertical gain as it seeks more climbs going via the Lac de Vassivière and Volvic before it reaches Clermont-Ferrand. From here it tackles a tough climb to get out of the city just to reach the flanks of the Puy. This will thin out the peloton before the final climb which is likely to be closed to the public… and team cars alike.
Stage 10 – Tuesday 11 July
A rest day in Clermont-Ferrand and then a hilly stage from a volcano theme park to show off more of the area, this is Romain Bardet country and a likely breakaway day with lumpy roads before the finish in Issoire.
Stage 11 – Wednesday 12 July
A flat stage across the old Bourbonnais region to Moulins, a passage across some of depopulated France’s empty area, past villages where many houses have the shutters are closed all day. With Moulins the Tour can finally end a trivia question because it’s the only departmental capital in mainland France never to host a stage.
Stage 12 – Thursday 13 July
After lumpy roads out of Roanne the race will tackle climbs like the Croix Montmain – 6km at 7% – and Croix Rosier as it climbs among the monts du beaujolais before a rendez vous in Belleville. A promising breakaway stage and scenic if the sun’s shining.
Stage 13 – Friday 14 July
The 14 juillet stage. There’s a passage across part of the Jura plateau before dropping down to the Rhone valley. Here the Grand Colombier is climbed from Culoz via the lacets, this is a beast of a climb comparable in raw stats to the Galibier and although without altitude, but it’s got attitude and views galore.
Stage 14 – Saturday 15 July
A hard day that’s almost always up or down, the race turns into the Chablais Alps to start the climbing via several short passes before the tough Col de Ramaz and then the mystical Joux-Plane, a confounding place that has seen many riders over the years label it their most feared climb. It’s chased by the classic toboggan descent into Morzine.
Stage 15 – Sunday 16 July
Another daunting day in the Alps and with 180km, what counts for a long stage these days in the Tour. After some gentler climbs to help the breakaway go clear, the second half is packed with tough ascents to the point where the Croix Fry is a categorised climb but the Aravis after isn’t, as if the route has too many mountains to label. The finish is described as “Saint-Gervais-Mont-Blanc” in the same way Ryanair describes Beauvais as Paris. The actual finish is in Le Bettex, a summit finish where Romain Bardet won in 2016, while Saint-Gervais down below hosts the rest day.
Stage 16 – Tuesday 18 July
The only time trial of the race and at 22km, the least amount of time trialling since 2015. It borrows roads used in the 2016 Tour’s time trial. It won’t be over that quickly because there’s a rise out of Passy and then the steep Domancy climb above Sallanches to the finish in Combloux, it’s not for the heavyset rouleurs. Don’t call it a mountain time trial but it’s not far off.
Stage 17 – Wednesday 19 July
Only 166km but with 5,100m of climbing and if we have to deploy the term, it’s the étape reine, the royal stage or “Queen Stage” as the literal translation goes. There’s Alpine aristocracy with Col de Saisies, the Cormet de Roselend… and then a climb labelled “Longfoy” but actually the Col du Tra. This long gradual pass was supposed to be climbed in 2019 on the last mountain stage but a landslide closed the roads and so it was never taken and if the climb isn’t fierce the descent is one of the most technical with over 30 hairpins in 9km. Then the drag up to Meribel which, despite the 8%, feels like a mere warm-up for what’s to come: the formidable Col de la Loze. Surely Europe’s most difficult cycle path with its ever-changing gradients and the 20% wall section at the top. This time it’s no summit finish, instead it’s down a steep road and only just wider than the cycle lane up before reaching Courchevel and a finish on the altiport.
Stage 18 – Thursday 20 July
A scenic route out of the Alps via the Lac du Bourget and the Rhône valley crossing some roads used earlier in the race before a flat finish with a very long finishing straight in Bourg-en-Bresse.
Stage 19 – Friday 21 July
Moirans has a population of just 2,120 but gets to host its second start after 2016. Is the mayor a big cycling fan? It’s a touristy place though for summer with campsites, river gorges and more while Poligny is the capital of Comté cheese, visit for the real thing rather than the slab of latex usually sold in supermarkets. But we’re left riffing on the tourism because the course doesn’t challenge too much, it’s another sprint finish? However there are some hills and desperate teams will want to salvage something via a breakaway win.
Stage 20 – Saturday 22 July
A dash across the Vosges with 133km and 3,600m of vertical gain and borrowing the Markstein finish used by Le Tour Femmes last summer but climbed here from the other side via the Platzerwaswel instead of the Grand Ballon. It’s a hard course after three weeks but not infernal, there’s talk of steep sections but don’t get sucked in by the hype, they’re rare points along the course. It’s more a slog with few recovery sections or valley roads to chase on.
Stage 21 – Sunday 23 July
The usual 60km parade that mutates into a 60km criterium and the finish on the Champs Elysées.
Closer to the start of the race you’ll also find reference material on the race rules like time bonuses, the points scale for the green and polka-dot jersey, time cuts and more as usual at inrng.com/tour.
From the Dolomites… to a spreadsheet. Promotion and relegation isn’t such a big topic this season as the mens’ teams are at the start of a three year period although trends are emerging already. This year womens’ World Tour licences are up for grabs and this is arguably a bigger deal as there’s a wider […]
Primož Roglič rides up Monte Lussari on his way to the stage win and the maglia rosa. If you’d been away for three weeks and glanced at the final results you’d spot Evenepoel didn’t finish and see the other pre-race pick won. Only it wasn’t so simple…
The start on the Adriatic coast brought warm sunshine and Remco Evenepoel in sparking form, both proved to be a mirage. The Belgian prodigy was 22 seconds clear of Filippo Ganna, a surprise margin but otherwise this was expected with Evenepoel in pink and rivals hoping to get ahead in the mountains.
Jonathan Milan won in San Salvo, a breakthrough result for the team pursuit rider who is now bidding to become a top sprinter. With a stronger leadout he’d have won more, but he could be a supreme leadout himself, a human battering ram and either way he’d win the points competition. The next day Michael Matthews won in Melfi, ahead of Mads Pedersen and Kaden Groves who’d each get a stage win in the coming days.
One of the themes of this year’s Giro is that none of the GC contenders wanted the race lead too soon, it was a Saint Augustinian fight for pink: “give me the maglia rosa, just not yet”. Evenepoel said before the race if he was in pink he’d be happy to loan it to someone else and by Stage 4 he was almost using a loudhailer on the start line. Lago Laceno saw the first of ten early breakaways stay away – almost half the stages – and Aurélien Paret-Peintre took the stage while the overall lead went to Andreas Leknessund, and the white jersey too meaning Evenepoel was free from all podium protocols for a while. Leknessund went on to have an excellent Giro with an eighth place finish overall. Evenepoel might have unloaded the lead but not his troubles as he crashed twice on Stage 5, first an errant dog and then a careless mistake in the finish.
The Gran Sasso was the first mountain rendez-vous for the GC but stage proved the equivalent of a cancelled appointment, unless your name was Davide Bais. A small breakaway got away without much fuss and stayed clear, Bais winning the stage and taking the mountains jersey, a boost for the endangered Eolo-Kometa team. The Gran Sasso finish has featured before, in 2018 it was the perfect finish with a win by Simon Yates with small time gaps among the other contenders, it didn’t decide the race but gave us action and told us a bit about rider form. This time a headwind blocked any ambitions and the riders came in together.
The stage to Fossombrone might be the best day of the race, end to end action and battle for the stage win and scrap between the GC contenders. The breakaway needed two hours to get away. Ben Healy could have been cooked from trying but with 50km he jumped and took a fine solo win. Behind Roglič attacked on the last time up the climb of i Cappucini and Evenepoel couldn’t close the gap as the Ineos tandem of Tao Geoghegan Hart and Geraint Thomas bridged across to the Slovenian. Panic stations for Evenepoel? Not ideal, yet this was exactly how the race was supposed to unfold with Evenepoel managing his lead and a 14 second loss was tolerable, especially with the time trial coming the next day where he was expected to take back molto time.
The Cesena stage was where Evenepoel’s Giro ended. He was one second faster than Thomas, with Geoghegan Hart a further second back, then the Groupama-FDJ pair of Küng and Armirail, with Roglič next at 16 seconds. At this rate Filippo Ganna should have won but he’d left the race with Covid, a clue as to what was coming. With everyone extrapolating Evenepoel’s gains per kilometre from Stage 1 to this stage, to win only by one second was really a loss for Evenepoel. He was back in pink but had less than a minute on his rivals, hardly the cushion he wanted and something was up. Indeed his cushion turned to car seat or the drive home to Belgium given he tested positive for Covid and was out of the race.
It was a shock because of who was involved. All season riders have been thwarted by Covid. There was a cluster in the Tour de Romandie, Jumbo-Visma kept making switches to their roster on the eve of the race. But suddenly the virus stole the limelight, here was the race leader going home among others. For all the virology chat, just remember public health and the performance of elite athletes are not the same. You might not sport a mask in the supermarket nor take a rapid antigen test if you have a sore throat, but pro cyclists certainly will behave differently for some time to come, just as they have long tested for other viruses at the first sign of symptoms too. Evenepoel’s departure was a loss to the race with a superstar out, but also a blow for his ambitions. He’s won the Vuelta, the Worlds and plenty more but the Giro, just finishing it, would have been an important lesson given he’s targetting the Tour de France next year.
With many getting Covid, others were just ill and the stage to Viareggio compounded things, it was “raining basins” as they say in Italian. A “Medicane” was approaching Italy and while this was uncomfortable for the riders, the flooding proved devastating for several regions in Italy and to watch the Giro on Italian TV was to see the disaster relief appeal messages. Some riders wanted to skip the start of the stage but the compromise was team buses would follow the race route in case things forced the race to stop and everyone needed transport. Magnus Cort won from the breakaway as the sprinters’ teams tried to chase but ran out of riders. Cort got the better of Derek Gee, who made a name for himself in the race, in a textbook finish, he knew the others knew he was the fastest. And trust me, the picture above is really from a beach resort in Italy and not Koksijde in February.
Pascal Ackermann took the stage win in Tortona but the stage was defined by a crash on the descent of the Colle di Boasi which took out several riders. One minute Tao Geoghegan Hart was third overall, the next he was being loaded into an ambulance.
Another day, another German win as Nico Denz won in Rivoli from the breakaway where he just held on over the Colle Braida so he could contest the sprint, beating Toms Skujiņš. Denz would win again too Cassano Magnago , saving Bora-hansgrohe’s Giro after their leader Vlasov left with Covid and Lennard Kämna rode to a discreet 9th overall.
The Alps were looming, the Alps were lopped. The first of the big mountain stages was abbreviated after rider protest about the descent of the Col de la Croix-de-Coeur, a course safety matter. After hasty negotiations a compromise was reached and the organisers invoked the Extreme Weather Protocol (EWP) to skip the first ascent, the Grand Saint Bernard via its tunnel. Only the weather wasn’t extreme on the climb, the Giro had raced through worse during the week and would do so the following day too. It was a bit like a Woody Allen stand-up routine about kidnappers:
The FBI surround the house, “Throw the kid out,”, they say, “give us your guns, and come out with your hands up.”
The kidnappers say “We’ll throw the kid out, but let us keep our guns, and get to our car.”
The FBI says “Throw the kid out, we’ll let you get to your car, but give us your guns.”
The kidnappers say “We’ll throw the kid out, but let us keep our guns – we don’t have to get to our car.”
The FBI says “Keep the kid.”
They kept the Croix-de-Coeur. This was a deal between the rider union and the race organisers rather than the EWP in action where teams, organisers, the race doctor and the UCI are supposed to confer. The rider union statement cited fatigue from so many days of racing in the rain. Now this is a real thing, especially with illnesses going around the peloton but as much as you can sympathise, nowhere in the rulebook does it say you can cite EWP because the weather’s been foul for days. It was a rider strike. If the decision was taken in a rush with the peloton having to think about the race ahead and the organisers the logistics change, nobody seemed to want to explain matters or apologise. Had the riders and the Giro announced their plans accompanied by a message to the waiting fans and a promise to locals to return as soon as possible things might have gone down better. Instead Aosta region’s politicians are calling on RCS to pay them damages.
Italian TV and the media blasted the race and the riders. The quotes from retired riders can make for tasty headlines but they’re imperfect for exploring the topic. Each generation races in its own conditions, road racing is a palimpsest of lived experiences. While yesterday’s riders boast of riding over mountain passes in the snow, in turn their elders could mock them because they didn’t have 350km stages. Previous generations rode through the night, others only had two gears and they were lucky because back in the day you only had one gear, and so on. We’re not going back to the Giro of 1909.
Anyway there was still a race and Einer Rubio won the stage, playing it cool while Thibaut Pinot got enraged by Jeferson Cepeda but took back the mountains jersey. If the race had visited Switzerland, it had to get out and went over the giant Simplon pass in grim weather with many riders frozen to the bone on the long descent, so much that the peloton finished 21 minutes down. Bruno Armirail rode into the maglia rosa, a reward for a luxury domestique whose pulling power ranges to fifth place in the Cesena TT. The sun came out for the Lombardia stage to Bergamo, at least the finish, and Brandon McNulty took a stage win.
Monte Bondone was the first big summit finish and did see the GC change with Thomas back in pink and Almeida climbing up to second place thanks to his attacking that got him the stage win ahead of Thomas. Bondone has seen more epic days but in retrospect this proved to a big GC moment. Aided by a big turn from Jay Vine that shredded what was left of the lead group, Almeida’s attack was arguably the boldest move among the podium finishers, launching with six kilometres to go and with 4.5km to go Thomas got across and the pair worked to distance Roglič. However Roglič limited his losses to 25 seconds as the lead two began to ease up in the finish with thoughts of the stage win. Perhaps Thomas did begin to stew in pink and this fatigue would come with a price; or equally not as it boosted him and the team?
Alberto Dainese won the sprint by the seaside in Caorle on one of those days where you could watch the final two kilometres and not miss anything, but the day had other effects, 200km but an active recovery day, of sorts, for the GC contenders.
Stage 18 was the first of two days in the Dolomites and a great day’s racing with a lively start with Thibaut Pinot able to infiltrate the breakaway and contest the stage win. In a battle of two animal lovers Pinot out to Filippo Zana; Pinot with his herd of animals back home versus Zana who used his prize money as an U23 to buy a horse from Serbia and he likes his chickens, rabbits and more. Behind there were animal spirits with Roglič here as he got away with Thomas, this time it was Almeida in trouble but only losing 11 seconds, again small gaps. Still this was Roglič becoming more provocative, the time losses of Monte Bondone forgotten and now he was making moves.
Stage 19 was the Dolomite tappone. But it was too much, like a feast presented to diners who’d already had their full, riders were tired from the previous day’s racing and concerned indigestion for the coming mountain TT. The GC contenders only moved within sight of the flamme rouge, newspaper Corriere della Sera – the same owner as the race organisers, the CS in RCS and with no axe to grind – described had called the racing il ciclismo dei ragionieri, “bookkeeper’s cycling”. Perhaps the margins were thin but credit was with Roglič even if it was hard to see his finish line sprint for three seconds translate into the thirty seconds he needed the next day.
So it all came down to the Monte Lussari time trial. Even during the stage things looked static with Roglič seeming to be on course for a stage win but Thomas keeping pink. Then Thomas cracked in the final two kilometres and was losing time. Roglič of course had to unship his chain at this point, so often he’s been the victim of misfortune but he unflappably put it back on and eventually got going again to take the stage and the maglia rosa.
Stage 21 was a criterium around Rome and won by Mark Cavendish with an imperial sprint that recalled his best days, launching off Fernando Gaviria’s wheel and finishing lengths ahead, and after Geraint Thomas had taken a long pull on the front to line out the peloton as a gift for his old team mate. Longevity is word often used with Cavendish these days and it’s especially remarkable for a sprinter to be winning at the age of 38.
The chart shows the GC standings for the top-5 overall relative to Roglič and as you can see there’s barely any movement in the lines for the podium finishers across the three weeks. Among the podium placers the lines are so close throughout, seconds in it and yet a good grand tour ought to see more peaks and troughs as fortunes wax and wane, or at least the lines crossing more often. Damiano Caruso finishes fourth without shaping the race but testimony to steady riding.
Thibaut Pinot’s line is more snakes-and-ladders, losing time in splits here and there, ill for the time trial in Cesena and a further time loss on Monte Bondone but this gave him just enough room to attack in search of lost time and stage wins. As much as he’d have liked that stage win he’ll be more than satisfied he could hang out with his peers on the GC, all while collecting the mountains jersey.
The Verdict
A damp, dull Giro. Spanish newspaper Marca – owned by RCS – remarked that Pogačar was trending on Twitter following the insipid stages; L’Equipe’s review this morning calls it “une course fade“, a bland race. The organisers can’t do much about the weather but some of the course design left riders tired and spectators frustrated. This was spoilt further by the intrusion of Covid and the rotten luck that saw other contenders crash out. Now incidents de course happen but when the race leader and a previous winner are taken out it’s worse. However until the Giro started no early breakaway had stayed away in a World Tour race for the win and now several got their rewards, there was a thrill in seeing riders thwart the sprinters some days and Monte Lussari did supply a late flourish.
If the stage wins were chaotic sometimes, alas the GC was more of an attritional contest across three weeks rather than a race of daring attacks or drama, the spark of i Cappucini and the closeness of the Cesena TT were tantalising but the GC contest fell into a hiatus that even Monte Bondone and the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, theatres of so many past battles, struggled to break. Absent Remco Evenepoel and Ineos without the second card of Tao Geoghegan Hart, the surviving riders were on a similar level, with similar styles of racing, especially as Roglič was sore from crashes mid-race. We want dynamic racing but can’t always get it, there’s no action-or-your-money-back guarantee.
If it lacked some spectacular moments Roglič finishes as a satisfying winner, he was tested along the way. Yes he was the pre-race pick for many but absent Evenepoel he didn’t run away with things and for a while was on the back foot and even losing time in the mountains, albeit seconds. He finished just 14 seconds ahead of Thomas – the tightest margin since 1974 when Eddy Merckx pipped Gianbattista Baronchelli by 12 seconds – and both only got six seconds of time bonuses all race. Roglič gets a Giro to go alongside his three Vuelta wins and Jumbo-Visma now get their grand tour grand slam. There are so many other lines on Roglič’s palmarès and yet we can see him two ways. He’s a stage racing cyborg with wins in every week-long race worth winning, bar the Tour de Suisse and that’s just down to calendar clashes given he rode the Dauphiné. Yet he’s also been DNF in the Vuelta and Tour last year, the Tour before that too, and when he did finish the 2020 Tour of course he lost to Pogačar. A year before that he he crashed on the stage to Como in the Giro and his GC bid faded and in all kindness and respect he’s often been an unwitting loser, a victim of events. This Giro win is his triumph and he overcame obstacles, from missing team mates to crash injuries, and even a dropped chain on Monte Lussari didn’t bother him.
For Thomas, he’s the premium runner-up aged 37 whose second place ennobles Roglič’s victory. In last year’s Tour his third place was deserved but as good as he could get. Here he might feel like the race slipped from his grasp and torment himself about what could have been done along the way, but a faster helmet change in Valbruna or towing Almeida to the top of Monte Bondone might have gained seconds but more than the 14 he needed? He had a very strong team but once “TGH” and Sivakov were out it was riding in a defensive manner. He had a slender lead to start with and the Lussari time trial always threatened a reversal of fortune for some.
And a solid result for Almeida with his first podium and still eligible for the white jersey ahead of Arensman and Leknessund. UAE have Tadej Pogačar for the Tour de France for the foreseeable future, Juan Ayuso for the Vuelta and possibly the Tour as well so Almeida’s diary for May could be booked for years to come and with a stage win he’s making constant progress and can hope to swap white for pink one day.
Long live the Giro we might say and the Giro was the race of long lives, or at least long careers. Roglič came to cycling when he was 22 and now wins aged 33, finishing ahead of a 37 year old. In fourth place there’s 35 year old in Caruso and fifth place goes to Thibaut Pinot who turns 33 today and on the verge of retirement. A theme in cycling of late has been how the young generation is sweeping everything aside but the Giro shows experience and persistence can count too.
It was damp and dull at times, but it wasn’t a bad Giro. We’ve had editions where the police have raided the race, the race leader has been evicted, convicted cheats have thrived, and riders have died in competition: that’s bad. This year was just, alas, unremarkable for days on end, much like last year where the hierarchy of the Blockhaus stage remained until the final Saturday and several riders were written out of the script thanks to Covid (Almeida), illness (Bardet) and crashes (Simon Yates). If the 2023 Giro was a wine, nobody would be smashing the bottles in rage, nor sending this year’s vintage to the vinegar factory. No, the worry is this year’s Giro just leaves people indifferent. There sotto voce calls to shrink the Giro to two weeks tour as part of wider calendar reforms. The race and its long format needs all the defenders it can get. You’d like to think that the current Italian government which is big on national pride, to put it gently, would stop this but the Giro is really struggling to cut through into public consciousness, populist politicians don’t show up at the race. Italian cycling needs some home heroes but that can’t be magicked up. But RCS can plot the route and with Made-in-Italy becoming a slogan, logistics permitting, why not sprint up into the belleza of hilltop town rather than the industrial estate below it? Instead of several sprint stages with an early hill, why not the put the climb in late, or add a couple more Fossombrone-style finales because Italy has all geography to supply all of this, it’s a staple of Tirreno-Adriatico after all. All the ingredients are there. And maybe next year Mother Nature will supply some sunshine.
The final stage and once the peloton has arrived by plane in the morning, there’s a quick trip to the beach followed by a criterium around Rome.
Tappa e maglia: Primož Roglič started the day with a 26 deficit on Geraint Thomas and ended it 14 seconds up. Plausible on the morning of the stage but a shock result in the moment as once the pair were racing up Monte Lussari they seemed to be almost tied on time, Roglič was only a couple of seconds ahead. But surprise was to come later as the further they rode up, the more Roglič was taking time and with two kilometres left Thomas had gone from his trademark forceful but powerful pedal stroke to chopping at the pedals, his head dipping at times.
Then Roglič dropped his chain and time seem to slow as he realised pedalling was no use, then dismounted and put the chain back on himself, spinning the cranks by hand when plenty might have hurled their bike off the mountain in rage, suddenly he’d gone from taking back time to standing still in the middle of the road. He remounted only to find it was hard to get going again on the slope and a spectator and the Jumbo-Visma mechanic came to his rescue with a push. It took the best part of 20 seconds to get going again. Game over? He was gaining time and this might just have given him breather and an adrenalin shot. Plus Thomas was losing more time by now, his shorts caked in salt. Roglič came in with the fastest time to the cheers of legions of Slovenian supporters and then it was just a countdown for Thomas and he was out of the maglia rosa. Both riders have suffered at the hands of fate over the years, appointments with destiny cancelled at the last minute so one of them got a cruel twist right at the end but Thomas was gracious in his interviews.
As for the all the others, the top-5 on the stage are the top-5 overall, Thibaut Pinot climbing to fifth overall at the expense of Eddie Dunbar, who slipped to 7th. Mountain time trials are rare but they have their appeal, especially on such a steep climb the effort is visible as opposed to flat courses where facial expressions can be hidden behind visors. Although if the course offered imagery the TV production and especially the direction could do with some improvement as the coverage struggled to tell the story of Roglič’s ascent and Thomas’s troubles.
The Route: first a charter flight in the morning for the peloton to Rome. Then 126km starting in Eur, – the district built for Benito Mussolini and now Rome’s business quarter – with a trip to Rome-on-Sea, aka Ostia and back via Eur. Then six laps around Rome and this time they promise the roads have been resurfaced. The route isn’t quite a tourist bus tour of the city – there are too many things to fit in – but there’s plenty as the course passes the Colosseum and more.
The Finish: flat and with some urban cobbles – sampietrini for locals – on the approach and then a sweeping bend past the Colosseum, more cobbles with 400m to go.
The Contenders: which sprinter to pick? Jonathan Milan (Bahrain) seems the most regular and cobbled finish suits as he can launch a seated sprint without fear of bouncing around. Mark Cavendish (Astana) has made it to Rome and the fairytale ending would be a sprint win but he’s really missing a leadout specialist. Otherwise Pascal Ackermann (UAE) seems fresh despite all the climbing, Alberto Dainese (DSM) might be more confident, Arne Marit (Intermarché) and Fernando Gaviria could still get a result.
It should be a sprint with several teams up for it but none of them have big sprint trains so if there’s a lull someone else could pounce, think Bob Jungels (Bora-hansgrohe) or why not Derek Gee (Israel-PremierTech)?
| | Milan | | | Ackermann, Dainese, Cavendish | | | Gaviria, Marit |
Weather: sunny and 24°C.
TV: KM0 is at 3.30pm and the finish is forecast for 6.45pm CEST.
A mountain time trial to settle things. Geraint Thomas leads the race and could well the stage today but his slender lead means the maglia rosa is still up for grabs. The order of the podium can be settled, likewise the other places in the top-10. Primož Roglič hardly needs any encouragement but this is right on the Slovenian border.
Tre Secundi di Lavaredo: a lively start to the stage heightened by Ben Healy’s efforts to jump clear and Groupama-FDJ’s work to contain him, Thibaut Pinot was chasing him down to protect his lead in the mountains competition, the efforts risked costing Pinot his GC and in turn this was annoying the peloton as if Pinot had to chase Healy, they had to chase Pinot so that he couldn’t take time overall.
A break got away and they stayed away. They had three Ag2r Citroën riders and if that wasn’t advantageous enough to them, their team car took out Movistar’s Carlos Verona although he was up and racing quickly while the team car was ejected from the race. Larry Warbasse provided a more positive image for the team as he led up the final climb but couldn’t sustain it and was overtaken by Derek Gee, Santiago Buitrago and Magnus Cort. Gee rode to his fourth second place, and he’s second overall in both the points and mountains competition, and the Fuga breakaway competition too, a Poulidor Giro in every sense with all these second places and his rising pou-pou-larity.
This time you could see he was going to be beaten, turning the pedals like a worker with a sledgehammer. Santiago Buitrago floated across, put in a lively acceleration and rode away for the win, almost overdue for the Colombian given his form pre-race suggested a stage win was very likely. As for Gee he started the Giro ranked 627th in the world, and that boosted by his UCI points haul from the Canadian TT title, and his stock will have risen.
As for the GC riders, another day with little action. The Tre Cime have seen legendary sport in the past but not this year. There weren’t big bold attacks, nor riders imploding. Roglič attacked before the final kilometre but Thomas reacted instantly and Almeida took his time and got back and things calmed down again until Thomas jumped with 500m to go. Roglič and Thomas duelled again, the Welshman seemed to be away but Roglič honed in on the finish line and surged past for a three second gain on Thomas, with Almeida a further 20 seconds back. Eddie Dunbar was the day’s loser, losing just under a minute to Damiano Caruso and slipping from fourth to fifth overall.
The Route: locals and visitors alike normally take the ski lift. Here there’s 10.8km of freshly resurfaced valley roads around to the foot of the climb, this isn’t all flat nor straight but there’s nothing too technical.
Then comes the brand new climb of Monte Lussari, although it’s also known as Svete Visarje in Slovenian, the border is close. Obviously the mountain’s been around for a bit now but the route up has been an unpaved trail, the creator of the Strava segment branded it “Lussari MTB Long Climb 2014”. But it’s been paved for the Giro and there’s 5km at 15% and with some very tight hairpins, think the Mur de Huy five times over, and under woodland canopy. Oh, and instead of smooth tarmac, it’s part concrete with rasping drainage groves.
Today’s bikes allow for all kinds of gearing to the days of riders almost being unable to pedal up a slope are over. The hard part is pacing the effort, do you attack a short ramp, or back off and spin? Or rather how many of the changes of gradient can be soaked up. It’s awkward and is more than a W/kg test, there’s an element of freshness needed here too.
The Rules: bike changes are allowed and it’s likely we see those riders going for the win today and the GC on time trial bikes for the first 10km then switching in the dedicated zone to a specialist road bike for the climb. Team cars are diverted and parked at the foot of the climb, the road is narrow and anyone catching the rider ahead of them won’t be able to overtake if there’s a car in the way. So from here on riders can be followed by motorbikes supplied by the race, each team can have a mechanic in obligatory team kit ride pillion carrying a spare bike. For the top riders on GC they can have two motorbikes, so two mechanics and two spare bikes, just in case the spare malfunctions.
Also the start is in reverse GC order as usual but after the first third of riders have gone there’s a 90 minute break so that all the motos can drive back down and get into position. Then a second third followed by another 90 minute break.
The Contenders: Geraint Thomas (Ineos) is the most regular in the Giro so far, that’s why he’s in the lead. He’s looked steady throughout but if he’s riding diesel-style, he’s showed there’s a turbo on top which will help for the change in the slope today. A stage win would seal his win and make sure he doesn’t being quoted alongside Federico Balmanion as a Giro winner who didn’t get a stage win along the way. As good as Laurens De Plus and Thymen Arensman have been in the mountains, Thomas should be stronger today.
Poor Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma), not only did he get sacked at the end of the 2020 Tour de France and saw the yellow jersey picked off his shoulders, he’s probably been asked about this moment again and again in the last 24 hours. This time obviously he’s not in the lead but he won’t dwell on the psychology too much, it’s all about how he can perform today. Quicker than Thomas yesterday but only in the last metres, this will give his fans plenty to hope for and they should be legion given this is as close to Slovenian as the Giro gets without crossing the border.
If it rains on the later starters it could suit those going earlier, they’ll have more traction on the climb and less weight too as they won’t be soaked. Jay Vine (UAE) has the physiology for a stage win here but how’s the form, he’s been ill and so isn’t 100%, team mate Brandon McNulty could be more steady. Sep Kuss (Jumbo-Visma) is climbing well but liable to lose time on the flat section.
| | Roglič, Thomas | | | Almeida | | | De Plus, Zana, Arensman, Kuss, |
Weather: sunny and 20°C to start then clouds building and the chance of rain for the final finishers.
TV: the first rider is off at 11.30am and Geraint Thomas starts at 5.15pm CEST.
The tappone we’ve been waiting for, a huge amount of vertical gain in a short space, we’ll see if this is enough to reshape the top three overall and more. There’s always Monte Lussari tomorrow to settle things.
The Legend of Zoldo: the best stage so far? A few early flurries for the breakaway saw Ben Healy try to get away but as soon as they hit the first climb of the day he was going backwards and a group with Thibaut Pinot, Filippo Zana, Warren Barguil and the indefatigable Derek (de) Gee(ndt) among those away. It was a small group and once clear of the Passo Crosetta they had 80km of lumpy roads across the plateau to stay clear, not easy but the three big teams in Ineos, UAE and Jumbo-Visma didn’t want to chase too hard, and perhaps they couldn’t either. They just had to contain the group with Pinot sitting six minutes down on GC. All day Pinot took max points on the climbs to get back in the blue jersey… except at the finish. When the breakaway hit the final climb to Coi, Pinot pulled away with Zana. The pair came to the finish together and the Frenchman seemed to get “finish line fever”, launching his sprint the moment he came around the last bend to see the finish arch looming and Zana was able to come past for the win. Zana’s not a star in Italy yet but the national champ winning a mountain stage is a big triumph and just the sort of result people were hoping from Giulio Ciccone, only Zana delivers.
Meanwhile we got a second race behind for GC. After Roglič’s wobble on Monte Bondone, he was on the attack this time it and was João Almeida’s turn to lose a few seconds. Almeida wasn’t losing much ground though and at one point on the descent from Coi he looked to be getting back on with help from team mate Jay Vine, only for Vine to crash and slow his leader and he lost 21 seconds at the finish.
Roglič is back in the game but if you want to look into the details, yesterday’s ascent was just his kind of climb with its steep corners. How will he fare today? More certain is that Geraint Thomas is the steadiest so far… or it’s his turn to lose time today?
The Route: 183km within which they’ve managed to get 5,400m of vertical gain. It’s a gradual ride uphill from the start to Arraba, gradually harder as the race approaches the foot of the Passo Pordoi, before a right turn and the Campolongo instead. From here on it’s non-stop Alpine action, a Dolomite derby, there’s no valley sections in between. The Valparola’s nothing fierce compared to what’s coming.
The Giau is a hard climb with 10km at almost 10% and passing the 2,000m barrier. If it’s not the theatre of attacks, it’ll sap many riders and see some dropped.
The Finish: three is the magic number as the final climb is really three separate climbs.
- First the Passo Tre Croci or Three Crosses Pass. This is a big regular road where the sections tip up to 8-9% at times meaning riders are on their own, the benefits of sheltering on a wheel are gone
- The short but steep Col Sant’Angelo which is followed by a false flat and brief descent
- The final climb to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, the Three Peaks of Laveredo. The final four kilometres average 12% but reach 18% at several points and rated by Eddy Merckx as one of the hardest climbs he ever did. It’s well surfaced, a wide road but exposed
- It’s also the revised Cima Coppi. As a finish line summit finish it’s 50 points already though.
The Contenders: Once you get to the third week of a grand tour those riders making moves one day can often repeat them. So Filippo Zana (Jayco-Al Ula) comes to mind, he’s no threat overall.
Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) has got even less room to go clear as he’s now seventh overall. Indeed we might see his team at work today because they won’t want to see Ben Healy (EF Education-Easypost) go clear given there’s 166 points available if a rider can cross all the passes first today, or just 98 points for the first three passes.
Warren Barguil (Arkéa-Samsic) will see his contract up soon and his team are said to be interested in Benoît Cosnefroy, a win here would boost his leverage.
Two regular tips but Jeferson Cepeda (EF) has gone quiet since his third place in Crans Montana and Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain) has done even less but it’s their last chance.
Otherwise Geraint Thomas (Ineos) is consistent but can he win a stage? Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) was back in the action yesterday, can he repeat on these long climbs at altitude? Probably and we’ll see if João Almeida (UAE) can turn things around.
| | – | | | Roglič, Barguil, Zana | | | Thomas, Buitrago, Almeida, Fortunato, Rubio, Konrad |
Weather: sunny but cooler for the second half, 16°C in the valleys and clouds could build up and rain.
TV: KM0 is at 11.50, the Passo Giau starts around 3.30pm and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
The first of two days in the Dolomites. If this was a music festival, today would see the band playing their new heartfelt acoustic tunes to an expectant audience who really want tomorrow’s Dolomite greatest hits, the stadium rock tracks like the Tre Cime di Lavaredo.
Postcard from Caorle: Ciao, we fled the mountains to get some sea and sunshine. It was pizzoccheri weather earlier but by the time we got to the Caorle it was gelato time. We were stood by the barriers with 400m to go and saw Alberto Dainese overtaken by others but it turned out he was more patient and came around everyone for an Italian win. After the finish we saw the maglia rosa Thomas Geraint doing his warm-down on his time trial bike because he’s thinking about Saturday’s stage. Wish you were here…
The Route: 161km and 3,700m of vertical gain. There’s 25km across the Veneto plains before the race collides with the Alps. The first climb is the Passo Crosetta is 11km at 7% but with a softer start and finish most of the ascent is over 8%, a selective start. The bump on the profile to Pieve d’Alpago is a drag on a wide road.
The Forcella Cibiana has a steep start out of the valley and then a hard second half but all on a regular road up to the pass.
The Finish: there are three parts to the climb, first the main valley road through Forno di Zoldo and Dont, with the previous descent done this place allows teams to get into position, riders to eat and drink. The second part is the hardest, a right turn into a narrow backroad with 3.4km at over 10% to the village of Coi. There’s a descent out of the village, still on the same small road but with nothing wild. The third part sees the race route back on the main road again and there’s a series of hairpin bends before the slope eases in the final kilometre.
The Contenders: breakaway or GC riders? Jumbo-Visma rode down the breakaway on Tuesday, this time they might hold back so have more numbers for later. Ineos don’t have so many riders to pull all day. UAE? They could put on a show on of strength here but equally seem happy to let a rider or two of their own go in the breakaway although now’s the time to have Formolo, McNulty and Vine beside Almeida.
Breakaway picks are Jefferson Cepeda and Ben Healy (EF Education-Easypost). Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) might be a popular pick but he’s still not far down on GC to get much room, plus his form’s in question, he was dropped from the GC group on Monte Bondone and note he was also ejected on the climb into Bergamo so he’s perhaps less sparkling than in the second week. Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain) came into the Giro in top form but hasn’t had results to show although now we’re on terrain to suit. Warren Barguil (Arkéa-Samsic) might find today’s shorter climbs suit more than tomorrow’s Tre Cime finish. Ilan Van Wilder (Soudal-Quickstep) is riding well, to the point he might forsake the breakaway so he can test himself against the GC group. Carlos Verona (Movistar) and Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) fit the bill – a lot of the field doesn’t – but they don’t look scintillating right now.
Among the GC contenders, João Almeida (UAE) has a stage already and today’s finish features a finish that levels out before the line. Geraint Thomas (Ineos) should be close and all eyes are on Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) if only to see how he gets on. Eddie Dunbar (Jayco-Al Ula) is riding high but how to beat the three names cited ahead of him?
| | – | | | Almeida, Thomas | | | Roglič, Cepeda, Healy, Buitrago, Verona, Van Wilder |
Weather: sunshine and clouds, typically 21°C in between the climbs but an outside chance of rain if the clouds build up.
TV: KM0 is at 12.30mp the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
A trip out of the mountains to the sea. The profile screams a sprint stage but the mix of riders left could change all of this.
The Bondone reveal: a big breakaway with Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Jack Haig, 13th and 17th on GC, plus Ben Healy who took a lead in the mountains competition but he’d pay for his sprints by the final climb. Jumbo-Visma were the most active all day including setting the pace at the foot of Monte Bondone, the final climb of the day. But once Rohan Dennis was done there was nobody else to pick up the pace.
UAE took over and their train set up João Almeida for an attack. Once his acceleration was over he was only a few metres clear and wasn’t pulling away. But that’s what he often does, only usually a few metres behind, this time he was dangling off the front. He wasn’t taking time but this put pressure on the chasers, Sepp Kuss tried to limit the damage the effort would soon cause Roglič to crack, a fissure more than a shattering.
With Almeida a few lengths clear Geraint Thomas floated across and the pair slowly pulled out time on Roglič, inscrutable as he span a low gear but perceivably losing time. Almeida won the stage after a two-up sprint with Geraint Thomas, with the Welshman taking the maglia rosa and the pair finishing 25 seconds ahead of the surprise duo of Primož Roglič and Eddie Dunbar. Surprise as in Roglič had been dropped on the climb, and because Dunbar was fourth on the day, and up to fifth overall.
Andreas Leknessund and Bruno Armirail have been more than clothes horses in this Giro, but still they’ve been storing the maglia rosa on their shoulders while it’s been destined for others, and their time was always going to be up come the third week. Sure enough they fell down the GC and we’ve now got an obvious trio for the podium.
Thomas leads with 18 seconds on Almeida and 29 seconds on Roglič, slender margins given a time bonus or two can change plenty and Monte Lussari can overturn everything. These seem to be our podium candidates given Damiano Caruso is fourth overall at 2m50s. The current podium order looks the most plausible. Thomas leads although he’s down to four team mates with Sivakov out if he wants to defend. Almeida seems confident and energetic but how to get ahead? Roglič isn’t done yet but did look a level below, saying he’s still sore from his crash last week, will the fatigue keep adding up… or is today going to be just the tonic?
The Route: 197km out of the mountains to the Adriatic seaside.
The Finish: flat but with some corners in town. The section of road with the 2km banner is narrow.
The Contenders: a sprint? The profile screams one but it’s the third week of the race where many are tired but some riders are keen, almost desperate, as it’s today or nothing if they know a summit finish is out of reach. Also there are fewer sprinters left in the race so less chasing power, more so since some teams with sprinters have other ambitions as well, riders deployed to chase today might be worth more tomorrow and beyond for their GC ambitions, think UAE and Bahrain.
If a sprint is the base case, the hard part is picking a winner as there’s no hierarchy to the sprints, nobody looks superior especially as Kaden Groves and Mads Pedersen have left the race. Pascal Ackermann (UAE) has won and remains in the race. Mark Cavendish (Astana) is still here and has been looking quicker each sprint. Fernando Gaviria (Movistar) feels more of a random pick sometimes. Jonathan Milan (Bahrain) has the brute force but has he got the deft skills? DSM have two sprinters but Alberto Dainese is probably quicker for a dragstrip finish.
Breakaway picks are Laurenz Rex (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), Alberto Bettiol (EF Education-Easypost) and Nico Denz (Bora-hansgrohe).
| | – | | | Milan, Ackermann, Cavendish | | | Gaviria, Dainese, Denz, Bettiol, Rex |
Weather: rain and showers are likely early in the stage during the mountain valley section, then 22°C and sunny once out onto the Po plains and the coast.
TV: KM0 and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
The Giro resumes after a rest day and we begin the backloaded final week with the first of three summit finishes.
The Route: 203km and 5,200m of vertical gain. Out of Sabbio and past Salo then along the shores of Lake Garda to Riva del Garda, almost flat although there are some undulations when the road darts away from the lake.
The first climb of the day scales Monte Velo to the Passo Santa Barbara. It’s a deceptive climb at first, a big wide road that heads out of town with the feel of something sluggish, where large trucks and buses cross over to the next valley. Only there’s a 15% gradient warning sign and the road suddenly funnels into something hardly wide enough for two Fiats. Then the slope bites and the hairpins start and the 14% section is real, not the inside line on a hairpin but a ramp. There’s a steep descent and then the road drags up to the Passo Bordala. The descent takes the race into the Adige valley but only just for the first intermediate sprint in Rovereto.
Then comes a second category climb that doesn’t look like much but it’s got 6km at 8% at the start before the slope turns into a drag up the side of the valley before crossing over and descending back down the other side of the valley almost Revereto.
The climb to Serrada depends on your perspective, the gentlest climb of the day but also a dizzying balcony road. There are no surprises but it’s a 17km climb, a team – think Ineos – can put their mountain train to work here and it’s softening things up for the final. There’s a long descent, gentle at first and then 8% for 12km but on a main road before reaching the valley floor and 10km to eat some gels for the final climb.
The Finish: Monte Bondone’s a legendary climb of the Giro, more on this below. Today’s ascent is not the “Gaul” route of 1956 but instead climbs out of Aldeno. From here it’s a 20km climb and the shorthand version is: first 2km hard, next 10km are OK and then the next 10km are hard before it eases to the line.
The Contenders: the breakaway has a good chance here. Climbers who can go up the road without forcing Ineos or Jumbo-Visma to chase are Jeferson Cepeda (EF Education-Easypost) and team mate Ben Healy. Lorenzo Fortunato (Eolo-Kometa) could get an Italian win. UAE seem happy to let riders go for the breakaway so Jay Vine or Brandon McNulty could try. Edoardo Zambanini (Bahrain) is the local rider today and a decent climber but a grand tour stage would be a breakthrough.
Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) is caught in a bind. 11th overall at 4m23s, none of the GC hopefuls will want to let him take time by and become a podium outsider by sliding into the breakaway so even trying to get points for the mountains competition where he’s currently second isn’t easy. Ditto Einer Rubio (Movistar) too, 14th at 5m29s who is almost tied with Pinot for points on the mountains competition.
Will the GC contenders move? There’s no head wind for a change but because the opportunities so far have brought a stalemate it still feels like they might still be observing each other and looking for weakness rather than striking out on their own although of course everyone will be willing an attack-fest, if only on Monte Bondone. It’s hard to pick among Primož Roglič, Geraint Thomas and João Almeida. Roglič’s weapon is his uphill sprint but we don’t quite know how his form is and today’s stage flattens out right at the end; Thomas might like the flatter finish today and Almeida briefly showed some punch on the ride through Bergamo Alta on Sunday and is still hunting his first grand tour stage.
| | – | | | Cepeda, Roglič, Thomas | | | Almeida, Healy, McNulty, Fortunato, Vine |
Weather: sunny and warm in the valley, 25°C
TV: KM0 is at 11.05 and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
Embed from Getty Images
Bondone and Gaul: Monte Bondone sits above the nearby city of Trento, a constant presence for locals as well as a ski resort. In cycling Bondone rhymes with the exploits of Charly Gaul. He won when the race first visited in 1956, taking the maglia rosa here on Stage 21 and winning the race overall two days later. Only it was the manner of his win that impressed, he started the day 24th overall and 17 minutes down on GC. A snowstorm hit the race and in sub-zero temperatures he road to the stage win and race lead, tappa e maglia. Many were forced to quit the race and of those who rode make it to the top of the mountain, many took their time and some probably got a lift to the point where the organisers were just desperate for riders to reach the finish by any means so that the event could continue. Even doing the stage on a vehicle wasn’t easy, as John Foot tells in the excellent Pedalare! Pedalare! “only one of the 12 motorbikes on the Giro was able to accompany him up the mountain”.
As if it’s not been damp enough, an autumnal feel today with a course borrows, or rather copies the Tour of Lombardy, including the lively finish through Bergamo’s citadel… but there’s a good chance the sun’s out today.
Simplon-Varese Express: a transition stage, they say they don’t exist any more but after the race’s passage to Verbier and Crans Montana the Giro had to return to Italy in a day and so the Simplon pass was awaiting and transit they did. Only via a 2,000m pass in the rain and through the clouds. A maxi-breakaway of 30 riders formed by the start of the Simplon pass and with so many riders clear even the sprinters’ teams had irons in the fire in the front group. They built up a big lead over the pass in the pouring rain and with low single-digit temperatures. Once down on the plains the riders tried to warm up and the attacks started to go. A quartet of Laurenz Rex, Toms Skujiņš, Davide Ballerini and Stefano Oldani looked like they were going to sprint for the stage win but Rex was dropped in the finale and the trio’s lead began to shrink. Caught by the chasers, Alberto Bettiol came surging past but his jump proved to be a leadout for Nico Denz who sprinted for the line and sat up to celebrate as a surging Derek Gee almost pipped him on the line.
Among the others in the breakaway was Bruno Armirail who’d been on the attack with Pinot the previous day and was fifth in the Cesena TT stage and rode into the maglia rosa. Can he keep it? Certainly not to Rome of course but just starting today is a bonus. Armirail started out in mountain biking but found it expensive given the wear and tear on bikes and moved to the road and finished second at the French U23 TT champs aged 19 and still very much an amateur in a technical discipline. He joined the Armée de Terre cycling team, taking on the status of soldier, and has been a stalwart of Groupama-FDJ for several years, to the point of being furious after missing out on selection for the Tour de France last summer.
The Route: 195km, 3600m of vertical gain and a mini Giro di Lombardia with the climbs of Valcava, Selvino, Roncola before a finish in Bergamo, all familiar haunts for the end of season race.
The Valcava is the first climb and quickly lifts riders away from the plains and then gets steeper still towards the top. It’s a regular for locals and the Il Lombardia race alike and one characteristic of today’s course is you can look at the evenly spaced climbs and think that’s it, three regular climbs. But they twist and turn and the descents are irregular and narrow too.
The profile of the Selvino is very level but this doesn’t show the series of hairpin bends, you might remember Fausto Masnada and Tadej Pogačar duelling on this descent from the 2021 Lombardia but today it’s up. At the top there’s an extra climb that’s been added since the route was announced last year, the San Salvatore. Then it’s down into Bergamo and to cross the finish line with a 3-2-1 second time bonus before a loop back into the hills.
The road up to Roncola is the last major climb of the day and a tough one with a steep start after the Ponte Barlino and then a hard 8% slope for the rest of the way.
The Finish: almost the same Lombardia finish via Bergamo alta, the old hilltop part of the town. There’s the run uphill over the cobbles and then the same sweeping descent, only the final part is different with the finish on the main road and straight, there’s not the right turn with 250m to go. But it’s not unusual as it’s the same finish from 2017 won by Bob Jungels.
The Contenders: a good day for the breakaway but who goes up the road, will we see some big names in the mix? We’ll see if Ineos can spare Thymen Arensman or Laurens De Plus for a move today to make Jumbo-Visma react. Primož Roglič in person can always try, although it was on the roads of Lombardia that his 2019 Giro bid came unstuck. If the GC riders do fight for the win Geraint Thomas is a safe pick, a win here would show he’s in great shape. Today’s stage might tempt some of the GC riders to move, they’ll be fresher after yesterday and tomorrow is a rest day and the awkward climbs and tricky descents are good terrain to exploit… but the flat sections in between aren’t so easy, these suit Ineos trying to contain and constrain.
Past Lombardia winner Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) is in form and can take some points for the mountains jersey today but winning in Bergamo is harder. Ben Healy (EF Education-Easypost) ought to be suited to this course but even more than Pinot he’ll be wary of a sprint and he’s been ill of late, team mate Magnus Cort can clean up in a sprint but can he get over the climbs? Italian champion Filippo Zana (Jayco-Al Ula) can make a name for himself if his team can spare him from shepherding Dunbar for the day. Bora-hansgrohe still have GC ambitions but are happy to send riders up the road stage hunting, so Patrick Konrad comes to mind. Otherwise it’s wide open to plenty of riders, Diego Ulissi (UAE) has eight stage wins to his name already but might lack the jump needed for the finish through Bergamo
| | – | | | Pinot, Konrad, Roglič, Arensman | | | Thomas, Healy, Zana, Cort, Van Wilder, Buitrago, McNulty |
Weather: rain clearing and then 23°C and sunny… quite promising but the Giro might not be done with the rain for today, there’s a heightened chance of rain for the higher parts of the course.
TV: KM0 is at 11.55am and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
A sprint stage with a 2,000m mountain in the way… weather and rider vote permitting.
Un Crans en dessous: the stage was shortened to 75km. The Grand Saint Bernard pass was skipped, the UCI’s Extreme Weather Protocol (EWP) was applied but the weather awaiting the riders was wet and cold at the start: grim but arguably nothing extreme. Some riders were more worried about the Croix de Coeur climb, others fed up and worn down by accumulated effects of the bad weather endured so far, and plenty felt both when they voted online on the eve of the stage to skip the Croix de Coeur climb. The compromise reached the next morning was to miss the first long climb of the day, the Grand Saint Bernard, not what the riders voted for but agreeable to riders and race organisers alike, although it still meant tackling the Croix de Coeur descent in the rain. The Giro’s visit to Switzerland was in part built, and probably part-financed, on the premise of showing off the “new” Croix de Coeur climb so skipping this was too much for organisers RCS. In the instant this was a communications fiasco without a clear explanation of what was happening, talk of adverse weather didn’t match reports on the ground. But it’s a more fundamental issue regarding the Extreme Weather Protocol’s use and the mood of the peloton. If the EWP is evoked but the underlying cause is a rider strike we ought to say so.
As soon as the race started there was no more time for polemiche as the new start was at the foot of the Croix de Coeur and there were attacks from the start. Thibaut Pinot went in one move with others including Hugh Carthy but Ineos couldn’t let the man who puts lanky in Lancastrian go, then another went clear with Pinot it it again and he was a driving force, crossing the Croix de Coeur climb first. The breakaway kept its advantage on the Rhone valley floor and Pinot attacked again as soon as the final climb to Crans Montana started and only Derek Gee, Einer Rubio and Jefferson Cepeda could follow. Gee would soon crack as Pinot launched a flurry of attacks, uncharacteristic for a rider whose style is often to soak up the moves early on a climb before going on the attack later.
Pinot kept attacking – seven times – with Cepeda jumping onto his back wheel, then Rubio slowly bridging his way across. Was Rubio in trouble? He never seemed to panic and with hindsight this tactic paid off as while Cepeda started to attack Pinot towards the top of the climb, the two ended up marking each other out. Rubio was always within in range and then had the energy to take the uphill sprint.
Behind Hugh Carthy attacked the GC group as did Damiano Caruso but Caruso and later Eddie Dunbar but the latter two were swept up, a headwind on the final climb dampened things and Carthy only took six seconds. The sole change to the top-10 was Pinot climbing into 10th place, and the Frenchman also takes a lead in the mountains competition. Ineos led the pace but Jumbo-Visma had numbers on the final climb, worth noting.
The Route: 196km from Switzerland and back to Italy, via the Simplon pass (if you’ve spotted 194km on the profile there’s a small detour later in Italy because of a landslide). It’s along the Rhone valley and into the German speaking part with a small climb when the road turns away from the valley floor and then past Visp and its big DSM factory before Brig and the start of the mighty Simplon pass, il Sempione in Italian.
There’s a rail tunnel under the pass that takes drive-on trucks and cars and so a Plan B option. But big vehicles can and do take go over the pass and on an ordinary day it’s one of those climbs that aren’t the best for cycling as it’s busy with cars, light trucks and motorbikes. Presumably the motorists complain about the cyclists. Anyway it’s a well-engineered giant of a pass, a wide road that lasts for 20km. 14%? Maybe on the inside of a hairpin bend but the feel is how steady this climb is, hard but no surprises. The descent is the same but with fewer views as it dives into a smaller, narrower valley but there’s 120km from Iselle to the finish.
Then comes a long ride down to Verbania and Lake Maggiore, these Filippo Ganna’s training roads (and Elisa Longo Borghini’s among others too). Look closely at the profile and you can see some lumps at the end but there’s nothing tough, a few undulations and on busier roads past industrial estates and the Alpine wilderness already a distant memory.
The Finish: a right turn onto the finishing straight, then under the flamme rouge and a drag of 2-3% uphill all the way to the line.
The Contenders: the Simplon – if ridden – is a launchpad for the day’s breakaway but there’s a long time to bring the break back. Only Trek-Segafredo won’t chase as Mads Pedersen has gone home so who will? Several teams still have an interest in setting up the sprint.
The uphill run to the line – and the vertical gain of today’s stage is good for Michael Matthews (Jayco-Al Ula) so there’s an extra team to chase and they even have an incentive to make the Simplon harder.
Pascal Ackermann (UAE) can manage a climb or two. Both Mark Cavendish (Astana) and Jonathan Milan (Bahrain) will find the finishing straight harder but it’s 2-3% and not 5-6%.
Breakaway picks could be Alberto Bettiol (EF), Simon Clarke (Israel), Toms Skujiņš (Trek-Segafredo) and Lorenzo Rota (Intermarché).
| | – | | | Michael Matthews | | | Cort, Ackermann, Milan, Cavendish, Gaviria |
Weather: more rain and cold. It might rain at the start but it’ll be 16°C but the top of the Simplon will see rain and 4°C… worse conditions than above Aosta yesterday. Once back down off the pass it’ll be warmer again at 16°C but still raining.
TV: KM0 is at 12.05 and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
Bonjour, the race starts in Piemonte but heads to Italy’s Aosta valley where French is a second language and then crosses into francophone Switzerland for two more climbs.
The First Denz: a maxi-breakaway of 30 riders went clear in among the dolcetto and nebbiolo vineyards of Barolo and Alba. At first sight these big groups appear menacing, ready to turn the race upside down with so many attackers trying to defy the peloton. Only it usually turns out that many riders miss turns or soft-pedal, each wants to win the stage let the others do the hard work and as soon as one rider eases, nobody else wants to work. This time the group split thanks to the weather, a downpour prompted some to go back to the cars for rain jackets and five riders pressed on in Samuele Battistella, Toms Skujiņš, Nico Denz, Sebastian Berwick and Alessandro Tonelli and soon the rest of the group was stuck, a stand off in the chase. The quintet became quartet when Battistella fell ill, then became a trio on the climb of the day, the Colle Braida but as much as Skujiņš drove the pace, he dropped Tonelli but the bulky Denz couldn’t be dropped. Into Rivoli and Skujiņš launched the sprint and Denz came past for his biggest win.
The Route: 199km and 5,000m of vertical gain. A start at the mouth of the Aosta valley and then up the valley on a road regularly used by the Giro to Aosta, an uphill slog which barely registers on the profile but harder than it seems.
Then comes the Gran San Bernando pass, not quite easier than it seems but a long climb rather than a steep one, this is climb to soften up the legs for later and also a big points bonanza for the mountains competition and it’s rarely steep but it’s sustained as it climbs past the early south-facing vineyards. This time it’s up to the tunnel and not to the pass, not for the first time as the Giro went through in 2006.. It robs the stage of 500m of vertical gain but probably won’t change the result. The tunnel offers some shelter but an odd moment, it warms up inside meaning a lull in the racing and presumably little TV as the race rides inside the mountain. Then comes a long descent, the kind trucks can negotiate but enough to get cold on.
The Croix de Coeur is a climb of two parts, first the hairpin ski station road to Verbier which is a hard climb and used in 2009 when Alberto Contador sped away for the win and Bradley Wiggins made a name for his climbing performances. But today the race goes beyond this and via a small backroad above the resort, a service road for ski lifts that’s also a “new” climb for cyclists and with 10% slopes, this is hard. When the cleared the snow off the top of the Croix de Coeur earlier this week they discovered the tarmac underneath had some winter damage but it seems they’ve made temporary repairs in time for the race. Too early to attack? The ensuing descent does reward the bold but anyone who takes time has over 20km along the Rhone valley to deal with before tackling the final climb.
The Finish: a ski station summit finish, however it’s not the main road up used by coachloads of tourists but the side road via Lens although it’s still a regular climb, a chalet access road if you like. At 13km it’s a long climb and selective as it rises quickly above the Rhone valley.
Once in Crans things level out for a run across turn before a left turn and a final drag up to the line of 7%.
The Contenders: breakaway or GC contenders? Let’s think of the GC riders where Ineos wants to defend even if Geraint Thomas has a two second lead overall, at least in the hope others fall away. Similarly Jumbo-Visma want Primož Roglič to win but they probably won’t work all day and boss the race for it. So the breakaway has a great chance. Jay Vine (UAE) seems good but could be on team duty, likewise Brandon McNulty. Lorenzo Fortunato (Eolo-Kometa), Ben Healy (EF Education-Easypost) and Einer Rubio (Movistar) can ride for themselves.
Among the GC contenders, Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) is the obvious pick but before backing him this is just a fitness test, can he handle the stage after crashes and questions over his form. Geraint Thomas (Ineos) too gets a test.
| | – | | | Healy, Buitrago, Fortunato | | | Roglič, Thomas, Almeida, Rubio, McNulty, Vine, Mollema |
Weather: more tough conditions, no more than 12°C in the Aosta valley and the warmest part of the stage will be the tunnel thanks to geothermic heat. It could rain on the Croix de Coeur but this threat is receding.
TV: KM0 is at 11.05 and the start of the Croix de Coeur is 2.20pm and the final climb begins around 4.20pm with the finish is forecast for 5.00pm CEST.
The Giro reaches the Alps but this is a day for the breakaway more than the first big showdown among the overall candidates.
Stage 11 Review: the breakaway didn’t need much more than five minutes to form as the race pedalled up the riviera with the bunch content with a cocktail of one part Eolo, Cofidis, Bardiani, Intermarché and two parts Corratec. It looked like it was going to be a long, boring stage with an inevitable sprint conclusion and in many ways it was… until a crash on the descent of the Colla di Boasi took down several GC contenders including Geraint Thomas, Primož Roglič, Pavel Sivakov and Tao Geoghegan Hart. The race was over for “TGH” as he was taken away in an ambulance, leaving everyone wondering what could have been given the form he’d shown. The diagnosis later was a fractured hip. On the same descent Oscar Rodriguez overlapped his front wheel by accident with a Trek rider and crashed hard, also out.
In the end we got a good sprint with Mads Pedersen launching from far, as he does. Mark Cavendish seemed to bet on this and hoped to come around but Pascal Ackerman was on the Brit’s wheel and came past him. Jonathan Milan started from further back and was close to passing them all had the finish line been a metre later but Ackermann won the photo finish.
What was supposed to be a benign sprint stage on paper has reshaped the GC with Geoghegan leaving the race and Sivakov losing time, Ineos will now line up behind Thomas which partly makes things simpler for the support riders he can count on, but it also makes him a simpler target for Roglič. All this and the race has yet to reach the Alps…
The Route: 179km with 2,300m of climbing to the Turin suburbs. It’s uphill out of Bra – no jokes about support from the locals – and into the Roero hills, birthplace of the Slow Food movement and among vineyards, passing places like Barolo and Alba that make the route read like a wine menu. However riders will be reaching for carbo drinks and gels and they’ll hardly have time to savour an energy bar as they try to get in the day’s breakaway. Then it’s across the plains and cereal fields towards Rivoli, the stage finish and where the race will cross the finish line with 56km to go and head out for the first encounter with the Alps.
The Colle Braida is a gymnasium for local cyclists as a proper Alpine climb, the first mountain to poke out of the plains. It’s well-engineered and at times cut into the cliffs and here are few hairpin bends. This is a regular road with few ambush points but as the profile shows the final 4km are at a selective 8% which suits the climbers. The descent has more hairpins but no surprises, it’s a regular road down and back to the plains but there’s twist with 13km to go, literally with a small unmarked climb and some hairpins on the way towards the village of Villarbasse, nothing fierce but if there’s still a group left and someone doesn’t fancy a sprint they could try here.
The Finish: the race will pass through Rivoli with 56km to go so the finish gets ridden once in advance which helps as it’s got some corners and clims. However it’s a run through the suburbs rather than via a medieval town and all on regular roads. There’s a dip after the flamme rouge and then curving bend leading into a short climb but this is up a wide and straight road. Then it levels out onto an even wider road.
The Contenders: a good day for the breakaway, the hilly start helps and the big climb is too much for the sprinters… so much so that in between this preview going up and you reading it some might have decided to go home already. Likely picks are Ben Healy (EF Education-Easypost) who is now clearly a marked man but good luck trying to follow on the climbs. Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo), Samuele Battistella (Astana), Carlos Verona (Movistar) and Brandon McNulty (UAE) fit the bill too but if they all arrived together none are great finishers but that’s why they’ll go clear.
A stage for the GC riders? Even if Primoz Roglič did attack, he’d have to hold off Ineos on the flat run back to Rivoli so it’s risky to put it mildly, especially with tomorrow’s big stage coming, he could try but if he takes 10 seconds over the top it’s still hard to commit to the remaining 28km TT. Today’s stage is reminiscent of Stage 12 in 2019 with the Montoso climb where Miguel Angel Lopez and Mikel Landa attacked on the climb and kept going to take some time, it could be that those a bit further back on GC have a go but again they’ll have to have the horsepower for 28km so while Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain) has the climbing form, can he power along the flat?
| | Ben Healy | | | McNulty, Verona | | | Mollema, Vine, Battistella, Van Wilder |
Weather: more rain and 13°C, this has to be the wettest Giro since 2013 when the race had an official song blasting out every morning in the start village called Mezza Estate by Cesare Cremoni, “midsummer”… only it rained and it poured.
TV: KM0 is at 12.45 and the approach to the Colle Braida is about 4.00pm with the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
An intriguing stage. The action should be on the flanks of Monte Vulture, an extinct volcano. But who will control the stage? The sprinters’ teams cannot and the GC teams won’t rush either.
Milan San Salvo: a crash with 4km to go derailed sprint trains coming before the 3km to go point also caught out some GC contenders like Tao Geoghegan Hart and Jay Vine. Along the San Salvo sea front it was Jonathan Milan who won and took an Italian win.
The Route: 210km, first along the coast past Termoli, then inland to Foggia and it’s all flat. The crucial part of the day is from Monticchio onwards where the race climbs the flanks of Monte Vulture. This is proper climbing on a twisting road.
From the top of the climb there’s 26km to the finish. It’s not as straightforward as it looks, there’s the twisty descent off the mountain first and then while the route picks up the main road below, this keeps twisting and turning, a slight advantage to a breakaway.
The Finish: ah, Melfi, a hilltop town with its castle and historic medieval centre. Forget that, today’s racing doesn’t go to the centro storico but Zona 167 instead, an area on the outskirts of town with some housing and workshops, and crucially a big truck parking area with enough space to accommodate the race and become the centre of the world for a day. There’s a small turn into the finish line and it’s uphill at 5% to the line.
The Contenders: a day for the breakaway? Riders can try to establish a lead early and hope to hold on.
Can the sprinters stay the course? The main climb is 6.3km at 6.4% and top and tail the climb and there’s 5km with more than 7%, normally too much for most but it’s down to the peloton to eject them as well. It’s where the likes of Michael Matthews (Jayco-Al Ula), Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) or Magnus Cort (EF Education-Easypost) although the latter hasn’t looked so lively this season and is talking about perking up for the latter half of the Giro.
Simone Consonni (Cofidis) is an Italian version of Bryan Coquard as a lightweight sprinter who is talented on the track but also with few wins these days.
Not long ago this would be terrain where Remco Evenepoel exploits the climb and then gets a gap and teams can’t bring him back on the twisty finale. But surely not.
| | – | | | Pedersen, Matthews | | | Rota, Consonni, Groves, Albanesi |
Weather: °C
TV: the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. It’s on RAI for locals and worldwide on Eurosport/GCN.
A flat stage for the sprinters. They have few opportunities in this race so this is an important stage for them and their teams.
Catch of the Day: blasting past the trabocco fishing huts, Remco Evenepoel got as much he could have hoped for, finishing 22 seconds ahead of Filippo Ganna, that’s more than a second quicker per kilometre better the rider seen as the best time trial specialist of his generation. GC rivals were left trailing, João Almeida was the closest at 29s, Tao Geoghegan Hart at 40s and beating expectations, both impressive. Roglič fared worse than imagined, losing 43s and seemingly labouring at times when normally he looks so smooth but he’ll see the positive side where only three GC rivals beat him. The imagined duel has taken a knock but we’ll see what the mountains bring next week.
For those thinking the Giro’s done, you can often extrapolate information from a prologue so an 18km TTis a less clue about form, more a signed statement. This could well be a luxurious, extravagant performance by the Belgian prodigy that will continue for three weeks… but there are four Sundays left and it could also be hubris in a three week tale of the hare and the tortoise, the story is yet to written. We’ll see if any testudine challengers emerge but for now they’ll be receding into their shells given the 30km time trial this time next week.
The Route: A stage for the sprinters with a handful of sharp climbs along the way to give something to TV viewers and get the mountains competition going and an incentive for riders to go in the breakaway as they can take the jersey in what should otherwise be a futile move. Today’s course borrows some of the spiky hilltop ramps from typical Tirreno-Adriatico stages of recent years. There are two categorised climbs, plus the climb mid-stage to Chieti isn’t rated but it’s as hard as anything else on the route. There’s 70km from the last climb to the finish, plenty of time to regroup.
The Finish: a dash along the coast to a roundabout and then the long away around which slows things down and rewards positioning. When they exit the roundabout the road isn’t as straight as the map suggests, it bends round more meaning the next turn with 1km to isn’t immediately visible. The final right hand bend opens onto a wide road to the line.
The Contenders: there are not many sprinters in the Giro, let alone dragstrip specialists, you can’t blame them given the route. Pascal Ackermann (UAE) probably needs the win today more than most as he’s less versatile if it’s hilly but his win rate is poor of late, not easy to back. Alberto Dainese (DSM) won a stage last year (pictured) but doesn’t win often either. Mark Cavendish (Astana) wants the Tour de France win and will have to surf wheels by himself and his win rate is low too.
The form pick could be Fernando Gaviria (Movistar) who has just won in Romandie but still a touch erratic compared to his best years. Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is on the up and has a decent leadout squad. Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) isn’t really a sprinter but can always turn on the power.
| | – | | | Gaviria, Pedersen, Groves | | | Cavendish, Ackerman, Dainese |
Weather: a sunny day, 23°C.
TV: the climb to Chieti is around 3.15pm and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST.
Welcome to the start of three weeks of daily previews. Time trials are a theme of this year’s race as there are three of them and today is a crucial stage, this is not a warm-up antipasto prologue, it’s a hearty main course.
The Route: at 19.6km and the novelty is most of the course is on a coastal cycle route, a dedicated cycle path built on top of the old Adriatic railway line (not new, remember the 2015 Giro’s opening team time trial in Sanremo). It’s sometimes so close to the sea that a gently breaking wave can spray a passing rider although the real interference is likely to come from the sea… breeze.
It’s flat until the finish in Ortona when it turns off the cycle path and heads up into town during the final kilometre but it’s never steep, some final corners will rob speed. This uphill finish is timed and a fourth category climb, the fastest will take the mountains jersey.
The Contenders: the obvious question we’re trying to settle is who will win but it’s worth asking who wants to win today? Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) hopes to take time on all his rivals for the maglia rosa, but he doesn’t need to win today and has said if he does, he’ll aim to get out of the maglia rosa by being delighted if the right breakaway can go away although he might find it harder to give away the white jersey and fully escape his media duties.
However this is a time trial, not a menu. Filippo Ganna (Ineos) should love the first part along the coast and he’s been more dependable this year in the time trials after a couple of erratic seasons but he’s not quite the banker he ought to be. His win would be a boost for Italian cycling and the Giro needs a home star and better still one that can beat the foreign star. But’s less nationalism, more commercialism, TV audiences rise if a local is doing well and if the organisers could chose they’d surely want Ganna… knowing Evenepoel is likely to get his time in pink soon enough.
Roglič’s searing jump uphill applies to time trials as well, it’s how he won Olympic gold so he’s a third pick but it’s harder to see him winning outright.
Can someone else win beyond these three? Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) has beaten Ganna this season but is more often close to the win. Edoardo Affini (Jumbo-Visma) looks like he could play rugby with Ganna. Josef Cerny (Soudal-Quickstep) won the Romandie opener but that was a flat course with some cornering. Lennard Kämna (Bora-hansgrohe) can get his Giro off to a great start with a win but it’d be a surprise result, likewise with UAE trio Jay Vine, Brandon McNulty and João Almeida.
| | Ganna, Evenepoel | | | Roglič | | | Küng, Kämna, Affini |
Trabucco, trabocco This part of the Adriatic coast is called the Trabucco Coast, named after the fishing huts where giant nets are lowered into the sea, there are different spellings. It’s a local feature and we’ll get plenty of close-up shots of the contraptions on TV. But these devices are not unique as they’re found all over the world, especially in Asia.
Today’s course is on the Adriatic cycle path. There’s a project to have a cycling route all along Italy’s eastern coast which is a work-in-progress but today’s course showcases a part of this and the idea is that one day it’ll allow locals to bicycle down for some net-caught fish; while tourists can ride the entire length of the country.
Seeding: a quick word on the time trial order. With no reverse GC order to go on, team managers met the organisers yesterday and drew lots from 1-22. This creates the order for departure with each team having able to fill the vacant slots. So a team can start their best rider first or early if they think there’s an advantage because of the weather, or vice versa. Everything else being equal teams prefer to start the best riders later as they can get feedback from colleagues about the course – a slippery corner here, a section where the wind blows etc – and also compare times to rivals. However the last slot can be reserved for the past year’s Giro winner.
As it happens Evenepoel is off at 4.34pm, followed a minute later by Roglič, then Küng and then Ganna, all at one minute intervals.
Weather: mainly sunny, 22°C in town and an onshore breeze that could pivot during the day becoming a touch more favourable to later starters, one forecast says it’ll go from 3/4 headwind to crosswind, another from crosswind to possible tailwind but it’s a light breeze.
TV: the first rider is off at 1.50pm and the last due in at 5.10pm CEST. Tune in early for images of the coast, towards the finish to see action. It’s on RAI for locals and worldwide on Eurosport/GCN.
A look at the contenders and pretenders for the 2023 Giro d’Italia. This year’s edition seems to open with two questions. Who will finish first between Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič, and who will finish third?
This the picture today and so often the Giro is an optical illusion that reveals a different form later. We’ll revisit and revise the contenders and their outlook on each of the rest days.
A reminder of the route. Three time trial stages totalling over 70km, the first two are flat and the last has a savage climb (pending news on any revision), it’s the most kilometres solo against the clock since 2013 although let’s not exaggerate as recent years have come close, this defining feature of the first two time trials is how they’re almost dragster courses to reward people who can turn a 58T chainring, local riders whose name rhymes with panna even. As ever the mountains build in intensity, there are summit finishes in the first week but it’s the third week that should prove decisive with the gigantic Alpine stages, weather permitting. You’ll find more detail on all the stages at inrng.com/giro. There are time bonuses of 10-6-4 seconds for the road stages.
Never say Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) doesn’t know what he wants. It’s victory in all three grand tours, the world championship title and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Despite this prodigious challenge, he’s ticking off the bucket list with ease. He’s the form pick, having won again in Liège by riding the entire field off his wheel. When he won the Vuelta last year, he put 48 seconds into Roglič in the 30km time trial and 1-2 minutes into the other GC rivals. So this year with Stages 1 and 9 totalling 49km he’s got terrain to suit, even if Roglič was on the back foot back then. Plus unlike many who say they’ll take things “day by day”, he’s saying stronger than he was in the Vuelta and has made gains in the time trials too so he’s here to win. And yet… there are still questions. The team are solid and in brief glimpses in the Ardennes seem to have raised their game but they’re not fierce, they can defend but other teams will fancy their chances. Evenepoel’s Vuelta win was comprehensive but last year’s edition was unusually front-loaded, he built up a cushion early. Then on the longer climbs later on he proved beatable, now he’ll face far more climbing with even longer ascents later this month. He enjoyed Goldilocks weather, neither too hot nor too cold so the Alpine week could be a challenge if the weather turns grim. Plus he’s under pressure, if things fall apart he might find it hard to stay focussed, especially as there’s every chance there’s more Belgian media at the race than Italian. This may all sound like blogger culo-covering but they’re genuine tests for a rider still discovering plenty about himself, he ought to pass them, and has to if he wants a Tour win to complete the set but this Giro can also be about lessons and there’s more than a hint of hubris although he’s probably just confident.
Primož Roglič is form unknown and so the reputation pick, although team mate Sep Kuss says he’s in his best shape, but he would say that. Roglič showed up, then cleaned up in Tirreno-Adriatico and took the Volta a Catalunya too and it was hardly news, he’s a stage racing cyborg who has thrived in one week races. A three times Vuelta winner shows he can do the distance, yet the Giro and Tour have been his undoing. One thing in Roglič’s past is a tendency to fade in grand tours, his last tilt at the Giro came after he won the UAE Tour, Tirreno and Romandie, no wonder he was rinsed for the third week, ditto his Planche implosion followed winning the Tour de l’Ain and crashing out of the Dauphiné; which brings us to the more recent fashion as he’s abandoned three out of the last four grand tours. He’s had further bad luck before turning a pedal this time with lieutenants Wilco Kelderman injured, a flurry of Covid cases this week and hardly like-for-like replacements. Excellent in the time trials, Roglič’s trump card is his jump, he can sprint for uphill stage wins and harvest time bonuses and it’s where he’ll hope to gain time on Evenepoel and the rest; a corollary is that Jumbo-Visma are likely to mow down the breakaways to set up their leader although there aren’t that many spiky finishes he excels in. For all Roglič’s physiological attributes, there’s psychology too. Evenepoel may seem relaxed these days but Roglič was able to get under his skin in the Volta a Catalunya and the next three weeks allows plenty of time for the stoic Slovenian to make subcutaneous provocation.
Now for all the others. The quote often attributed to Napoleon of “never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake” comes to mind. The focus on two riders means the burden of the race falls implicitly on Soudal-Quickstep and Jumbo-Visma while other teams can sit back and toil for two weeks or more. Passive? Yes but the big prize is winning in Rome, not bossing the second week; plus it’s realistic given the performances of Evenepoel and Roglič and the Giro does throw up surprises, see Richard Carapaz riding away on the Colle San Carlo while Vincenzo Nibali and Primož Roglič marked each other.
Ineos start with four riders who could each lead other teams and arguably the strongest squad in the race. Geraint Thomas and Tao Geoghegan Hart lead the team and Thymen Arensman and Pavel Sivakov give them two more options. Thomas makes his third bid to win after being thwarted by two crashes, otherwise he is dependable although his steady ride to the podium in last summer’s Tour de France came after victory in the Tour de Suisse weeks before, his level today less reassuring as he’s been chasing form and nowhere near to winning but he’ll hope he can bide his time until the third week, think Aesop’s Tortoise. Geoghegan Hart has been victorious, winning the Tour of the Alps and doing this by climbing well and sprinting for stage wins; but as we saw in Tirreno, whatever he could do, Roglič could do better. But again he’ll pounce if the Big Two flounce. Arensman is still a work-in-progress while Sivakov could – and perhaps will – lead for another team but is more likely to be a mountain sherpa. It’s worth mentioning a fifth rider, Filippo Ganna as he could win the opening stage but on other days he’s a circus strongman capable of bending the race to his will. Collectively the team could tear the race apart, or try, but they have a tendency to defend, riding in train formation as we saw in the Tour of the Alps recently. But if there’s nothing to defend in the third week, none of them are in the top-three, then things could get lively.
UAE bring an interesting team with talents who get to shine when Pogačar isn’t racing. João Almeida made a name for himself in the Giro with a long spell in the maglia rosa back in 2020 when he seemed a punchy rider perhaps limited in the high mountains. Now he’s almost the opposite, a diesel who might be dropped on a climb if the pace is too high at the start but winches his way back into contention. This is commendably consistent but it’s unlikely to win the Giro, he’ll need to recover the old punch and he keeps improving and is a formidable challenger. Talking of improvement Jay Vine is the one of the most interesting riders in the race because his rise up the ranks hasn’t finished. A Zwift competition winner, a Vuelta stage last year after just riding away from Evenepoel et al and since, a Tour Down Under win and the Aussie TT title. January’s antipodean antics might not seem big but it quietly signalled a lot: time trial gains, leadership, managing the media and Vine flourished although since he’s been dogged by injury but won’t be starting if this isn’t resolved, he too could be a revelation. Brandon McNulty gives the team a third option, he’s good in time trials but would surely sign today for a top-5.
Bora-hansgrohe come with two leaders in Aleksandr Vlasov and Lennard Kämna. Do you remember Vlasov’s performance in the Tour de France last summer? Fifth, impressive but he was rarely a protagonist and so many might have been scratching their head trying to recall the answer. He’s a steady rider, also fourth in the 2021 Giro, and good in time trials so it’s easy to see him in the top-5 again, but how to win? If Jai Hindley won the Giro last year, Kämna’s role was instrumental, easing up from the breakaway on the Marmolada to give Hindley a tow as Richard Carapaz cracked. This year Kämna is aiming for GC rather than breakaways and stages and he’s a versatile rider, a former junior world champ in the TT, punchy on the climbs and good on the long ascents too. A recent documentary on German TV featured Kämna talking about pressure and expectation but he’s growing into the role and now wants to make the breakthrough as a consistent GC contender. He could be the surprise of this race.
Bahrain come with a strong team. Santiago Buitrago had a great third week last year, including a stage win but he’s a climber and even if the form looks improved on last year he’ll lose mucho time. Jack Haig and Damiano Caruso are solid riders but not spectacular with few wins between them, they’ll be riding steady like tightrope artists hoping they don’t slip off the overall classification. With Haig set on GC, Caruso might be tempted to chase a stage win.
Among other outsiders, Hugh Carthy leads EF Education and such is his honest, self-deprecating style he’d probably be the first to say he’s unlikely to win but he is consistent and durable while Ben Healy starts his first grand tour and will be interesting to watch, he looks like a pure climber but is very able in time trials, this course could help him beat other contenders to a high position but it’s his first grand tour the question is keeping fresh after a busy season already, while Rigo Uran was a Giro contender but it’s probably his last season and he’s less consistent. Another retiree is Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) who has said he wants a high GC finish and in his peak moments he’s been excellent against the clock but look closely and they’ve been on hilly courses, this route doesn’t suit with so many flat time trials, he’ll be on the back foot and perhaps he’d settle for a stage win, albeit one by attacking the lead group one day in the mountains and cashing in those TT loses for space to move but he’ll wait for the third week and if the weather’s grim he’ll be rubbing his hands… and not just to warm them.
| | Remco Evenepoel | | | Primož Roglič | | | – | | | Almeida, Geoghegan Hart, Kämna | | | Vlasov, Thomas, Vine, Pinot |
Here’s the Giro d’Italia guide. There’s all the stage profiles on one page, with a preview of their routes well as explainers on the rules for the mountains and points competitions; TV guide, time-cuts and more.
A separate look at the contenders and pretenders for the overall win will be along soon.
As loyal readers will know, a reminder you can read this post here but if you need the reference material in the coming weeks there’s a permanent page with all the same info at inrng.com/giro with the link in the menu at the top of the screen for desktop browsers, or in the dropdown menu if you’re on a mobile device.
Route summary
Last year’s route had just 26km of time trials, the least since 1962… when the route didn’t have a TT stage. This time there are three time trial stages totalling over 70km, although the third has a tough climb, it’s much more but within the norms of the past 20 years. As ever there’s a mix of mountains that get harder and more intense for the third week in the Alps including some high altitude, weather permitting.
Stage 1 – Saturday 6 May
A time trial to start the race and for Filippo Ganna to get a home win and the maglia rosa. It’s held mostly on a coastal cycle path, although wide enough to permit a following car.
Stage 2 – Sunday 7 May
A stage for the sprinters but it’ll suit those who can manage the sharp climbs, this borrows some of the spiky hilltop ramps from typical Tirreno-Adriatico stages. The climb mid-stage to Chieti isn’t even rated but it’s hard. There’s 70km from the last climb to the finish, plenty of time to regroup.
Stage 3 – Monday 8 May
An intriguing stage. The action should be on the flanks of Monte Vulture, an extinct volcano. But who will control the stage? The sprinters’ teams cannot and the GC teams won’t rush either.
Stage 4 – Tuesday 9 May
A mid-mountain stage on some familiar roads, the Molella-Laceno finish has been used a couple of times in recent years. As a finish it’s where Domenico Pozzovivo got his stage win in 2012 and the Colle Molella is a selective four kilometres at 10%, albeit on a big fast road. Plenty will get ejected but the group of GC contenders should be sizeable.
Stage 5 – Wednesday 10 May
A good day for a breakaway with the opening half ideal for a move to get away and build up a lead. Given the few chances for the sprinters this year and the flat finish that follows, several teams can try to set up their sprinter for the win.
Stage 6 – Thursday 11 May
After a start and finish in Naples last year, another Napolitan day. This time there are no laps, instead the route is like a tourist day-trip the Amalfi coast via Vesuvius and then back. The Capo di Mondo climb out of Positano is 10km but most of it no more than 4-5%.
Stage 7 – Friday 12 May
Very similar to the 2018 stage won by Simon Yates. There’s the climb of Roccaraso which has featured regularly in recent years and then the big summit finish of the Gran Sasso d’Italia, literally “The Big Stone of Italy”. The were only seconds between the big names in 2018 but the order that day proved instructive.
Stage 8 – Saturday 13 May
An intriguing stage. It’s 140km to the scenic gorge of the Gola del Furlo and after this, the scenery will give way to sport with the climbs around Fossombrone. The climb of I Cappucini is an awkward backroad that’s steep, then another hard climb and then it’s Cappucini again. This stage doesn’t look tough as the y-axis of vertical gain doesn’t look fierce but it’s harder than it seems.
Stage 9 – Sunday 14 May
A TT where the hardest part could be a bridge over the autostrada. The opener and this course are flat and with few corners, there aren’t too many places to brake and accelerate, it’s more about reaching a top cruising speed and holding it.
Stage 10 – Tuesday 16 May
The race crosses the Apennine mountains to ride into Tuscany. The Passo delle Radici isn’t steep but it’s up and up for a long way and a chance for some sprinters’ teams to eject heavyset riders.
Stage 11 – Wednesday 17 May
The longest stage. After the coast it’s inland and via a series of steady climbs to Tortona passing the Gavi vineyards.
Stage 12 – Thursday 18 May
The first Alpine stage but first the Alba vineyards and most of the route is on the flat Po plains. The Colle Braida doesn’t look like much on the profile but it’s a proper incursion into the Alps. It’s over 10km at 6.8% and that includes a descent along the way, the top part is hard and selective as it passes the hilltop abbey of the Sacra di San Michele before a fast descent to Rivoli, a town on the edge of Turin. It’s reminiscent of 2019’s Stage 12 via the Montoso climb to Pinerolo.
Stage 13 – Friday 19 May
A big day in the mountains to Switzerland via the giant Col du Grand Saint-Bernard. Tackling a 2,469 metre pass in May is ambitious – the pass usually opens on the last day of May, it’s never been opened before 23 May but if the weather helps and workers are deployed, well fingers crossed. If not there’s a tunnel that allows the race to stay below 2,000m as a potential back-up plan. Once in Switzerland riders will feel the difference thanks to the tarmac although the first thing they’ll feel is the chill via the long descent. The Croix de Coeur is the hairpins of the road up to the swank ski resort of Verbier with a “new” road on top, followed by a perilous descent to the Rhone valley and then the Crans Montana ski station summit finish.
Stage 14 – Saturday 20 May
Back to Italy via the Simplon Pass, a big transport artery used by trucks and so it’s accessible to sprinters, and like the previous stage, if it’s snowing there’s a tunnel underneath too. Once clear of the pass there’s a long ride down the valley via some of Filippo Ganna’s training roads.
Stage 15 – Sunday 21 May
A mini Tour of Lombardy with the Valcava and Selvino climbs before the finish in Bergamo.
Stage 16 – Tuesday 23 May
The lack of altitude shouldn’t mask this stage’s big attitude, there’s over 5,000 metres of vertical gain. This is a decisive stage with successive climbs offering little rest in between. This time Monte Bondone is tackled on the eastern side from Aldeno and it’s a gradual ascent at first before the final 10km offer plenty of 8-10%.
Stage 17 – Wednesday 24 May
It looks like a course you could almost freewheel down but there’s 192km to pedal out of the mountains down to the coast. Today’s stage serves two purposes, first a day for the sprinters so they stay in the race and second an active recovery ride for the GC contenders allowing them to start the next day relatively fresh.
Stage 18 – Thursday 25 May
A big day in the Dolomites including the climb to Coi, never used in the Giro before with 4km at over 10%. On paper it doesn’t look as hard but all we know is on paper as the Giro’s not used this finish before, at some point maps will have be swapped for a visit.
Stage 19 – Friday 26 May
Crans Montana and Monte Bondone can both make a good case they’re hosting the biggest stage of the Giro because they’re longer and have more climbing. But there’s plenty about this stage that makes it more compelling. The saw blade profile at first glance, the regular incursions beyond 2,000m, and then the names, an aristocracy of Dolomite ascents with the Valparolo, Giau and the Tre Croci approach to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, a famous place in the Giro but used sparingly, the last time was 2013 when Vincenzo Nibali won the stage wearing the maglia rosa on his way to the win.
Stage 20 – Saturday 27 May
A mountain time trial, back in the Giro for the first time since 2016 when cosmonaut Alexander Foliforov won the day. Monte Lussari is a new climb, little more than a mule path round the back of a mountain but it’s been paved in time for the race. There’s a flat section which will have managers exploring bike change options before the steep climb which is also worthy of a specialist bike… a motorbike as team cars are banned and so assistance can only come from team staff riding pillion on the back of motorbikes supplied by the organisers. If the sun’s shining it’ll be scenic, all forest and a hilltop village… for views but agony for riders with sustained sections between 15-20%, and via hairpins.
Stage 21 – Sunday 28 May
They say all roads lead to Rome, so here’s 700km transfer for the final stage. It’s perhaps less a test for riders and more for the city of Rome, the last visit saw the final stage altered and partially neutralised after the roads were in such a poor state.
The Jerseys
There are four jerseys in the race: pink, cyclamen, blue and white.
Pink: the most famous one, the maglia rosa, it is awarded to the rider with the shortest overall time for all the stages added together. As such, they have covered the course faster than anyone else. It is pink because the race has been organised by La Gazzetta Dello Sport, a newspaper printed on bright pink paper. It is sponsored by Enel, an energy company.
There are time bonuses available on all the stages except the time trials:
- 10-6-4 seconds for the first three riders respectively on each stage
- 3-2-1 seconds are available for the first three riders at the second of the daily intermediate sprints
Cyclamen: the points competition. Riders score points at both of the intermediate sprints per day and at the finish line. The allocation of points depends on the stage in question, they are categorised with the typical sprint stages offering more points in a bid to place the purple-toned jersey on the shoulders of a sprinter who can handle arithmetic. The maglia ciclamino is sponsored by Be It, a made in Italy marketing campaign.
- Category A+B stages (Stages 2,5,7,10,11,14, 21) offer points for the first 15 riders at the finish: 50-35-25-18-14-12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. For the intermediate sprint there are points for the first eight: 20-12-8-6-4-3-2-1
- Category C stages: (Stages 3,4,6,8,12) offer points for the first 10: 25-18-12-8-6-5-4-3-2-1. For the intermediate sprint there are points for the first five: 10-6-3-2-1
- Category D+E: (Stages 1,7,9,13,15,16,18,19,20) offer points for the first 10: 15-12-9-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and for the first intermediate sprint of each stage there are points for the first eight: 12-8-6-5-4-3-2-1
Blue: the mountains jersey. It is sponsored by Banca Mediolanum, a bank. There are five categories of climb and note the weighting towards first place.
- 9 fourth category climbs: the first three riders crossing the top of the climb win 3-2 and 1 points respectively
- 8 third category climbs: the first four riders over the top get 9-4-2-1 points
- 18 second category climbs: first six riders get 18-8-6-4-2-1 points
- 13 first category climbs: the first eight riders get 40-18-12-9-6-4-2-1 points
- CC or Cima Coppi: a special award, the “Coppi Summit” for the highest point of the race. This year it is the San Bernardino on Stage 13. The first nine win 50-30-20-14-10-6-4-2-1 points
White: for the best young rider, this is awarded on the same basis as the pink jersey, except the rider must be born after 1 January 1998, ie aged 25 or under. It is sponsored by Intimissimi, an underwear brand.
Now a rider can’t wear two jerseys at once, they’d get too hot and the sponsors wouldn’t get the exposure they’ve paid for. So if a rider leads several classifications, they take the most prestigious jersey for themselves and the number-two ranked rider in the other competition gets to wear the other jersey. For example if a rider has both the pink jersey and the blue mountains jersey they’ll wear pink whilst whoever is second in the mountains jersey will sport blue jersey. The hierarchy is pink > points > mountains > white.
There are also other prizes and in-race competitions such as the intermediate sprint competition which is separate to the points competition or the time bonuses also available at these spots; the breakaway prize for the rider with the most kilometres in the breakaway; the fighting spirit prize which is a combined competition for scoring across the points, mountains and so on; the team prize; and the fair play prize for teams that avoid fines and penalties.
Time cuts
All riders have to make the time cut each day to stay in the race and this is a function of the stage type and average speed:
- Stages 2,7,21: the winner’s time plus 7% if the average speed is less than or equal to 40 km/h; 8% if the average speed is between 40 and 45 km/h; 10% if the average speed is over 45 km/h
- Stages 5,10,11,14: the winner’s time plus 9% if the average speed is less than or equal to 37 km/h; 10% of the average speed is between 37 and 41 km/h; 11% if the average speed is over 41 km/h
- Stages 3,4,6,8,12 the winner’s time plus 11% if the average speed is less than or equal to 35 km/h; 12% if the average speed is between 35 km and 39 km/h; 13% if the average speed is over 39 km/h
- Stages 7,13,15,16,18,19 the winners’ time plus 16% if the average speed is less than or equal to 30 km/h; 17% if the average speed between 30 km/h and 34 km/h; 18% if the average speed is over 34km/h;
- For Stages 1,9 and 20, the winner’s time plus 30%
Three Kilometre Rule
Anyone with a mechanical or crash within the final three kilometres can get the same finishing time as the group the were with at the time of the incident on Stages 2,3,4,5,6,8,10,11,12,14,15,17 and 21.
Bunch sprint time gaps
The protocol for time gaps in bunch sprints applies for Stages 2,3,5,6,10,11,14 and 21.
The unmissable stages
Anything can happen during the Giro but there are some stages that matter more than others, some suggestions for the must-watch days:
- Stage 4 with a selective uphill finish
- Stage 7 to see who’s the sassiest on the Gran Sasso
- Stage 13 as the start of the big mountain stages
- Stage 16 for the Bondone tappone
- Stage 18 with the hipster alternative Dolomite climbs
- Stage 19 for the Dolomite derby to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo
- Stage 20 as the final TT to settle the race
TV
All stages will be broadcast live from start to finish. Italian host broadcaster RAI offers the richest coverage with experienced commentators as well as roving reporters on motorbikes to add extra info. If you want English coverage, there’s Eurosport-GCN of course on TV and online.
The timing varies but as a rule the finish is expected for around 5.15pm CEST each day.
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Last week’s stage race may not have wowed television viewers but it was rich in information and ideas. A round-up…
Two time trials meant the race had more solo kilometres against the clock than the Tour de France or Vuelta, and of course in less than a week. Christian Prudhomme turned up the start – always interesting as he’s unlikely to be on holiday – and said time trials can “fossilise” (my translation) the GC of a stage race with some riders able to pull out big gaps (more on this thinking here). Yet the race was decided on the single summit finish when Adam Yates got 21 seconds on Matteo Jorgenson, plus the ten second time bonus, and took the overall lead.
In between the spring classics and a week out from the Giro, the race’s slot on the calendar is bit late for the GC riders who’ve had a busy spring and done the Ardennes; and too late pre-Giro for many of the GC contenders, especially as the weather is often wintry. This explains why there are few star names at the start and why the wow factor is missing.
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The subtlety here is the young jersey competition. As said here before, if you put yourself in the shoes of a team manager and imagine you have an ambitious, talented young rider on your books. They want leadership or protected status in a World Tour race, where do you send them first? You’ll use the Critérium du Dauphiné as a dress rehearsal for your Tour de France squad; ditto the Tour de Suisse. Other races don’t suit, Paris-Nice can be all about the crosswinds, Basque Country is Boss Level racing, the end of season race in China’s not much to offer and the BinckBank Tour or UAE Tour don’t really supply the obvious opportunities. The Tour of California used to work for younger riders. Romandie delivers here, it’s what’s called a course limpide in French, a term that doesn’t have an equivalent in English but think “clear, clean” as in a race with few traps, riders are able to make set piece efforts without being undone by crosswinds or narrow farm tracks. Think of a computer game boss level but with the difficulty set to medium than expert. Many big names have won the race, often before they were big.
Here’s the top-11 above, 11 so we can crowbar 18 year old Jan Christen there, the rider has signed a deal with UAE until 2027. It feels like there are young stars than the Carina Nebula. Matteo Jorgenson is reportedly going to Jumbo-Visma, local newspaper HLN in typical style reported this as a reinforcement for Wout van Aert’s classics ambitions with the rider fourth in the E3 Harelbeke joining. Of course he’s a bit more versatile and that’s what should make him an invaluable signing, with time people will be able to pronounce his name: he’s American not Danish or Austrian, and the “Jor” in Jorgenson is like the “Jor” in Jordan. Hopefully cycling editors are pronouncing Max Poole as they order staff to land an interview with a revelation of the spring. Cian Uijtdebroeks is quietly on the way up. Thomas Gloag already won the best young rider competition in Valenciana in February, now he’s among the World Tour and looks like a complete rider although descending trajectories could be improved. Juan Ayuso won the time trial, no bluffing or tactics there. Jayco-Al Ula have been discreet this year but Filippo Zana looks stronger ahead of the Giro. Oscar Onley delivered as well, his work shredded what was left on the front group high on the road to Thyon 2000. Lenny Martinez was 16th in the time trial stage, a very good result for a first year pro who’d be flyweight if he was a boxer and he was helping Pinot on the Thyon 2000 summit finish. Finn Fisher-Black is back after big crash injuries and 9th after team work for Yates. Asbjørn Hellemose gives Trek-Segafredo some cheer in the week they’ve shredded Tiberi’s contracy and seen Giulio Ciccone forced to sit out the Giro.
If the race gives us a glimpse of the future, does the race have a future? At times the local coverage was like a business report, honey to this blog as much as the scenery and sport or at least a substitute on a cloudy day towards a sprint finish. Speaking to Swiss TV, race organiser Richard Chassot said his annual budget is around 4.2 million Swiss Francs (about the same in Euros/Dollars) for the men’s and women’s races. Only he’s operating at a shortfall of about 200-300k Francs and only has reserves for another years or so. So the race is alright for 2024 but needs more funding if it is to survive. It this the sound of an alarm bell? Yes, it was notable this was an open topic of discussion in the race. But it’s also a call to local politicians to back the race which shows of Switzerland’s French speaking half, some relatively small subsidies from the cantonal, ie regional, government and things should be fine.
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Egan Bernal continues his comeback, he was spotted being dropped on the climb to Thyon then rode back to eighth place, a steady ride but at a high level. It’s hard to extrapolate too far but the signs seem gradually more encouraging and his pull on the final climb on Sunday helped eject many sprinters. He says he’s down to do the tours of Hungary and Norway, and if they go well, then probably the Tour de Suisse. Can we extrapolate if that goes well then he’s touring France next?
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Thibaut Pinot got one of those Pinot results, tantalisingly close but not there. Supporters should note it was an ideal day for him with cold weather and a long final summit finish, his speciality is starting slow on a long climb before getting more aggressive and fast for the final. He’s ready for the Giro.
Among other older riders Damiano Caruso seemed like a flower that bloomed during the race. Ready for the Giro too? Yes, although presumably for his diesel-style racing as he grinds his way to, say, fifth in the third week. Also have to mention Chris Froome who was being dropped before the sprinters on some climbs, perhaps he’s aiming for the Tour de France and able to pass on advice to younger riders last week but absent any communication to this effect it’s a bit like watching an old lion pad around a enclosure in the zoo rather than rule the savannah.
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The sprints suited riders called Ethan, with Vernon and then Hayter taking wins. Vernon impressed on Stage 1 when he got over some big climbs that ejected other riders, despite being a big rider although he’s what they call longiligne in French. It wasn’t a dense field so Romain Bardet was hustling for time bonuses at times before Fernando Gaviria won the final stage by launching audaciously early.
All roads lead to Rome, or at least the Abruzzo region and the Giro’s grande partenza. Hopefully nobody else is ambushed by Covid is doing the rounds. Several riders are testing positive ahead of the Giro both in Romandie and elsewhere. Case numbers in Europe are harder to come by but there doesn’t seem to be a wave, it’s just bubbling away, a persistent risk for the peloton. If you were in charge of Quickstep or Jumbo you’d invest in a private jet to get your riders to the start and take every measure to avoid infection.
Kazuyasu Tayama is a master craftsman when it comes to making cast iron kettles, often important and cherished utensils in Japan, a land of tea and cold winters. When he started work as an apprentice in a small workshop at the age of 16, it took him decades before he was allowed to pour the molten iron to make a kettle. Metal work requires practice but a lot of Tayama’s early years involved little teaching, he was expected to learn by watching and gradually assimilate the techniques needed.
Now you’re wondering what on earth Japanese kettles are doing on a cycling blog? Well watching TV a year ago revealed Tayama’s story and it supplied a remarkable example of a lengthy apprenticeship. In cycling things aren’t as exaggerated but many a rider started out the same way, they’d become a professional cyclist in their early 20s and hope to reach their peak years later, accumulating experience and wisdom before becoming masters. As you read this you can probably hear the sound of an iron kettle smashing through a glass ceiling because today riders can turn pro out of the junior ranks and win World Tour races while still a teenager.
Apprenticeships as a pro today seem almost over and in part because of what comes before. There’s recruitment and, for want of a better word, pre-recruitment. Once upon a time a rider might appear on a team’s radar if they got good results as a junior, they’d be followed and perhaps supported as an Under-23 rider and should the results keep coming, sign a pro contract. Plus each team would have a natural hinterland to hire from, Movistar for example could get the pick of Iberian riders because it knew the Spanish scene well. Now early results as a junior can still attract attention and open doors but now recruitment is often more about mining for the hidden gems rather than the polished diamonds. If this was motorsport, a team would love to sign a junior who can jump on a 125cc bike and beat their peers who ride 250cc motors as it would suggest skill and ability. In pro cycling the opposite is true: better to find the rider with a “big engine” who just hasn’t mastered it yet. So results can open doors but recruitment now is also dependent on power data from a rider from training and racing and teams invite riders in for lab tests so their physiological data can be measured.
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This isn’t new though. After all young Peter Sagan after all visited the Quick-Step team back in 2009 and set some amazing numbers in a lab test but they didn’t sign him, Liquigas got him instead thanks to Sagan’s mountain bike links to Cannondale. However back then the matrix of requirements was different, impressive numbers were part of the mix but so was the time, attitude and money as Patrick Lefevere said Sagan wanted too much money while today teams can get involved in bidding wars for juniors. Physiological data has become the sine qua non.
The development process is shifted too. While a neo-pro was expected to learn the ropes, much of this is now moved to the U-23 and junior ranks who give riders structured training programs and more from an early age. Indeed this is testimony to whole shift in the sport where training rides are full of targetted efforts rather than just a long ride with some sprints or a couple of mountain passes. Every pro rider has a coach and this has moved down to other ranks too.
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If you’ve got it, flaunt it
The key ingredient to win a bike race isn’t experience, although that can help. Instead it’s physiology, the ability to push the pedals hard. You can imagine an ironwork apprentice spends a good while making the tea for colleagues but even if they sit down to learn it takes a long time to master metalwork. In cycling, why have someone with prodigious physical talents doing the equivalent of sweeping the workshop floor when they could be making masterpieces?
So many other things that used to be acquired knowledge are now not just shared, but programmed. Whereas once upon a time on a Saturday in March each year a rider would roll out of Milan with a belly full of pasta and the hope of making it to Sanremo, now each rider’s breakfast can be dosed according to the efforts they’ll make in the day. The GPS bike computer can be programmed with regular alerts to eat gels and bars at set intervals. One way to beat your rivals was to learn the course of a race in order to exploit a change of wind direction, or to recon a climb in order to know what was around the next hairpin, now alot of this can be computed via Veloviewer’s Race Hub.
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Categories
One observation is the breakthrough of young riders seems to vary by type. A stage racer can reach the top sooner because of the set piece efforts required, a summit finish can be reduced to a watts per kilo contest. Sprinters seem to need more time, to learn the ins and outs of sprint trains and to build a rapport with their leadout. Fabio Jakobsen got some wins in his first year but consistency came later and his first Tour de France stage came in his fifth season as a pro although crashes and injuries probably delayed this, he and other sprinters don’t win big from day one. Sprinting is just less measurable, yes peak power counts but it’s also about delivering this after a five hour ride, and plenty of skills too, indeed you wonder if Mark Cavendish would be hired today as his power numbers were not stupendous. A time trial specialist has more measurable skills as the first ingredient is power, yet there’s research and development into the most aero position and testing out combinations of positions, clothing, helmets and other kit which is also an iterative process of refinement although funding hastens this.
Hierarchy
If a young rider’s chances of winning are greater than those of the elder riders then it makes sense to back the newcomer. Easier said than done but teams can work to align interests, to make sure that if there’s a Vingegaard-Roglič scenario that the elder is happy to help the other. This can be attitude but win bonuses and other payments can help. At the very top there’s a self-fulfilling role as a rider working for the likes of Pogačar or Evenepoel is contributing to wins that in turn attract sponsors which raises the team’s budgets and so the salary goes up, contract renewals come more easily.
Back in the day
Turning pro hasn’t involved a formal apprenticeship but 20 years ago a promising rider would be signed but typically kept away from the team doping programme for the first two years so this was a sign of an implicit apprentice system. Now that teams are not systematically “preparing” their riders this has gone so young riders are on a more equal basis.
Start early, finish early?
If success comes earlier, will other things follow faster too? It does make you wonder if by the time some riders reach the age of 28 they’ll feel like they’ve done it all and the thrill has gone, the job is more intense and the flipside of being 21 and a millionaire is having food portions weighed and every training ride remotely monitored by performance staff. Put simply it’s not as fun, there’s less room for improvisation. Perhaps Peter Sagan, him again, comes to mind as he arguably had his last bumper season aged 29 and by then already seemed to be a marketing mannequin for corporate brands rather than the upstart phenomenon. His career arc does show something that a rider can burst onto the scene but then remain, and only slowly depart. The exit is not as sudden as they’ve become an asset and don’t have to obtain the same results to be valuable. Put simply they can earn big bucks just because they’re famous.
You can see teams have pipelines, for example Jumbo-Visma have riders being lined up to replace Jonas Vingegaard in 3-4 years. UAE might have Pogačar but they’ve also got Juan Ayuso who is four years younger, and have signed Jan Christen until 2027 too.
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Rejects
For every wunderkind there might be riders who don’t breakthrough even if they have the watts. Maybe the job is not for them or the subtle things they still need to learn don’t come easy. Teams paying top dollar for promise are at risk for not being able to convert this, their budget is eaten up without the returns sponsors crave.
Experience still counts
Not everything is being swept away, there are still old orders. Nobody turns pro and takes a tilt at the Tour de France right away. There are bridges to be crossed, stages to be ridden. Even the grand tours have a pattern where a young rider might start the Vuelta as their first grand tour, they may do the Giro then as a team leader and if things have proved successful then graduate to the Tour.
If I was a magazine editor, I’d commission a long piece along the lines of “things I wished I knew before” where experienced pros could imagine advising their younger selves. Regardless of how much talent a rider has, experience and wisdom still has a place. Would Tadej Pogačar have won the Ronde van Vlaanderen without Matteo Trentin’s work? Probably not. Wout van Aert ought to win Paris-Roubaix or the Ronde one day and when he does, you can imagine a tale of patience and experience as well as brute force. Primož Roglič looks almost invincible in one week stage races but he did serve an apprenticeship as a World Tour pro, first able to win time trials but the road race wins came later after he’d mastered positioning. Remco Evenepoel had the legs but you can see how he’s grown mentally from the interviews he’s given and the Belgian media has touched on how he’s required psychological support to deal with the pressure… of the Belgian media.
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White under Yellow
One aspect that hasn’t caught up is the various young rider competitions for the best Under-25 rider. The idea has been to highlight a promising rider while giving those considered physically and mentally immature a subsidiary target to aim for during a stage race. It’s not new that a rider wins both white and yellow, think Fignon in 1983 or Ullrich in 1997 but they were breakthrough wins, exceptions. Likewise in the Giro with Berzin in 1994 or Quintana in 2014 where this race has been a stepping stone to the Tour. But it feels like the days when the white jersey competition rhymed with anticipation are over, instead the competition can almost be invisible. Is it a concern for organisers, is the competition they host invisible and devalued? Or maybe it works in reverse, are sponsors delighted to see a champion of today in their jersey? There ought to be some reflection among organisers and perhaps trials in smaller races of other contests, a subject to return to.
Conclusion
Tires are wider, clothes fit tighter, more is eaten. This might sound like the path taken by an ageing cyclist but it’s actually the evolution and rejuvenation of pro cycling in recent years too. Along with this, the pattern of turning pro and gradual improvement seems old and overtaken, although this is a vision distorted by the precocious success of a handful of riders. Many if not most riders still improve and experience can count. However the hunt for talent has intensified and riders are increasingly hired at a younger age than before, to the point where lingering the U23 ranks can be a sign of stagnation. Some of these riders are also winning in the pro ranks from an early of age.
Pro cyclists never served a formal apprenticeship, neo-pros could be discarded, but there was a period of learning by assimilation and gathering experience. Much of this is over, information that once required empiricism and absorption is now obtained online, or shared rather than preserved. Whereas teams would sign a rider and still learn plenty about them in the following two seasons, now they know plenty about them, whether through years of physiological data or via seasons spent on feeder teams. The result is riders who might have once targetted a white jersey competition are taking yellow and teenagers are winning World Tour races. It’s a palpable shift.
While we make comparisons between the likes of Tadej Pogačar and Eddy Merckx, one thing that remains to be seen is longevity. Merckx appeared and dominated for years. The young riders we see at the top today may not want to stay around as long and could equally be swept aside by new replacements. So while Tayama-san served years learning about ironwork, maybe we should look to his kettles instead because no sooner has one masterpiece been created, he’s thinking about making a new and better one.
Remco Evenepoel goes clear La Redoute, Tom Pidcock gives chase and will manage to get onto his back wheel but he won’t last long. From here on Evenepoel’s biggest rivals were the rain and the cold but he stayed away to take a prestigious second consecutive win in Liège.
Normally the run down to Bastogne lets a breakaway form and that’s it. But Tadej Pogačar crashed, an incident with Mikkel Honoré which seemed to involve a pothole and a double puncture for the Dane, taking Pogačar with him although it all happened before the TV coverage started and none of the photo agencies seem to have any images either for now. Pogačar rode back to the peloton and it looked like it could be a Milan-Sanremo repeat where an early crash proved without incident. Alas he’d soon quit out of precaution, went to hospital and was later diagnosed with a fractured scaphoid that requires surgery. He was due to take a break, just not this kind.
Absent the UAE team, Soudal-Quickstep took over as the climbs approached. It signalled intent but also a linear race, to discourage attacks and shrink the peloton prior to an inevitable Evenepoel attack. Still Jan Tratnik, Magnus Sheffield and Valentin Madouas gave them the slip but the latter pair couldn’t or wouldn’t stay with Tratnik’s pace and the Jumbo-Visma rider built up a minute’s lead.
Tratnik’s not an explosive rider but is a tractor who can ride hard for hours and his presence up the road was a menace for Quickstep, they seemed to be burning through riders all while the Slovenian rider was opening up a gap. Yet this wasn’t the Wolfpack in all its ferocity: Mauro Schmid was ill but started, Julian Alaphilippe a late pick and so on. Besides their toil delivered a roll call of victims: Enric Mas, Mikel Landa, Alexey Lutsenko and plenty more were ejected, while the likes of David Gaudu and Neilson Powless were left dejected thanks to allergies and punctures.
If Tratnik was taking time on the breakaway and peloton alike he was still out solo while both groups in front and behind of him weren’t using so much energy and having shredded the breakaway soon had only Simone Velasco of Astana for company. Meanwhile Soudal-Quickstep also had the relative good fortune where if one of their riders was in trouble on a climb there were able to get back on the descent and do another pull which in turn spared the next rider. Some teams with more riders could have tried to turn the screw here so that the likes of Alaphilippe and Vervaeke were ejected for good but it was also something people could observe on TV but harder to spot in the group especially as the rain started to fall and concentration on the wheel in front become ever more important, especially on the frantic descent to Remouchamps and the start of the La Redoute climb.
Ilan van Wilder led at the start of the climb and set such a pace that it looked like the Strava KoM was bound to fall. As the gradient began to bite and Evenepoel stayed seated while everyone else was standing on the pedals. An uprising felt inevitable. Evenepoel’s winning move came in three parts: his first attack on La Redoute lasted two seconds as his rear wheel skidded on the white paint so he sat back down. He went again and opened up a gap but hadn’t quite made the break and Tom Pidcock got across to him on section across to the “new” climb to Cornémont. Pidcock shook his head to say he wouldn’t work. If the Briton was feeling fine was this the right move because he had team mates behind, or the wrong one as a sprint with Evenepoel might suit? An academic question as the third and final part of the attack came and Evenepoel shed Pidcock to go solo, leaving the Ineos rider to get caught by the valiant Trek-Segafredo tandem of Skjelmose and Ciccone.
Game over? Never say never but it’s Evenepoel’s modus operandi, to get a gap and turn on the power to stay away. It’s exactly how he won the previous year. He was strong on the climbs and the flat but took things safe downhill and in the bends, it seemed the only risk he was taking was wearing white shorts on a rainy day.
If it seemed Evenepoel had it sewn up, the race was far from done. A sizeable group formed behind as Ben Healy was making moves. Almost too many but he kept making them and must be the revelation of the spring. He got clear on the Roche-aux-Faucons climb with Santiago Buitrago and towards the top a resurgent Pidcock bridged across. As good as Healy is, he’s said out loud he can’t sprint and finished two seconds behind Pidcock and Buitrago… who somehow ended up on the wrong side of Evenepoel for the podium ceremony.
The Verdict
A race sans Tadej Pogačar means we wonder if he could have been a factor in the finale, presumably, probably even if he’d been looking more tired of late but to speculate further is to waffle about Liège. Pogačar’s absence didn’t unlock the race of course, it left Remco Evenepoel without competition. Pogačar or not, the plan was always to attack on La Redoute as Van Wilder told Belgian TV afterwards. Inevitable yet also impossible for his rivals, nobody could follow when he launched and the only rider who could get across to him soon after was ejected minutes later. So we got Liège but no more baston as Evenepoel’s biggest enemies then became the wet roads and the cold in case he ran out of energy. He didn’t and for once Patrick Lefevere had something to smile about, his spring season saved again.
As the final spring classic with the obvious name winning it’s the how and why that keeps it interesting. Until recently Liège felt as tiring for spectators as the riders because the contenders tried to save energy for a late move, only here things happened with 30km to go and that’s been late compared to many other races. The exception this season was Sanremo which supplied a thrill for the final 6km. There’s always next year for Pogačar to spring on the Cipressa.
Now all roads lead to Rome as the Giro d’Italia awaits Evenepoel. Clearly his training has gone right and his team mates seem boosted by their leader. He’ll take even more confidence into the race but the start is still two weeks away and the finish is in five weeks. Which raises a nagging, background alarm bell because we’re already expecting a duel in May with another Slovenian in Primoz Roglič rather than, say, six riders in search of a maglia rosa. It only takes one crash or suchlike from these two and instead of an afternoon the suspense for three weeks could vanish.
All photos via ASO/Maxime Delobel
Pogačar. Need you read more? This blog doesn’t sell clicks so that’s up to you but he’s not invincible and the prospect of the best rider in the world right now versus the world champion this Sunday is enticing.
Also this year’s route has an added “hidden” climb, plus there’s all the usual information like weather and the TV timings below too.
The Course: 258km from Liège to Bastogne and back. There’s plenty that’s familiar on the course but this year’s edition has some subtle differences and one might be crucial.
The early phase is the ride south to Bastogne but the route heads for more hills than usual, nothing savage to split the field, just added vertical gain. It means the first marked climb of La Roche-en-Ardenne is approached via a descent rather than the flat as usual.
The route becomes familiar with the procession of climbs as it’s one every few kilometres. Most of the climbs are 1-2km at 10% but they’re irregular and make riders pay for being in a bad position. This in turn makes the descents risky most are not too technical but riders jostle for position ahead of the next climb.
The big difference this year is La Redoute which has the same approach and the steep open climb as usual, 2km at close to 9%. But unlike past years were there was a left turn at the top, a false flat and the descent to Sprimont, now the race turns right. It goes over to Hotchamps and there’s more climbing, 1km at 5.5% with a middle section at 7%. If you’re familiar with the later climb of the Roche-aux-Faucons, it’s a similar thing with the marked steep climb that’s then chased with a “hidden” drag up and this could be the place to do plenty of damage. Then comes an exposed section and the Côte des Forges which is a steady climb on a wide road and then a fast descent to the Ourthe valley.
The Côte de La Roche-aux-Faucons is next, it’s not a classic climb, first used in 2008 but very selective. Listed as 1.5km at 10%, this is hard enough but after a brief descent of a few seconds it starts rising again to the village of Boncelles and this second section is 1.6km long with a gradient of 5.5% which isn’t steep but with all the climbing before, both cumulatively in the day and the sharp effort just before, it’s a difficult moment and where the winning move often forms and those beaten can’t or won’t chase. You can see this second part of the climb on the profile below. As the final climb it’s the make-or-break moment for many.
The Finish: it’s hard to close any gaps over the top of the climb and down the tricky descent into Liège, arguably the most scenic way to town as the woodland avoids views of the dilapidated steel works. The comes the flat quay road beside the river Meuse.
The Contenders
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) fits the bill. He’s good on the climbs, he’s got a fast sprint to win from a group and his team are looking increasingly effective. Of course the kicker is that he’s on a level above the rest, not invincible but almost this season. He’s still in form with this as his last race before a long break so it’s all in for the Ardennes triplé. When Mattias Skjelmose and Mikel Landa finished the Flèche Wallonne on Wednesday neither was seen theatrically banging their handlebars in frustration, they knew the remaining podium spots were as good as it got. Pogačar’s victory on Wednesday sets things up for Sunday because while he could have tried a long range attack then, he let his team do the work instead so he’s fresher for the weekend.
The rest…
It’s not easy for the field to beat Pogačar to put it mildly, the course suits him and each time you think of a world class contender the next thought is he’d roll them in the sprint. So how to beat him? Either move before he does, anticiper, or just fire some team mates forward to fatigue his team so he’s not sitting in a Sedan chair all the way to the foot of the Roche-aux-Faucons. Also if he attacks early then don’t collaborate with him; in last week’s Amstel some riders in the breakaway with 80km to go were pulling on the front like pallbearers at their own funeral, although this work was also giving them an option on the podium, a top-10 or just a sackload of UCI points.
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Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step) is said to be flying at the moment and if he’s stopped posting his training rides on Strava, the word is he’s been rustling climbing records on Teide. So far so good but how to win on home roads? He went solo last year with a searing attack over the top of La Redoute but will be marked closely this time. If he’s away in a group his chances of winning are going to be reduced, even his boss Patrick Lefevere was critical of the way he lost the Volta a Catalunya last month, “erreurs de jeunesse” he said. Still there’s a lot of power under the hood and the finish line is nothing technical. Past winner Julian Alaphilippe starts but the question is whether he finishes, he’s over injuries and illness but brings experience rather than form and will be helping Evenepoel but he can sprint well.
Tom Pidcock (Ineos) doesn’t have the win rate but he’s knocking on the door of superstar status in the sport. He’s been playing catch-up this spring since crashing out of Tirreno-Adriatico but things seem to be coming together. Tired in the Flèche, if he’s recovered he’ll find a course to suit including some descents where he can take time and pressure rivals. If there’s a sprint remember he’s pushed the likes of Wout van Aert to a photofinish in the Amstel before.
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EF Education-Easypost have the spring revelation in Ben Healy and he’s a form pick but in L’Equipe today he says he is “nul au sprint” and regardless of the exact adjective he used in English during the interview, he’ll want to arrive solo but easier said than done. Neilson Powless and Esteban Chaves give them more depth and it’ll be interesting to see their plan.
Trek-Segafredo bring an interesting team with Mathias Skjelmose, Giulio Ciccone and Bauke Mollema. Do they sit tight and hope for the first two to give them a numerical advantage later as they’re clearly in form, or play riskier cards?
Jumbo-Visma aren’t the same force in the Ardennes but Tiesj Benoot and Attila Valter have a shot.
Quinten Hermans was on the podium last year but hasn’t looked as incisive this season for Alpecin-Deceuninck, Søren Kragh Andersen is always a good card to play.
Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-hansgrohe) wants to be a grand tour contender but can still be punchy on the climbs, but enough to go solo? That’s hard and he’s not an obvious sprinter. Andreas Kron (Lotto-Dstny) is a strong rider but an infrequent winner but the form is there for a top-5, Maxim Van Gils keeps getting solid results too. Romain Bardet (DSM) looked lively on the Mur de Huy and if anyone can launch a move on the climb, he had the staying power to finish in the top-10 and Liège is a race he’s enjoyed over the years. Mikel Landa (Bahrain) is having a good season so far but converting visibility into a one-day Monument win is another. Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) is versatile but will probably find his climbing limit here, likewise Matej Mohorič (Bahrain).
| | Tadej Pogačar | | | Tom Pidcock | | | Remco Evenepoel | | | Skjelmose, Benoot, Mas, Powless, Healy | | | Kron, Bardet, Valter, Ciccone, Lutsenko |
Weather: mostly cloudy and with rain showers, a top temperature of 15°C. A pesky wind of about 20-30km/h from the south is forecast meaning a tailwind for the return but as the route snakes around the countryside it’ll mean parts of the course are exposed to crosswinds, especially atop the climbs.
TV: host channel RTBF lists coverage of “Liège-Bastogne-Liège à bicyclette” from 10.55am CEST and the men’s race live video should begin around 1.00pm on Eurosport/GCN or the channel you watch the Tour de France on. The series of climbs begins around 2.30pm, tune in from here on to see if Pogačar attacks from afar… although it’s more likely he lets his team soften up the field first. The finish is forecast for 4.55pm CEST.
Women’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège: Demi Vollering can do the Ardennes triplé before Pogačar and SD Worx have a stranglehold over the spring classics. The race starts at 8.30am and finishes at 12.30pm CEST. As you’ve probably worked out by now, ProCyclingUK.com does a knowledgeable preview of women’s races so click here for Liège.
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After two years of bother the organisers promise they’ve upgraded the photofinish equipment so there’ll be no doubting the winner. Perhaps they won’t need all this given Tadej Pogačar is riding? It’s a tough course where he’ll find plenty of rivals.
The Route: 253.6km and all in a corner of the Netherlands and not the low country but Limburg, the hilly part. It’s relative as the race rarely gets beyond 200 metres altitude but there are 3,200 metres of vertical gain spread across 33 marked climbs.
One difficulty you don’t see from the profile nor map is the mix of narrow roads and tight corners, it’s part part-labyrinth, part-Mario Kart course, part street furniture showroom. It means those at the front get to chose their line while anyone beyond, say, 20th wheel is stuck in a cycle of braking and sprinting. Local knowledge and a couple of strong team mates help here, arguably more than the Ronde and Liège.
The Finish: the Keutenberg and then the Cauberg to cross the finish line. Then it’s out into the apple orchards and and the Bemelerberg climb, a soft gradient but sometimes just enough to split the field. Over the top it’s via Mathieu van der Poel Allée and to the finish on a big wide road.
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The Contenders
The organisers have hired a different company to handle the timing and photofinish in order to avoid the hiccups of the past two years but maybe they need not worry as Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is in town. Of the Fantastic Five, only he starts so at least he doesn’t have to worry about Mathieu van der Poel. The course suits with its succession of hilly climbs, he’s handy for a sprint in a group and he’s binned the mythology of having to learn the lay of the land in the Ronde. That said the Amstel course is more technical and so he can’t be too nonchalant here especially as he’s only started once in 2019 but didn’t finish. Plus while he’s spoken about racing on to Liège the following Sunday he’s said the results depend on being able to hold onto form.
Tom Pidcock (Ineos) back to a race where he was less photogenic in 2021 when Wout van Aert just beat him to the line. Last year’s winner Michał Kwiatkowski was dropped in Wednesday’s Brabantse Pijl but he’s got the race craft and could surprise, if not he’ll be there to guide Pidcock.
Jumbo-Visma are the home team but won’t have it easy and their best riders aren’t here, no Wout van Aert, no Primož Roglič. Tiesj Benoot and Attila Valter team up again after their Strade Bianche ride where you can pick the letter “t” or “l” to place after due- depending on how you saw things. Both can work well here with Benoot as the battering ram and Valter as the more incisive rider for the climbs.
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Bora-hansgrohe have Ide Schelling and Sergio Higuita with the former an outsider capable of taking a flyer, a Schelling versnelling, while Higuita won a stage of the Tour of the Basque Country and not by scaling a wall or ramp but bossing a bunch sprint, albeit one reduced thanks to some climbing.
Briefly announced as the winner last year Benoît Cosnefroy (Ag2r Citroën) is in form but faces the perpetual problem of riders who target “the Ardennes” races in there are only four races here and competition is fierce. Still he’s world class on his day and is suited to these sharp climbs.
Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) fell ill for the Ronde but looked ripe for Paris-Camembert and the longer the race, the better he’ll go. David Gaudu’s here too after a decent Basque Country result despite being ill while Romain Grégoire’s worth watching.
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Neilson Powless (EF Education) is having a great season and when he got his first win in the GP La Marseillaise he said his goal was really the Ardennes. The terrain suits as he climbs well, the hard part will be positioning and if it comes down to a sprint, his rivals could be quicker. Ben Healy is climbing well, Mikkel Honoré is strong but Andrea Piccolo should be their second option only his form doesn’t look so hot.
A hilly race for a punchy Dutch climber? Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) has featured in the race but how to win. Mattias Skjelmose is another option with Quinn Simmons and Toms Skujiņš bringing more support.
Alpecin-Deceuninck must be the most gravity-challenged team in the World Tour, especially now Jay Vine’s left. They can clean up in flat races but it’s harder for them in the hills. Søren Kragh Andersen, Robert Stannard are their best options but how to win? SKA can try to float away during a lull.
With the pressure to perform easing now the Flemish calendar’s done, Soudal-Quickstep have a better chance here, plus a team that resembles their “wolfpack” style with younger riders able to take risks so Mauro Schmid and Andrea Bagioli have a shot. Rémi Cavagna is in form too and was decent on the climbs in the Brabantse Pijl before deciding to ride up one on the pavé standing on the pedals while his breakaway companions rode up the smooth gutter, seated and he blew up trying to match them.
Intermarché-Circus-Wanty have a solid team with Kobe Goosens, Rui Costa, Lilian Calmejane and Lorenzo Rota but translating their Majorcan wins into a World Tour victory is a big ask, Costa is normally the best bet – fourth in Strade Bianche – but doesn’t seem in form now.
Finally is this race too hilly for Matej Mohorič (Bahrain) as he can get a result but risks being fried by the finale. Jayco-Al Ula are having a discreet classics campaign to put it politely, but Matteo Sobrero is a rising talent, a TT rider capable of more but he’d have to take some long range move. Lotto-Dstny’s Andrea Kron is due a big result one day but how to get past all the names cited above? Movistar’s Alex Aranburu is a fast-finisher if he can be there in the finish. Astana are beginning to pick up and Alexey Lutsenko and Samuele Battistella are worth watching but translating Lutsenko’s Sicilia summit finish from Friday to this is a big leap.
| | – | | | Tadej Pogačar | | | Tom Pidcock, Benoît Cosnefroy | | | Neilson Powless, Valentin Madouas, Tiesj Benoot | | | Valter, Higuita, Schmid, Mohorič, Lutsenko, Kron, Kwiatkowski |
Weather: cloudy and some rain showers, a top temperature of 12°C.
TV: the race starts at 10.50am and the finish is for 5.00pm CEST. It’s on NOS locally and Eurosport/GCN for most other territories.
Ardennes? the Amstel Gold Race isn’t in the Ardennes. Cycling sometimes label it as an “Ardennes classic” because it’s hilly, on at the same time of year, and not far from the Ardennes. It’s a heuristic but it’s a wrong one. The Ardennes are a western part of the larger Eifel mountain range. The Ardennes begin far to the south of this race, think Liège and instead the Limburg hills are clay and sand deposits. Now you know.
Women’s Amstel: this starts at 10.15 CEST and finishes around 2.20pm with TV coverage from midday onwards. For a good preview, see procyclinguk.com’s Amstel picks
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The Zaaf team races on, despite unpaid wages. Reports in the newspaper AS say that payments will be made to riders but we’ll see. It’s problematic for the riders here but also shows the gap between the World Tour and the rest where the top teams enjoy regulatory protection and oversight while the lesser ones have a much wilder time and this is much more pronounced for the women.
It’s worth remembering this is a Continental team, so it’s not subject to the World Tour rulebook (nor the Pro Continental rulebook, as the men have this extra tier) and so there’s less regulation and fewer protections for the riders. Conti team are overseen by their national federation, in this case Spain’s RFEC. One of the problems seems to have been is that the team hired extra riders in December which bumped up the wage bill but reports say the wage guarantee (think a bail bond for the salaries) wasn’t revised to match increased liability so even if the guarantee is drawn down it might not cover much. There’s a Catch-22 scenario where riders obviously don’t want to race without being paid, yet they need to race in order show performance to attract interest from other teams. Yet it’s not so simple as if wages are unpaid, the support at races is also lacking so just trying to perform is harder.
The list of differences are a whole blog post’s worth but it shows the massive gap between the World Tour and outside for the women’s teams. While the men’s squads raced to get into, or stay in, their World Tour last year largely for for sporting and marketing reasons, for women it’s very different as a team that moves up sees its riders granted all sorts of protections, guarantees and oversight. It means plenty for the sponsors too but the female athletes stand to gain or lose a lot depending on how their teams fare this year. The chart above shows the current standings as of Tuesday this week, the top-15 at the end of the season – above the red line – qualify and the teams with asterisks are the Conti squads eligible for promotion.
One rider that’s left already is Audrey Cordon-Ragot has moved to the Human Powered Health team, an ambitious squad to keep an eye on. HPH is a subsidiary brand of United Healthcare, currently the 11th biggest company by market capitalisation in the world.
One added disappointment of the Zaaf team’s demise is it associates the name of Zaaf with this negative outcome. Say “Zaaf” and you may well think of a tottering team with unpaid wages. Instead how aboutAbdel-Kader Zaaf? The Algerian cyclist was the French amateur champion in the 1940s and rode the Tour de France four times. Apparently the sponsor of the team Riad Belatreche is a grandson of Zaaf so he’s launched the team as a tribute. Nicknamed the Casseur de Baraque“, a phrase hard to translate literally so think “blowing the doors off” or “bringing the house down”, Zaaf was a regular attacker, the post-war Thomas De Gendt if you like, and also a Tour lanterne rouge. In 1950 in he collapsed in the heat of a Tour stage between Perpignan and Nîmes. Slumped by the road locals sprayed him with wine to revive him and he got up and rode off, only in the wrong direction and found the bunch coming towards him. An amusing anecdote and one that’s got several versions with embellishments and exaggerations. Anyway he was more than the guy who rode backwards and his name is certainly more than a flakey team.
Meanwhile in France – where all Conti teams have extra national rules to ensure everyone is salaried and effectively professional – today sees the first of three races in eastern France with the Classic Grand Besançon Doubs. There’s always been a Tour du Doubs race in this area and the organisers seem to have thought if they’ve got the peloton in the region for a weekend, they might as well have them for a long weekend. Today’s L’Equipe says it’s also part of Thibaut Pinot’s farewell tour – he lives nearby – and while he says he’s focussed on performance and the upcoming Giro d’Italia, he’s skipping the Tour of the Alps to race on home roads.
The Giro? If you want all the stage profiles on one page, see inrng.com/giro and there along with more info about the course and more. It’s a work-in-progress for now pending publication of the race rulebook with its scales for the points and mountains competitions and more but if you want lots of info on one page, it’s waiting.
One thing that’s harder to find ahead of the Giro is Remco Evenepoel’s training on Strava. He’s been sharing plenty but as his big appointment looms he’s not uploading his rides for public viewing any more. A team manager Klaas Lodewyck tells Het Nieuwsblad that “people know enough” by now. Perhaps he’s doing more specific efforts now, or just that he and his entourage want to keep a degree of mystery ahead of the race. Or save him from pressure as a rest day or a slow pace risks generating stories back back home.
Finally the transfer market’s busy. Christophe Laporte is happy at Jumbo-Visma with a report he’ll renew his contract and turned down a generous offer from Ag2r Citroën… despite Jumbo reportedly quitting the team so Laporte and team management alike must be pretty confident about the team’s future. Ag2r Citroën is clearly in the market for a big name rider now that Greg Van Avermaet’s contract is up and there’s beaucoup budget to spare. Do they try to tempt Julian Alaphilippe away from Quick-Step where Patrick Lefevere might be happy to unload him? Or make eye contact with Pavel Sivakov? That’s just one team in the news today. A lot of riders are out of contract across the peloton this year – before anyone thinks “sure, many are every year” last winter saw few big moves beyond Richard Carapaz, this year just has more churn – so it’s a defining period for the next couple of seasons. Soudal-Quickstep is at a crossroads needs a refresh for their classics team but 2024 is unlikely to see a big change. Who is Ineos’s best GC rider these days, if you answer Dani Martinez he’s on the market too. Anyway expect a lot of transfer talk in the news from now until the summer as teams find ways to take on the Fantastic Five.
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Mathieu van der Poel leaves the Carrefour de l’Arbre pavé sector solo while arch-rival Wout van Aert is forced to stop because of a puncture. This was the final, decisive moment that gave Van der Poel the win but came after a series of events that worked in his favour to the detriment of Van Aert.
A tailwind and so much for third time lucky, it seemed it took 27 attacks before a small group could open up a gap but that only lasted a few minutes. Even going by TV footage which didn’t show all the attacks given they also cut to video at the rear, the shots of cathedrals and landscapes, you lost count after the fiftieth visible attack. This was not a matter of arithmetic but anarchy. Amid the chaos though you could discern a plan or two. Alpecin-Deceuninck were provocative with the likes of Silvan Dillier; Jumbo-Visma were defensive, using Edoardo Affini to chase. The first 100km were covered in two hours because of all of this.
A move got clear as the first pavé sector loomed, seemingly many in the peloton needed to urinate before the crucial next phase. This couldn’t be done too too close to the cobbles because by then many would be pacing their leaders into position so a brief window opened up and Juri Hollmann (Movistar), Jonas Koch (Bora-Hansgrohe), Sjoerd Bax (UAE) and Derek Gee (Israel-PremierTech) jumped through it, with Nils Eekhoff of DSM trying to chase. It looked tentative rather than menacing and risked being swept up by the time the cobbles came.
Come the crashes. Even in the dry conditions the pavé are pernicious and the gutter perilous. Among the fallers was past winner Peter Sagan, one among many in trouble and from here the only sighting of the Soudal-Quickstep team was when they were having mechanicals or being dropped. Harsh? Yes but take your pick among many other teams who would also be out of the picture too.
Jumbo-Visma weren’t immune to misfortune. Wout van Aert had a puncture with 110km to go. Far from the finish and no hurry… only he and his team had other plans. He got back, rode up to the front and minutes later the race caught fire on the Haveluy to Wallers cobbled section when Jumbo-Visma attacked. Traditionally teams try to pace leaders into the Arenberg to get them ahead of any crashes but this was an attack and an attempt to distance rivals as well as risk. Suddenly Van Aert, Laporte, Van der Poel were clear with Stefan Küng, John Degenkolb and the surprise of neo-pro musketeer Madis Mihkels. With hindsight this move was perfect as the participants hauled themselves clear of the carnage.
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The Arenberg section felled many riders including last year’s winner Van Baarle and the ensuing traffic jam delayed more. Mads Pedersen made it through and got across to the lead and soon after Max Walscheid, Laurenz Rex and Alpecin pair of Jasper Philipsen and Gianni Vermeersch made it too. With these additions, a subtraction as Christophe Laporte was undone a puncture in the Arenberg trench and out while Alpecin-Deceuninck and Intermarché-Circus-Wanty had numbers while Jumbo-Visma didn’t. Numerical superiority is the Dutch team’s prime plan whether it’s the Galibier last summer, Geraardsbergen last February and probably Gruson here. Only Van Aert was now by himself.
Laporte got a spare and tried to chase but was eventually swept up. Soon he and team mate Van Hooydonck jumped clear of the bunch and were joined by Lotto’s Florian Vermeersch. A two minute gap to close? Well they couldn’t just sit back in the peloton and chat, plus their potato-hunting forced Alpecin-Deceuninck to drive the front group, thus allowing Van Aert to hang back.
Each cobbled sector seemed to shake loose a rider and the unheralded ones too, soon Koch was cooked, Bax went backwards and Rex was deposed to leave an all-star group of seven: Van der Poel and Philipsen, Van Aert, Küng, Ganna, Pedersen and Degenkolb. Degenkolb was the surprise traveller in the front wagon but as former winner of the race, plus a Roubaix stage winner in the Tour, he was very much a first-class ticket holder.
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Van der Poel was making several moves, including on the tarmac. Too much, too soon? It was a worry in the moment especially because a year ago he looked so strong then faded. If some of the others in the group wanted to win then it should have been them making these moves but the likes of Ganna and Küng were just holding on tight.
On the four and five star sectors Van der Poel and Van Aert looked like staff on a cruise ship during a storm, deftly navigating the bumps in the road while the likes of Ganna, Küng and Pedersen were stumbling around the course. This reached a culmination on the Carrefour de l’Arbre when Philipsen wobbled, forcing Van der Poel to move and this took down John Degenkolb but Van der Poel only lost a few pedal strokes.
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In the wake of the chaos Van Aert accelerated but only Van der Poel was coming across. It was an attack by Van Aert but the move said plenty about Van der Poel’s day, he could have been floored seconds earlier by a crash but instead was chasing down his arch rival.
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The two didn’t last long together. As the Carrefour section came to an end Van Aert was a few metres off Van der Poel’s wheel and his rear wheel flailing about: a rear wheel puncture and presumably his hopes and dreams were equally deflated. Van der Poel was solo and if there was still 18km to go, it felt like the result was a formality. He stayed clear for the win, able to celebrate a lap ahead in the velodrome with team mate Philipsen taking second place and Van Aert third.
The Verdict
An energetic race but one with few surprises. Paris-Roubaix often features riders with intriguing cameo roles and stories of partial resurrection where characters that haven’t quite been written out of the script can still flourish. This year’s edition was more Hollywood than art house, the final hour was an all-star billing that was reduced to a duel. The early breakaway barely existed, the day was all about the celebrities and the moves they made from Haveluy onwards.
More than any other classic Roubaix throws up shock results and you apply hindsight to explore how the winner triumphed. This year Van der Poel’s win requires little analysis, he was the strongest rider supported by a solid team, and boosted by the misfortunes of his rivals.
Was Van Aert’s Carrefour crevaison the decisive moment or the final straw? Some of the pre-race chat was about the adjustable inflation system being used by some Jumbo and DSM riders during the race which allows a rider a softer ride across the pavé and then a firmer tire for the tarmac. Yet for all the marginal gains Jumbo were repeatedly undone by that plague of pneumatics the plain puncture. Notionally the two Vans used the same tires but there’s plenty of difference in terms of set-up, with rims, pressure, foam, sealant and other choices contributing. And luck too. In the “Hell of the North” Van der Poel enjoyed a heavenly day.
Are you sitting comfortably? A traditional Paris-Roubaix awaits, after pandemic and electoral postponements, the race finally back to its traditional slot, and Easter Sunday one too. To add to the tradition, at least this century, it’ll be dry too.
The Route: 257km from Compiègne to Roubaix. To get to the cobbles there’s almost 100km on regular roads, including a few gentle climbs. All the course is exposed to the wind but conditions look calm for Sunday so last year’s crosswind ambush is unlikely to repeated.
It’s worth remembering that in this 257km race, 92% of the course ranges between tarmac and 3-star cobble sections, only 8% is the fearsome four and five star sections, it’s still a road race and plenty of action happens on the ordinary roads. Sectors are rated by difficulty but also a function of distance. So a short sector with stones jagged enough to puncture tires and dreams alike may not merit a diabolical rating, the second section at Templeuve comes to mind, it’s a brute but it’s short so only has two stars.
The Arenberg Forest is one of those self-fulfilling strategic points as riders rush to be at the front in case of a crash… which heightens the crash risk. It’s been tended by a herd of goats this year which doesn’t just provide ecological headlines and cute images, it’ll help the riders. To explain, in the past the authorities deployed weed killer and then heavy street-cleaning rotary brushes on trucks to clean the dead vegetation away from the pavé only this also gouged out the material between the stones making the edges even more pronounced. The caprine care this year means this will be a little less savage. Anyway, back to the sport and riders will know from here on if they’re on a good day or not.
Now the sectors come thick and fast as the route twists and turns across Le Nord, a grim corner of France whether it’s mythologised in the tales of Zola or the newspaper and TV bulletins of late. With 20km to go the crucial sectors of Camphin and then the Carrefour de l’Arbre arrive. This final one is five-star, two kilometres and the hardest part comes towards the end where it starts to climb and this is the crucial moment to make the difference.
The Finish: Held in the old velodrome, riders enter the 500m rough concrete track for one and half laps. The banking can be exploited by a rider lucid enough to remember how to sprint on a track, harder than it sounds after 250km.
The Contenders
Mathieu van der Poel is the obvious pick, albeit in a race that’s often full of surprises and traps so no five chainring-rating for him. He’s in sparkling form and packs a reassuring sprint. His Alpecin-Deceuninck team is able to support him but that’s as far as they go, they’re not going to bend the race to their will. He’s prone to nonchalance at times, at being out of place but the calmer weather conditions should make this less of a worry. He’ll be heavily marked but once on the pavé and things are lined out he can make his moves.
Wout van Aert has been on the receiving end of late but it’s still relative, fourth place in Flanders was a defeat by the expectations we place on him and Jumbo-Visma but the form is almost there. He’s been complaining about his knee but if he’s there for the finish, well by then everything will feel sore. It’s the last chance for him and the team to get the cobbled Monument they crave. The team bring back Dylan van Baarle whose form is unknown but he wouldn’t be starting if he wasn’t capable so he’s a contender, especially for a longer range move. Christophe Laporte can win this race as well, his ability to make intense efforts for two minutes counts for plenty and he’s fast in a sprint too.
Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) is the form pick, he was very strong in the Ronde but much like then, what to do with the other riders? He got the better of Van Aert in the sprint last Sunday but can he beat everyone? So many questions but perhaps it’s best not to overthink things and to just aim to be in the thick of the action in the final hour.
Filippo Ganna (Ineos) got a lot going for him. Time trial specialists have long found Paris-Roubaix to their liking and Ganna looks like a bigger version of three-time winner Fabian “Spartacus” Cancellara who won three times but often had to go solo because his sprint was a liability. Ganna however showed a new weapon in his armoury with that sprint in Sanremo and rivals will be wary of him in a sprint too. At 86kg the cobbles will almost bounce off him but that heightens the risk of mechanicals, even if today’s bike equipment mitigates plenty of this risk, his challenge is the hustle and bustle for position where despite his size he’s less than gladiatorial. Magnus Sheffield is an outsider worth watching too but has had a difficult spring campaign and more than any race Paris-Roubaix rewards experience or at least perseverance.
It feels like you can’t mention Soudal-Quickstep without bringing words like trouble, absence or decline but their team is arguably most suited to Paris-Roubaix, in part because Yves Lampaert (pictured left) and his diesel-style of racing, give him five metres and he could be a hard rider to bring back. Florian Sénéchal is the local who dreams of improving on his sixth place from 2019 but like many team mates has had a rough time while Davide Ballerini and Tim Merlier could surprise.
Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) was strong in the Ronde but as ever if he jumps everyone thinks he’s a great wheel to follow as he’s so strong and if they stay away, he shouldn’t be much of a problem in the sprint. Fred Wright (Bahrain) is in form again and capable of being in the front group while Matej Mohorič has made Paris-Roubaix his big goal after a strong performance last year.
Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) is back and by now the pressure has dropped, but so could his form and his weakness at times has been his brute force which has caused him to crash in corners, he might need more finesse for the pavé, team mate Florian Vermeersch was solid in the Ronde and now has a flat route to suit. Mikkel Bjerg is not normally been a cobbled classics guy but he’s got a giant engine and could be UAE’s best bet even if Matteo Trentin is in form and a crafty racer. Nils Politt (Bora-hansgrohe) has been visible in many spring classics, in part because he’s attacked solo at the wrong points, enjoying a spell in the limelight before being swamped but this could still pay off. Sep Vanmarcke (Israel) was third in Gent-Wevelgem and an outsider.
If last week’s Dutch word was anticiperen, in French it’s anticiper and the same principle applies. Many wins in Paris-Roubaix have come from the early breakaway and having riders up the road gives a team an option on the win and also having helpers up front to support leaders. We can have a course de mouvement, where wave after wave of attacks go at the start. Long shots who might slip into an early move with dreams of winning à la Van Summeren/Hayman include Guillaume Van Keirsbulck (Bingoal-WB), Edvald Boasson Hagen (Total Energies), Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X), Luke Durbridge (Jayco-Al Ula), Max Walscheid (Cofidis) or Greg Van Avermaet (Ag2r Citroën).
| | – | | | Mathieu van der Poel | | | Filippo Ganna, Mads Pedersen, Wout van Aert | | | Christophe Laporte, Dylan Van Baarle, Matej Mohorič | | | Lampaert, Vanmarcke, Küng, Asgreen, Politt, Wright, Bjerg, Garcia Cortina, Trentin |
Weather: dry and sunny for sure, the forecast for the wind varies according to the sources, some suggest a light 15km/h tailwind for the predominant northerly direction of the race, others almost nothing.
TV: live from start at 11.01am CEST to finish at 5.20pm CEST. Normally it’s on the same channel you watch the Tour de France on so France Télévisions for locals and VPN users, and Eurosport/GCN in most other countries.
Paris-Roubaix Femmes: it’s today (Saturday) between 1.30pm and 5.30pm CEST with TV coverage for the final two hours, about where the first of the 17 cobbled sectors begins. This blog’s picks are Lotte Kopecky (SD-Worx) and half her team mates. You’ll find a better informed, proper preview over at procyclinguk.com.
Something’s changed in pro cycling since 2020. For years the most prolific winners were the sprinters, now five other riders are taking the spoils, led by Tadej Pogačar.
Almost ever year this century the rider with the most wins at the end of the season was a sprinter, of sorts. The likes of Erik Zabel, Alessandro Petacchi, André Greipel, Peter Sagan and Mark Cavendish topped the tables. Philippe Gilbert broke this run when in 2011 he pipped Marcel Kittel by one win. Then in 2021 Tadej Pogačar, Primož Roglič and Wout van Aert jointly led with 13 wins each and in 2022 Pogačar was ahead of Remco Evenepoel. So far this season Pogačar leads with ten wins… ahead of Roglič.
Now this isn’t an absolute change, the sprinters haven’t stopped winning and the likes of Fabio Jakobsen are not far behind. It’s more while the sprinters remain consistent, five riders have risen up beyond them as regular winners: Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič. Among the five, Pogačar is the most prolific and regular is understating things.
Since turning professional in 2019, Pogačar has 236 days of racing and taken 56 wins. That’s a win rate of 24%. (NB it’s possible to have a win rate in excess of 100%. Win every stage in a stage race plus the overall and you can have more wins than race days but let’s go with this ratio as over time it still means Pogačar has won close to a quarter of the races he started). This is exceptional; especially in a sport where the field is typically 150-200 riders and includes terrain and tactics where others thrive.
In 2009 André Greipel’s win rate was 30% and his Colombia-HTC team mate Mark Cavendish got 27%, career peak rates for each. But take their best years and both average around 17-18%. Ordinarily brilliant but Pogačar’s changed the references here. He’s scoring like a sprinter in their prime, and he’s doing season after season.
Non-sprinters can score high. Alejandro Valverde’s win rate in 2017 was 30% but that’s for one year. He got off to a fine start but crashed hard in the Tour de France prologue and his season was over, so only 36 race days, so it’s part a statistical quirk from an abbreviated year. Had he won two stages of the Tour that year his win rate would have declined to about 20% given the extra 20 days of racing. Or crop Valverde’s stats down to best years of 2003-2019, then remove the time where he distracted and then suspended because his doping case, and we get a tweaked career win rate of 11%, solid by el Imbatible but less than half as efficient as the Slovenian prodigy. Now we can tweak stats but the point here is Valverde was prolific for his time but just wouldn’t rate today. Plus it can work in the other direction as Pogačar’s 24% rate includes a first season learning the ropes. Measure Pogačar between 2020 and today and his rate would be 28%.
“If I wanted to get shit small wins, I’d race shit small races”
– Mark Cavendish, April 2010
Cavendish’s dig at Greipel, then both colleagues and rivals, pointed out quality matters. No worry for Pogačar, as two thirds of his wins have come on the World Tour calendar. His win in the Jaén Paraiso this February was his only lowly 1.1 level win.
Pogačar is exceptional here but Van der Poel, Van Aert and Evenepoel are also dominant with a career win rate hovering around 19%, ahead of any sprinter. There are subtle differences in their career paths of course and their schedules, the “two vans” have taken some sprint wins. Van Aert turned pro in 2017 so his rate is sustained over a longer period. So the precise rate is anecdotal but all the same 18-19% is prolific.
Primož Roglič is worth mentioning too. He turned pro in 2016 and his win rate is a creditable 15%. He of course had an early career in winter sports, contract cleaning and supermarket shelf-stacking and it took him a few seasons as a pro to enter his prime. Measure from 2019 to today and his win rate, ahem, jumps to 20%.
Taken alone, Roglič winning 20% of the races of the races he starts is impressive. But it’s the combined effect with the others cited above that is astonishing. Adding up their win rates gets us to 95% but of course it doesn’t mean there’s a 5% chance left for the field, far from it. But it does mean if we have some of these big five riders on the start line there very likely to win. Ironically our Fantastic Five have only race together once: the 2021 Worlds road race in Leuven… and of course Julian Alaphilippe won.
In case you’re wondering about the sprinters, Fabio Jakobsen’s career win rate is 14%. Delivering sprint wins is valuable and he’s probably the most bankable sprinter now although this season suggests there’s no pecking order. A Super Six rather than Fantastic Five? Not yet, his win rate last season was an impressive 20% so another year like that and he can become part of this cartel of riders winning so often. But that’s the point, for years a sprinter like Jakobsen would top the tables when it came to wins, now he’s a percentage point behind Roglič so the sprinters are playing catch-up. One factor is there are fewer opportunities for sprinters, with race organisers trying to spice up stages to enliven TV audiences and this can have a double-counting effect, a pure sprinter is thwarted by a short climb at or near the finish but this rewards one of the Fantastic Five but that’s a story for another day.
Normally if the same riders were winning all the time things might feel boring, a monopoly. Yet for now it’s still exciting to watch. Because for all the stats, the entertainment is not how much they win, it’s in how they win and they’re often not afraid to make bold moves and attack early. Maybe it’s because they know they’re bound to win?
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So what do you do when you’re a big favourite to win but the two other riders everyone is tipping are bigger than you and likely to win any sprint? Make them suffer on every climb possible and turn final climb into the hardest possible effort. Tadej Pogačar did just that, launching on many climbs before making his final move on the Oude Kwaremont to away solo. This kept Mads Pedersen and Mathieu van der Poel at bay so all he had to worry about was holding on for the finish. Easy to say, hard to do. This was an overwinning by Pogačar.
A fast and nervous start although “start” meant the first 100km. Grey skies, wet roads and a pesky wind might seem typically Flemish but it made for a long opening phase. The peloton was nervous in the crosswinds and at one point Mathieu van der Poel was caught out by a split in the field. Bahrain drove the pace and if this didn’t feel like panic stations, Van der Poel’s team were forced to use up riders to close the gap. It took 100km before a breakaway managed to get clear and eventually eight strong riders were away in Daan Hoole, Tim Merlier, Guillaume Van Keirsbulck, Jasper De Buyst, Filippo Colombo, Elmar Reinders, Jonas Rutsch and, just Hugo Houle. Winners? Surely not but tough work for the chasers and some tactical cards being played. The stress was seen in other ways with crash after crash including a massacre by Maciejuk when the Bahrain rider tried to move up the field on the edge of the road, hit a patch of grass that was more like a bog and pivoted diagonally across the front of the bunch and many riders went down and plenty had to leave the race.
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Kopgroep, waaiers? No the word of the day at the start had been anticiperen, the tactic of attacking early to get ahead of events with the hope of hitching a ride when the big names roll past. Most of the field knew they weren’t going to match the “Big Three” of Van der Poel, Van Aert and Pogačar in a race up the Kwaremont-Paterberg so better to try something else. This started in earnest with 110km to go when Mads Pedersen launched up the Wolvenberg and had quality company with Kasper Asgreen, Matteo Trentin, Neilson Powless, Stefan Küng, Jhonathan Narvaez, Fred Wright, Nathan Van Hooydonck, Florian Vermeersch and they were soon joined by Benoît Cosnefroy and Matteo Jorgenson.
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At 65km to the breakaway group had over three minutes, a big gap for any team to close given the strength of the breakaway; let alone for the Big Three to hop across in one go. A doubt began to creep in, was it too late to react? And if they did, would it be too costly and the winner was up the road? The uncertainty was perfect for drama, it never crossed over into feeling like the race was over. Indeed as they raced to the Oude Kwaremont for the second time the chase brought the lead down by a minute within a few kilometres. UAE hit the front like they were doing a sprint leadout. You could tell Pogačar was going to launch but only a few riders within range could react and in this moment both Van Aert and Van der Poel were a few too many wheels back, close enough to see him go but not directly on his wheel to try and follow instantly.
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Maybe they could not have followed even if they were right on Pogačar’s wheel. The Slovenian was clearly superior uphill. That was always the plan, to make the long climb of the Kwaremont as suffocating as possible for the two Vans. Still he now was solo with 55km to go. Not in the lead but now one and half minutes behind the breakaway which had seen its lead almost halved in the space of ten kilometres. This left him in a Jumbo-Visma sandwich, press on solo while the Dutch team have two riders behind and one up the road still in the break? In the end he didn’t have to decide as Laporte moved after Pogačar. How much would Pogačar have gone alone on the flat is worth asking but the chase closed him down and meant there was no politicking between Van Aert and Van der Poel over who should chase. At this point our Big Three had an extra star in constellation in Tom Pidcock but he wouldn’t shine for long.
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Onto the Koppenberg. While the race uses circuits and passes through many places several times, there’s no chance of déjà vu with this climb. A cynic would say it’s only used once as you can’t fit a giant VIP tent here given the road cut like a trench into the woodland, but even our cynic would agree once is plenty. It’s always a selective climb and caused the front group to fracture. It also shrunk the Pogačar group to just the Big Three as Pidcock and Laporte were left behind.
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The Kruijsberg and Hotond part of the course is less celebrated but often crucial to the race, a moment where many want to catch their breath. Mads Pedersen made a move on the approach and quickly got a gap. Of all the riders in the group Pedersen could have thought about playing his sprint card but here he was again with some anticiperen. As The Big Three caught and past riders ejected from the front group, Van der Poel decided to attack up the Kruijsberg and Pogačar responded but Van Aert was in trouble and much of Flanders must have sighing as a gap opened up. WvA could chase and would collect Van Hooydonck from the break but even if he could get back, a repeat would surely only happen again.
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Onto the cobbled part of the Oude Kwaremont and Pogačar made his move. The slope’s not fierce but the cobbles aren’t easy and slowly you could see a gap open up on Van der Poel. A metre here, a bike length there, suddenly Pogačar was clear. Van der Poel hadn’t been cracked, he seemed full of menace but at the same time not closing in, despite a TV moto riding in front on the way across to the Paterberg. It stayed close and 13 seconds over the top of the Paterberg was advantage Pogačar but no more. The suspense lasted a few more kilometres but once Van der Poel started to dip his head, Pogačar’s started to go up and for once the race fell into a lull as each of the final kilometres ticked past. Pedersen, so active all day, got a reward with third place.
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The Verdict
Rating each edition minutes after they’ve finished is risky but today’s edition was a thriller and has all the hallmarks you’d look for, it was stamped with suspense and branded with tension. Few will watch the whole race again in one sitting but there’s a lot to review. It had end to end action, 50km/h in the first hour and the same again in the second hour and every group that went up the road was a threat. If you’ve learned the Dutch word anticiperen, now their word for victory: overwinning. Pogačar wasn’t just winning today, he was overwinning. So strong he could go solo up many of the climbs and forcing the others to react before doing it one final time to go solo and finish with nobody in the picture.
Instant reaction comes in other forms too and before he’d cooled down from taking his third Monument, Pogačar already got questioned if he can win all five. It’s fascinating how pro cycling banks a win and immediately asks what a rider can do next. Logical but we should reflect it wasn’t long ago when the likes of Alejandro Valverde and Vincenzo Nibali seemed brave to start the Ronde; Pogačar showing up and finishing fourth last year was fascinating for the way he raced and also the slight flash of anger at the finish for an otherwise laidback character. Suddenly it’s all normal that a Tour winner is here and the question is what he’ll do next. Anyway there are no plans for Paris-Roubaix soon, he told Belgian TV today he’ll have to put on a few kilos; Milan-Sanremo is elusive so completing the set of all five Monuments is a big ask. Yet all these questions feel external, put to Pogačar by the media and those who know their cycling history. He’s still 24 and probably doesn’t give a hoot about history.
Paris-Roubaix is next weekend. No Pogačar but of course Van der Poel and Van Aert. Both were beaten today on their terrain and go into the last cobbled classic hoping for more. Van der Poel burned matches here and there but nothing wild, he can be prone self-arson at times, it’s more he just didn’t have a perfect day, that early chase and a dropped chain. Van Aert too, taken down in a crash, could have been sore and he was climbing like he did in the E3, losing metres in the crucial moments. Described recently on the radio by a Belgian as a mere “sorbet” – as in palate-cleanser at the end of a meal – it’s surely more of a mouthful. Van der Poel and Van Aert will be hungrier than ever.
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Welcome to Flanders where millions this Sunday will be hoping for home win from Wout van Aert but he’s got to deal with Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar, the rest of the field, the course and forecast crosswinds.
The Course
A start in Bruges and then 273km. A dash south-east to the hellingen, the small hills and ridges and where the race twists and turns like a tangled ball of string in an area no longer than 20km and no wider than 10km but where 170km of the racing happens with three climbs of the Oude Kwaremont, a long drag of a climb that’s rarely steep and part tarmac, part cobbles and it’s where the pavé begin that the slope kicks up. Later it’s the Kwaremont again chased by the Paterberg, much shorter but a wall of cobbles that hits 20% and begins with a sharp right turn.
The Koppenberg is a crucial climb, arguably the hardest of them all because of the gradient and the rough cobbles and if someone stalls then plenty are forced to walk and it’s often where a crucial selection happens over the top and it’s used sparingly, just once. Then come more bergs leading to the final Kwaremont-Paterberg combo in the final 20km. It’s not all about the climbs though, the portions in between are suitable for attacks as riders catch their breath and where those who lose the race often hesitate as rivals slip away.
The Finish: left over the top of the Paterberg and the gradual descent and then that long road into the outskirts of Oudenaarde for a flat finish.
The Contenders
Which of the big three, or the Grote Drie in Dutch? At the time of the Milan-Sanremo preview Mathieu van der Poel had won 23% of the races he’d started, Tadej Pogačar 22% and Wout van Aert 17% so picking another rider was going out a limb. And now their combined percentage win rate has gone up a point between them.
Mathieu van der Poel has won the Ronde twice already, is in form, packs a big sprint and can make all the right moves. So far so good but his Alpecin-Deceuninck team aren’t formidable, they’ll help him but he will be isolated when rivals can have strength in numbers, and Søren Kragh Andersen is more a joker to play than a workhorse. Also his sprint saw him beaten in the E3 last week, will this worry him? Probably not, it’ll come down to who has the most energy in Oudenaarde and he’ll back himself.
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Wout van Aert doesn’t have to win but all the same, the two big lines missing on his prolific palmarès are the Ronde and Roubaix. It wasn’t long ago his problem was being isolated in the finale of a race but Jumbo-Visma have been on a shopping spree and now his team are so strong that they won’t just carry him, some have got a shot at winning themselves. He looked a little short on the climbs in the E3, an off-day or is he still chasing top form after illness interrupted his training and race schedule? Of course he won but Sunday’s course is more selective. The team will miss Dylan van Baarle because of illness but Christophe Laporte is an obvious outside pick and his finishing speed gives the team more options while Tiesj Benoot is strong but not such an obvious winner, he might be best deployed sapping the others.
Tadej Pogačar is the third of the Grote Drie because in a sprint with the two above, how can he win? We saw this when he finished fourth in a two man sprint last year. He’ll have to hit the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg as hard as he can with the hope of taking five metres on the Paterberg because if the likes of MvdP and WvA are just behind, which of them wants to lead the chase? Easier said than done but just as he refined his tactics in Sanremo, he should be smarter here. His UAE are strong but even Matteo Trentin and Tim Wellens seem to be workers for their leader.
Mads Pedersen has a potent sprint and can get over the climbs, plus he’s backed by a strong Trek-Segafredo team but how will they race, do they gamble on going early or back Pedersen to match the top favourites?
Tom Pidcock is back after concussion in Tirreno-Adriatico. Able to dart up the climbs and with strong team support he’s a contender but how to win? As mentioned before, he’s been beaten in cyclo-cross because he lacks the brute force of the two “Vans” although at least here he can draft them better. Ben Turner and Magnus Sheffield give Ineos more options.
Valentin Madouas was on the podium a year ago and was strong in the Strade Bianche this year but fell ill after Tirreno-Adriatico but is back in form and was kopgroep material in the E3. Groupama-FDJ team mate Stefan Küng is always strong and would be hard to pull back if he can get away solo but it’s this that’s hard, many will want to follow and he’s not explosive enough to barge clear.
Matej Mohorič could place although he’s not thrived in this race in his previous two attemps, but how to win? For him some kind of sneak attack could pay off when the others are watching. Not for him a “burn all the matches in one go” attack, instead he could drift away during a lull late in the race, much like Bahrain team mate Fred Wright did last year.
Soudal-Quickstep come with a stacked team. They maybe struggling for results this year but between the seven of them they’ve won more spring classics than many rival teams combined. Julian Alaphilippe is having a run of bad luck. Compared to last year it’s not so bad but illness here, a mechanical there means he’s not had a clear run at things. But the form seems ok and he was looking lively in Dwars Door Vlaanderen. The problem is many can shine on a climb or two, it’s sustaining this to the finish and we saw this with Kasper Asgreen on the Stationsberg in the E3 who briefly looked strong. Yves Lampaert will always struggle in a sprint so Roubaix looks better for him.
Neilson Powless has been one of the best riders of the season so far. We might wonder if he can keep this up but he made the podium in Dwars on Wednesday and has ambitions to win here and in the upcoming Ardennes races too. EF-Education will miss Alberto Bettiol so it’s all for Powless.
Then there’s everyone else. Almost everyone else knows they can’t sit tight and hold on, many will want to get ahead of events. The tactic of anticiperen isn’t new but this time it’s crucial to so many teams and riders which creates a self-fulfilling momentum where if more teams try to take on the race early and fire riders up the road as late as possible but before the Koppenberg then they can get an option on the finish. Here Ag2r Citroën and Lotto-Dstny come to mind, firing riders like Oliver Naesen and Caleb Ewan forward.
Anthony Turgis (Total Energies) has plenty of stamina but few wins. Movistar sometimes beat expectations because we all think of them as a squad for the summer stage races but Ivan Garcia Cortina was 5th in the E3. Sep Vanmarcke (Israel-PremierTech) is in form and not on many radars but his problem is the climbs, maybe next weekend’s Roubaix suits more, with Dylan Teuns perhaps with an eye on the weekend after that. Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) started the season well but hasn’t weighed on the classics yet, sometimes seeming to talk himself out because of bad weather but this Sunday’s dry weather should help. Michael Matthews (Jayco-Al Ula) has the pedigree but has he got the hustle?
| | Mathieu van der Poel | | | Wout van Aert, Tadej Pogačar | | | – | | | Pedersen, Laporte, Powless, Madouas, Pidcock | | | Benoot, Alaphilippe, Mohorič |
Weather: dry and sunny, a top temperature of 10°C and a northerly breeze of about 20km/h but which could gust to 40km/h which makes the weather a factor. The course twists and turns this wind direction means a headwind for the long finishing straight.
TV: live from start to finish, 10.00am CEST with the finish around 4.30pm CEST. Get settled by 3.00pm to catch the Koppenberg.
Women’s Ronde: it starts at 1.30pm and the finish is for 5.30pm CEST. You’ll find a good preview over at procyclinguk.com
The spring classics are a big part of the season, teams can hire specialists there and some riders live for this brief part of the season. It’s wonderful sport but it can lack commercial sense… which is why it’s wonderful.
Take your pick from the marketing data and reports commissioned by various people in and around the sport but whichever way you slice it, the Tour de France is the event around which the whole sport revolves. Even in Belgium, even in Flanders where the Ronde can get 1.2 million TV viewers which is roughly double the average daily audience for the Tour, but it’s still one day compared to le Tour’s 21 stages. Now imagine how this skews for big countries like France, Germany, let alone what that’s like in the UK, USA and Australia. Put like this even Lotto-Dstny has a commercial imperative to do well in July so imagine where the likes of Bahrain, UAE and Ineos get their eyeballs from.
Of course it’s not all about TV audiences, sacrosanct though they may be. Team sponsorship can offer VIP marketing reasons, inviting valuable contacts to attend races and so on. But here again the opportunities in the spring classics are limited. Yes there are many races right now but if we think of wining and dining VIPs (beering and dining?) at, say, Dwars Door Vlaanderen as well as the E3, Ronde, Gent-Wevelgem etc, the Tour de France offers 21 days of this via mobile VIP zones… and there’s the rest of the calendar for the whole year of course too.
A team can build a classics team but it’s going to be expensive and can it hope to get a return on this? It’s complicated further by the specialism required. There’s also a physiological gap here with riders who thrive this month finding opportunities can be limited in the rest of the year. Try to forget Tadej Pogačar for a moment because normally can have riders who thrive in stage races and who can also dabble in one day races like Liège and Lombardia, or even the likes of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert because they of course can deliver throughout the year and have range. Instead there are plenty of 75kg plus classics contenders don’t have many races all year or they have to find other roles. It’s not quite now or never but a big part of their earnings profile is dependent on this short window while a sprinter, climber or stage racer has opportunities from January to October.
Plus a lot of these races are almost reserved for insiders. We value the Monuments but how many people who don’t read niche cycling blogs could name all five? How do the ordinary public rate the Ronde, Dwars or the E3? Insiders in cycling can weigh up the relative value of these races but what does a win or a podium mean to a sponsor?
Quick-Step in its various incarnations has seemed like the definitive spring classics team. But management has long known it needed to expand beyond this. You might see their current demise on the cobbles as resources go towards supporting Remco Evenepoel; but before that it was also for Julian Alaphilippe. In fact it’s been going on for decades as Quick-Step the company knew however much they valued March and April, other races counted. Marketing manager Frans De Cock told L’Equipe recently that even 20 years ago the team wanted to tap audiences in France and the US (translated):
We couldn’t be focussed on Johan Museeuw for a small part of the year in the spring, even if this was the most important part for us in Flanders
The team knew it couldn’t count on this small part of the season alone and has consistently done well in the Tour de France too. Arguably it’s doing better in the Tour these days than in Flanders.
Some teams have built up classics squad and dedicated resources here for different reasons. One alternative incentive is the availability of UCI points. It’s something few thought about, then last year many belatedly clocked that one day races offer points-a-plenty compared to stage races. While some team managers “discovered” this last year, others had spotted long ago. Take Ag2r where you might think they dream of little else but the Tour de France and a stage win or a spell en jaune. And yet they’ve also had to harvest ranking points in order to stay in the World Tour and one way they’ve done this is by racing hard in the classics. The team once recruited Iranians for points but once this avenue closed, they went for the likes of Johan Van Summeren, Oliver Naesen and lately Greg Van Avermaet. Maybe they haven’t had big headline results they hoped for but they’ve accumulated a decent points haul, the team finished 8th on the UCI rankings in 2021 helped by Greg Van Avermaet and this kept them away from relegation woes last year.
All this though is very dependent on a matrix of factors. Nationality of the team counts, obviously a team with Flemish roots will have a cultural attachment to the cobbled classics in a way that a Spanish or Bahrain team can’t. The sponsor has a say, the VIP tents right now are practically a convention for Belgian construction purchasing managers with Soudal (adhesives), Quick-Step (flooring), Deceuninck (windows), Renson (cladding) treating staff and clients. But the same goes for Jumbo supermarkets in Belgium who have a greater interest now than in, say, the Vuelta a España; while Movistar has the reverse priorities and so on. But bike companies also come into the mix here, they’re keen to be seen at the Tour de France but they know hardcore fans also watch the classics and machines that can withstand the cobbles make for good marketing. This aspect reaches its apotheosis in Paris-Roubaix which is practically a shop window for manufacturers who deploy special bikes which suit a “Sunday in Hell” but also make life comfortable for weekend warriors for the rest of the year and where “Roubaix” is even a marketing label for frames and fleece alike.
Conclusion
The Tour de France is such a large part of the season and teams all feel the pressure in July to deliver for their sponsors, even Quick-Step have to get it right. Right now we’re in a niche part of the year where there’s lots of sport and fun to be had but in cold, economical terms it might be harder to justify pouring so many resources into these kind of races which attract a smaller, niche audience. Some teams opt out but it’s surprising how many squads come with dedicated classics riders and devote a lot of resources to this part of the season. All the better for it.
Say what you like about Wout van Aert, he’s generous. Gifting the Gent-Wevelgem win to Christophe Laporte was the third time he’s given his French team mate a win after Paris-Nice and the E3 last year. These moments are fascinating for all the potential discussions and intrigue involved.
Normally in a two-up sprint we might compare the innate power and sprinting ability of each rider, adjust for their likely fatigue and so on. For two team mates together is it down to them to sprint – à la SD Works in Siena – or do they talk about it? Or does the team car get involved with commercial decisions from contractual matters to the marketing preferences of sponsors getting involved? It can be a lot harder to predict who will “win” when presented with this kind of finish. The rules say riders should sportingly defend their chances but making two riders sprint isn’t as simple as it sounds, one might have been working for the other, they’re team mates and friends rather than rivals and so on and just may not want to contest it, and often based on a rapport we don’t know much about. They could fake a sprint but that risks looking silly and besides, the rulebook doesn’t get opened for these kinds of finishes.
To problems of another kind and Soudal-Quickstep keep get a roasting for their lacklustre performance in the classics in a way that other teams don’t. Patrick Lefevere says his team’s the same as it was back in the day when it was getting results but that could be the problem: it’s often brought on riders and once they’ve made a name for themselves, they go elsewhere to cash in. Only now the roster looks too familiar, almost stale. It’s still packed with talent but just less dynamic and they lack a central rider to base their tactics on, Tim Merlier and Fabio Jakobsen are fast sprinters but both struggle to get over the climbs, even the bergs, and risk having their legs blunted for the finish.
Le @giroditalia débarque sur RTL ! #RTLSport pic.twitter.com/7bOG5ZHHMm
— RTL sport (@RTLsportbe) March 27, 2023
Lefevere might have turned his TV off after watching Catalunya but others will be tuning in soon. Obviously a lot of Belgian media is focussed on Evenepoel, and the latest part of this is that the Giro d’Italia is now going to be shown on RTL, a mainstream TV channel in Belgium. The race is on Sporza but that’s for half the country in Dutch, it’s on Eurosport and so for subscribers who go looking for it. But given the big interest an extra rights deal has been rustled up with just over a month to go to show it in Wallonia too.
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Belgian viewers on both sides of the and more have plenty to look forward to. The duel in Catalunya between Evenepoel and Primož Roglič was entertaining to watch as Evenepoel tried to attack and take time. He just wasn’t very subtle, launching uphills moves with the hope of breaking Roglič, the Slovenian who only started cycling in his 20s is now the deft pro who measures his efforts against the inexperienced rider. It sets things up nicely for the Giro but there we’re more likely to see Evenepoel ahead of Roglič after the time trials, so the Slovenian sniping time bonuses here and there. The risk is these two are so far ahead of the rest and then one of them has a problem and there’s no sport, others like João Almeida or Aleksandr Vlasov will be wondering how and where they’ll get opportunities.
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Staying in Italy, if riders in pro cycling get nicknames based in the longstanding “activity + home” formula, which has given us monikers from the Eagle of Toledo to the Manx Missile, the “Cat Sniper of San Marino”, aka Antonio Tiberi is still in the news. La Gazzetta Dello Sport reports Trek-Segafredo is minded to drop him and Astana is among the teams in the running to recruit him. Only the rules say no. There’s a transfer window from 1-15 August so moving before is unlikely. Teams have tried in the past, take Alessandro Petacchi who “retired” and suddenly Quick-Step tried to sign him. But a loophole was closed largely because of this transfer saga so Astana or another team couldn’t get Tiberi in time for the Giro as any rider who belongs to a World Tour team can’t retire and suddenly become free. But Tiberi is a promising long term rider so could be worth waiting for, especially if he’s able to put the past behind him.
Talking of young riders and transfers, the UCI’s introducing a development fee payable when men’s World Tour teams sign a rider, it’ll involve a €2,000 payment for every year the rider in question rode with a UCI Conti development team or a club registered with a UCI federation. €2,000 is both a small sum and a significant one. Small as in an U23 team or junior squad collecting this is hardly cashing in a golden ticket; but at the same time a squad recruiting a neo-pro could be liable for up to eight years of payments or €16,000 which counts on the wage bill. One pinchpoint is the payment goes to the national federation who then pay it on… that’s the idea but some federations could be slow, invent a handling fee or in quarrel with the team in question, especially if their development work is better than the federation. But the main thing is the establishment of this system, there’s a path here now that could expand.
Staying with promising talent, the Tour du Pays de Vaud race has been cancelled this year. Even readers of a niche cycling blog would be forgiven for not having heard of this one but it’s a short stage race for juniors ridden by national teams held in Switzerland at the start of summer and crucially it’s got a mountain stage or two. This makes it almost the Tour de l’Avenir for juniors, albeit over a long weekend rather than eight days. The list of winners – Adrien Costa in 2013 and 2014, then Marc Hirschi, Andreas Leknessund, Mathias Skjelmose, Marco Brenner and after a Covid-break, Jan Christen last year says plenty by itself, the other podium places have been full of now famous names too. I think it might have been Jonas Vingegaard’s first race outside of Denmark and where he could race uphill. It’s certainly been a draw for top talent… as well as recruiters and rider agents as well looking to make signings. Now it’s off, with the amateur – in the noble sense – organisers cite rising costs and regulations and the trouble of finding sponsorship for a junior race.
Finally on the subject of cancelled races, two related stories to keep an eye on. The police in the Netherlands are cutting back the support they give to races due to staff shortages, which means fewer races are likely to go ahead but the impact on the calendar, amateur or pro, remains to be seen. Similarly, a more short term issue, there are widespread protests in France. Paris-Roubaix is not far away and this event relies on police support for road closures, something that will be harder if staff are being deployed elsewhere, or require rest periods. The prefet, a central-government appointee for the local area was only too happy to postpone the race in the past. Hopefully the race goes ahead and we’re only left worrying if it’ll rain.
Mathieu van der Poel leads by three seconds as he starts the descent down the Poggio. He’s counter-attacked Tadej Pogačar and left Filippo Ganna and Wout van Aert to chase. This was the moment the race was won.
The start in Abbiategrasso lacked the grandezza of Milan’s Castello Sforzesco or the Piazza del Duomo but the sporting aspect was the same. The neutral start was paused at chilometro zero to allow some riders back to the peloton, including Tadej Pogačar who was getting dirt wiped off his shoulder, it looked like he’d crashed but not even pride was wounded as he posed for selfies.
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The early break was never allowed to get more than three minutes. Orphaned by Michael Matthew’s Covid withdrawal, Jayco-Al Ula sent Alexandre Balmer and Jan Maas up road with Aleksandr Riabushenko (Astana) and wildcard invitees Alessandro Tonelli and Samuele Zoccarato (Green Project-Bardiani-CSF-Faizané), Mirco Maestri and Samuele Rivi (Eolo-Kometa), Alois Charrin (Tudor Pro Cycling) and Negasi Haylu (Q36.5). This must be crushing for the riders as they couldn’t even spend the next few hours daydreaming about a win and were reduced to rolling billboards for their sponsors at best thanks to the relentless work of the likes of Jos van Emden and Jacopo Mosca for Jumbo-Visma and Trek-Segafredo.
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One of the themes of this year’s race was just how uneventful if was, calm skies and the best part of 300km with relatively few incidents along the way. Come the Passo Turchino and Julian Alaphilippe crashed towards the top but got back on, it probably cost him a bit of mental energy but not much more. Down to the coast and the three capi came and went without any major incidents; sure some sprinters were dropped and Alex Aranburu crashed but little else. Soon after Sam Bennett was among those felled by some unmarked street furniture. The crash of Michał Kwiatkowski and Jan Tratnik seemed the most significant in the moment as they’re lynchpins for their leaders but with hindsight it’s claim to say this altered the result.
This year’s vintage was a Derny race, all the team leaders and lieutenants sat tight in the slipstream for as long as possible. Sure the Cipressa saw more sprinters dropped especially when UAE took up the pace and once again nobody could or would attack here. The descent was without incident although Mathieu van der Poel and Søren Kragh Andersen surged towards the front so they could follow UAE’s Matteo Trentin down and the trio opened up a small gap on the way down.
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It all came down to the Poggio, the crucible where the race reaches boiling point. Bahrain barged into the lead to start the climb. Try as they might they couldn’t keep the pace up, or rather UAE came around with Tim Wellens hitting the front and winding up the pace as best as he could, his head shaking from side to side as if he was having an argument with his legs. This was more than a lead-out, Wellens’ wanton pace dragged a group clear and for the first time since Abbiategrasso the peloton was split. We knew what was coming next but if Pogačar’s attack was telegraphed that didn’t make it any easier to follow. It was like a storm warning, rivals could plan and prepare but when it came they were on their own.
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The Poggio just isn’t steep enough for Pogačar, as much as he can attack, a handful of rivals can get on his wheel as long as they’re close enough to react. This was arguably where the only tactical finesse occurred as Søren Kragh Andersen gave chase with Filippo Ganna, then Wout van Aert. Mads Pedersen and Matej Mohorič were just metres away but could only watch as the race slipped away. This was the moment Mathieu van der Poel came past them and latched onto the winning move, just as “SKA” cracked, his job done.
The Poggio is never steep but it flattens out over the top and with Pogačar’s gravity advantage over like some Zwift rider with a feather power-up expiring, Mathieu van der Poel surged past. Pogačar and Ganna chased while Van Aert was there but only just, a gap.
Passing the legendary phone box at the top, Van der Poel led by three seconds, a gap no bigger than the time it took you to read this sentence. Yet it was a gap, a break and Van der Poel was away. His descent was workman-like, and each of hairpin exit saw him sprinting for the win and this time the RAI camera motos were far away, most of the descent was filmed by helicopter and it wasn’t until after the final bend that the moto shots resumed. Wout van Aert led the chase, how many times in his life has he done this? Onto the flat and Ganna was wincing, possibly bluffing but it looked like he couldn’t do much. By now Van der Poel had 11 seconds and that was it, there was time to sit up and celebrate.
The Verdict
An exciting finale that brings a satisfying result. Some riders have taken the win in Sanremo like cat burglars creeping into a bank and unpicking the safe with skeleton keys to take the trophy before rivals could react. Today Mathieu van der Poel walked in the front door, blew the doors off the race on the Poggio and took an emphatic solo win. This was more than a one-shot attack, bridging across to Pogačar’s move when others were floundering was one giant effort. Then another as he countered Tadej Pogačar and no less than Filippo Ganna and Wout van Aert couldn’t help Pogačar bring back the Dutchman. The result feels incontestable – even genetic given his grandfather won here in 1961 – so unless the script was ripped up and some wildly different scenarios were played out, who else could have won. As the sun sets over the Ligurian coast this evening nobody is talking about a seatpost or a chainring but a champion’s triumph instead.
And yet if there’s no doubting the outcome, the final 15 minutes of Sanremo supplied tension but not the head-spinning delirium of recent years where the result was uncertain until the last metres. Pogačar launched where everyone expected, the surprise was Van der Poel countering but once he took three seconds, the more settled things began to look.
Indeed for post-race analysis there’s much less to decrypt and decode with the benefit of hindsight. None of the top four could have any regrets, indeed Filippo Ganna’s forceful sprint showed a new side, an extra weapon to deploy. Pogačar might feel short-changed for missing out on the podium after making the decisive move but because he made the decisive move he got countered. For all their struggles to get a win until recently, Alpecin-Deceuninck played their cards perfectly with Van der Poel as the star but Søren Kragh Andersen as a catalyst. This was a close, tight edition with 44 riders within one minute, the last of these being Peter Sagan.
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Milan-Sanremo is this Saturday. It’s the paradox of the longest race that is often won thanks to the finest of details and the smallest margins, a race that can look anachronistic with its distance and late action but surely the Monument where race science and aerodynamics count the most.
Read on for the things we know like the route, TV times, stats and even the weather. As for who is going to win, there’s stellar cast of contenders from grand tour winners via classics contenders to sprinters and more. Picking between them is hard which is what makes the finale so tantalising.
The Route
294km and a new start. No longer Milan-Sanremo, the start this year is in Abbiategrasso, a town outside of Milan. There’s a loop around Abbiategrasso before a dash south to Pavia to pick up the traditional route after 30km. The change seems anecdotal, it’s a flat start either way.
After 120km it’s Ovada and the start of the Passo Turchino. Once a climb that shaped the race, a combination of road improvements and the peloton’s ability means this gradual mountain pass is just a gentle energy sapping moment. The tunnel at the top of the pass is roughly the halfway point and the ensuing descent is much steeper than the way up, the peloton often starts to get nervous as it senses the Mediterranean below but as it’s dry it shouldn’t be inherently risky.
Then comes the Via Aurelia coastal road as the race skims along the coast, from afar we get scenic helicopter shot, inside the peloton it’s increasingly frantic with modern street furniture and antiquated town squares alike to navigate. The cape trinity: Capo Mele, Capo Cervo and Capo Berta are small climbs but serve as landmarks to break up the flat road and riders fight from position. By now the race has done 250km.
Then it’s on to the Cipressa (more detail). This starts with sharp right hander and quickly climbs through olive groves above San Lorenzo and the 9% gradient bites after 270km. This is a proper moment of climbing that ejects sprinters, the average of 4% is a blend of a steep start and a flat balcony over the top where dropped riders flounder. There’s a toboggan descent, the most technical part of the entire course. The race continues along the coastal road where teams battle to get their leaders into place for the start of the Poggio climb.
The Poggio (more here) starts with 9.2km to go and marks the final phase of the race. A furious pace is inevitable. A right flick off the coastal road and the climb begins with a series of wide bends that are so fast some riders have to brake. Positioning is everything as the road twists up, every metre matters. It’s not as steep as the Cipressa, there’s one short step at 8%, this is often the place to attack. After 287km the peloton’s brittle and the Poggio can be just enough to shatter things.
The descent often matters. It’s 3km and averages 4.5%, it’s not that technical but amid the bends and ramps if a rider can take five seconds here then the others behind will ask who can close this gap and that hesitation is enough to settle the race.
The Finish: under the 1km banner and it’s left at the fountain, then right on the wide Via Roma.
The Scenario: Milan-Sanremo might well be the race where the greatest proportion of the field starts the race harbouring private hopes of triumph. Maybe the breakaway will stick this time, maybe, maybe. However this race has long been a hunting ground reserved for star riders and even a “bunch sprint” as the chart above shows is really amid a very reduced group. The race tends to follow a pattern with the Cipressa to soften up the field and increasingly the Poggio does the same rather than being the springboard to victory. In the last two years the Cipressa’s been ridden so fast that not one rider has attacked and we have to go back to 1996 when the winning move went clear here.
The Contenders
Cycling data outfit Fuoriclasse crunched the numbers in February when Mathieu van der Poel had won 23% of the races he’d started, Tadej Pogačar 22% and Wout van Aert 17% so between them so they’re the obvious three picks. That said this isn’t an ordinary race and if the career stats suit them, the two cyclo-crossers have niggling doubts over their form: they have a 0% win rate this season. Still, rivals will be watching them and even basing their plans on them, if they move so will others. Often trying to pick the winner of any bike race is more an exercise in storytelling than prediction but when it comes to Sanremo you can almost run through the whole start list and the scenario whereby each rider could win…
Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) was looking very strong in Tirreno-Adriatico, has won this race before and he can do it all, from winning bunch sprints to surging clear on the Poggio. This is also his problem, when he moves others follow and so many will look to him and mark him. He’s also been chasing his form after a delayed start to the season because of illness. Christophe Laporte has a very fast finish too and used to have problems with races over 200km but has resolved that.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) isn’t just a contender, his presence in the race might have rivals planning their tactics around his expected move on the Poggio. Pogačar launched here last year on only it was early, too many riders were able to jump on his wheel. So an attack later on seems likely bordering on predictable. Now he’s obviously excellent uphill but the Poggio isn’t so steep and while few dare to follow him when he surges on an Alpine ascent, for the Poggio it can pay to get in his draft right away. Perhaps he could confound predictions and go on the Cipressa as this slightly steeper climb suits more but his team have come to win rather than gamble. If he’s joined by others on the Poggio he’ll count on his sprint.
Matej Mohorič (Bahrain) won last year by attacking just before the descent and using the bends to ride away while others behind hesitated. Repeating this is going to be harder, he’s a “must follow” rider now. But good luck tracking him down the Poggio, ever since he was a child riding down the hill to his club’s group rides he’s made descending his thing. He’s got a mix of team mates several of whom could be outsiders but Mohorič is bound to be their Plan A.
Is Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) having a Philippe Gilbert moment? Once unbeatable on short climbs, Gilbert began to lose that zip and had to find other ways to win races. Alaphilippe’s past 30 now must be losing a bit of the fizzle and sizzle. The form’s not been ideal too but he’s been a canny rider too who can win the sprint in a small group. Davide Ballerini is a fast sprinter while Kasper Asgreen and Yves Lampaert can both be luxury lieutenants or reserved for an attack in Sanremo if they can make it.
Third last year, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) gives the impression of being able to ride through a brick wall when he’s on form, although this lack of tact is sometimes how downfall. His condition’s questionable after he was adrift on the Strade Bianche and discreet in Tirreno-Adriatico but even when not 100% he’s a force to be reckoned with. A glimpse of his form came when he launched Jasper Philipsen to a sprint win and the pair can play the old 1-2 with MvdP covering moves on the Poggio while Philipsen holds tight for the sprint. Søren Kragh Andersen is also a crafty card to play and can win à la Simon Gerrans.
Italian hopes rest on Filippo Ganna (Ineos) and his big shoulders. He’s been visible on the Poggio in recent years, but as a pace-setter on the early slopes. This time perhaps he needs to hide on the wheels, bide his time and aim to win just like Fabian Cancellara did with a late attack in the streets of Sanremo where he can pile on the power and nobody else can match him. Easier said that done of course but in the absence of Tom Pidcock he’s their best card. Magnus Sheffield is in form too and could do a similar move too.
Trek-Segafredo come with past winner Jasper Stuyven, he did a textbook “Sanremo heist” in 2021, attacking just as the Poggio descent ended to leave the group looking at each other. Mads Pedersen seems made for this race but seems to have an on/off relationship with it, this time he’s back and looked very strong in Paris-Nice before leaving the race ill. Presumably he won’t be starting if he’s not 100% and his power and surprisingly light build makes him look perfect for the race.
Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) is capable of winning, he’s been in the mix in the sprints of late but how to win if he comes to the finish with some of the names above? Play it calm and hope the weight of the race is on them so he can use his sprint.
Lotto-Dstny bring Arnaud De Lie and Caleb Ewan which could double their chances but equally cause confusion when it comes to team mates pacing their leaders into position whether it’s for the final climbs, or if anyone is left for the sprint in Sanremo. De Lie’s a novice but the story of his career is how each time he’s presented with a challenge he meets it; that said of late he’s done well but is yet to triumph in the World Tour and Saturday is bound to be the longest ride in his life. He’s powerful on the climbs and has a sprint but has he got the finesse for the finale? Caleb Ewan’s twice been runner-up and dreams of this race and has been thwarted by photofinish cameras so far this season.
Neilson Powless (EF Education-Easypost) has been a rider in form this early season but how to win, the climbs aren’t selective enough and his sprint probably isn’t powerful enough; he can set up the stealthy Magnus Cort who does have a sprint.
Now for more outsiders. Fernando Gaviria is looking much sharper again but still short of his 2017 form, still he’s a contender thanks to his sprint and Ivan Garcia Cortina gives Movistar another option or could help Gaviria. Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) won in 2016 but then a enjoyed an excellent start to the season with several wins, something that’s not happened yet. Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) seems capable of winning as he’s often handy on a climb but his form has looked erratic. Second last year, Anthony Turgis (TotalEnergies) is a resilient rider who is due a big win but he’s more suited to a hard day in a Flemish semi-classic. Ag2r Citroën’s Benoît Cosnefroy can deliver world-class rides and the Poggio is his kind of launchpad but the descent and tactical finish make it hard to see a win. Bardiani’s Henok Mulubrhan has had a great start to the season but the team would sign for a top-10. DSM’s best bet might be Marius Mayrhofer, the winner of the Cadel Evans road race this year who packs a punch and sees himself as a classics rider. Israel-PremierTech bring veteran Sep Vanmarcke but Corbin Strong could be the one to watch.
| | – | | | Wout van Aert | | | Mathieu van der Poel, Mads Pedersen, Tadej Pogačar | | | Matej Mohorič, Jasper Philipsen, Filippo Ganna, Caleb Ewan | | | Girmay, Alaphilippe, De Lie, SKA, Cort, Laporte, De Lie, Gaviria |
Weather: textbook weather for La Primavera, a cold start at 3°C but once over the Turchino, sunshine and 15°C. They’ll be a hefty 30km/h tailwind for much of the Via Aurelia which means a crosswind for the Cipressa and Poggio in places.
TV: live from start to finish on RAI for locals and Eurosport/GCN. The neutral start is at 9.55am CET and the finish is due around 5.10pm CET. By all means watch all of it but if so treat like radio, something that’s on in the background. If you plan to tune in later, the Capi start around 3.45pm and the Cipressa an hour later. US readers should double-check as it’s the time of year when the US and Europe are out of sync between the seasonal clock changes.
The easiest race to finish, the hardest to win. Milan-Sanremo is also the most elusive race, where victory can often feel within reach, a tempting mirage.
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Cast yourself back to 2010 and in the sprint for Milan-Sanremo Sacha Modolo finished fourth riding for the Colnago-CSF team, Bardiani today. “More than a hope” wrote La Gazzetta the next day about this future prospect. Only it was Modolo’s best result in La Primavera and the closest he got was eighth in 2014.
Modolo might just have got lucky in 2010 when the wheels of fortune spun his way but many other riders have come close in Sanremo and looked to have the race within reach only to never make it. Take Peter Sagan who seemed made for the race, able to win bunch sprints, a daredevil descender or just powerful enough to barge clear on the Poggio, it feels like he should have won it many times over. Only he’s had two second places, five fourth places and a sixth place yet never won.
In recent years Ben Swift has been on the podium twice. Michael Matthews has been in the top-10 five times, Sonny Colbrelli four times, Nacer Bouhanni, Greg Van Avermaet three times. Caleb Ewan has twice finished second. Now by definition many riders have to be the runners-up. A top-10 in Flanders, Roubaix or Liège, or a grand tour, and every rider will be wondering what to do to improve. It’s just that in Sanremo things are so close.
The winning margin is so fine and the race is open to all that it all leads to feeling that if things had turned out a just little differently then the big win would arrive. A sprinter can think this, a grand tour contender too, and everyone in between gets to dream and plan. It’s this that seems to tempt so many into this race.
If it’s back to the drawing board for someone close to the win, they’ll feel it only takes the tiniest of pen strokes to get them that win when it comes to Sanremo. That’s the devilish part. It’s almost as if there’s an optical illusion at work. Losing out by a few millimetres or a bike length after 300km looks like nothing, so a tiny bit more work over winter and in the build-up and basta, the top step of the podium awaits. Only it’s not so simple, the race could be very different next time, maybe the weather is worse or the dreaming rider just gets out of bed on the wrong side. But that disappointment comes on the day itself, perhaps in the final minutes. Until then it’s the hope.
If you have a rider in mind when it comes to finishing close, imagine how that particular rider must feel? It’s no secret to say that over the years riders like Michael Matthews, Matej Mohorič and Caleb Ewan have tackled the Poggio in training. To the point that local residents might look out the window, or workers in the hothouses producing flowers look up, and think “oh, him again” as the same rider comes past again. And again.
The lesson from all this is that a rider might get to start Milan-Sanremo many times over but maybe they’ll only ever get one real shot at winning. Who’ll seize it this Saturday?
That’s the Paris-Nice prize list, make if it what you will. As ever these sums are almost anecdotal for the teams and riders given the money is levied, taxed and shared. Instead the interest of these prize lists is how they can correlate with activity and visibility in the race. Israel-PremierTech had a rough time of things but they only finished with two riders.
Talking of all things Nice, after a promising start with the stages in Italy, yesterday saw the two final stages of the 2024 Tour de France announced and they look enticing as well. Stage 20 is mountainous and crucially uphill from the start which should enliven the stage as the climbs of the Braus, Turini, Colmiane and Couillole aren’t steep by themselves but if things get lively from the start it’ll be much hard. The 34km time trial on the final Sunday is a hard effort but will we get the suspense of the GC and overall result in doubt? We can’t say. Knowing the start and the finish, what else can we imagine? Well a 34km time trial is long for Tour standards, could it be the only TT stage? Maybe there is a team time trial held by “Paris-Nice” rules but this would have to come very soon after the announced grand départ stages, especially as these Italian stages reach the foot of the Alps which pre-supposes some kind of Alpine stage although it’s possible to have one crossing via a gentle pass and then a team time trial. Or how does the race get to Nice, will there be more Alpine stages on the way there, or an air transfer to Nice airport. Answer at the presentation in October of course.
Staying in Italy, this Friday sees the annual general meeting of the CPA, the Cyclistes Professionels Associés rider union. Gianni Bugno is stepping down as president and members will elect a new head of the CPA. The difference this time is that professional riders are able to apply in person to vote whereas before there had been a system of block voting where the head of any national riders’ union cast their vote on behalf of all the pros in their country. The upshot could be a more responsive and representative rider union but we’ll see, one vote at a time.
From cycling politics to gender politics now. An usual leap here but it involves Soudal-Quickstep boss Patrick Lefevere. He was a curious guest for Flemish TV’s talkshow De Afspraak (“The Appointment”) last week to discuss International Women’s Day. Surely in no other country would a cycling team boss take part in a comparable panel discussion? At one point Els van Doesburg, a politician, was talking about women’s emancipation and being able to wear clothes they want without fear of harassment and host turned to Lefevere for his opinion and he said harassment of women is an issue but, and he uses the word for but “maar”, more women are getting drunk and sometimes they tread on thin ice. The women in the studio were giving him looks but before he dug himself any further into the looming crater the presenter warned him, “watch out, you are also on thin ice” is the translation of subtitles in the screengrab above. Lefevere seemed to jolt and suddenly stopped this line and pivoted to asking whether women civil servants get the same pay as men in Belgium.
If he wanted to discuss clothing, Lefevere could have instead talked about women being able to wear Soudal-Quickstep kit and how the AG-Soudal-Quickstep team that he’s backing is poised to join the World Tour. The story for the Women’s WorldTeam promotion/relegation contest is whether the teams that had a relatively meagre haul of points like AG-Soudal-Quickstep but have hired over the winter can overhaul those teams that did well last year but look likely to score less this time, think Lifeplus-Wahoo. With the women’s Vuelta establishing itself, RCS taking over the Giro for women and the Tour de France Femmes taking off, getting a licence in the top tier for next year and beyond brings a lot of assurance for sponsors.
One team in potential trouble is EF Education-TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank because of the third title sponsor. Depositors are being rescued but the bank’s future as an institution is in doubt to put it mildly, so therefore is its marketing budget. It may not be the case here but sponsors often pay in quarterly instalments and a cycling team is not a priority creditor which would leave the team short of funding for the months to come.
Staying with women’s cycling and the Strade Bianche result has been revised after Kristen Faulkner was disqualified for wearing a blood glucose monitor during the race and the Jayco-Al Ula gets replace on the podium ex post by Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig. Now some might not like the rule but park that. It’s black and white in the rulebook that using a glucose monitor = disqualification, here’s the screengrab:
So the inevitable outcome has happened to the race result, presumably after some kind of investigation or hearing, a chance to check Faulkner is not a diabetic given these devices are allowed in such instances, just as diabetics are exempted in part from the UCI’s “no needles” policy when it comes to insulin injections. Only it’s all be whispered out, there’s no official statement from the UCI despite a World Tour podium being changed because of the UCI’s rules.
Finally did you know Remco Evenepoel’s taken a Strava KoM in Tenerife? Quite possibly yes if you’ve read a cycling news website today. As it happens many pros get KoMs in training but it’s not often news. Evenepoel though only has to do something in training for it to become news in the Belgian media and this is in turn copied by other English-language websites. It does tell us about Evenepoel’s form and while Tenerife’s south coast is notoriously windy – it has wind/kite surfing hotspots – he did the climb to Taucho which snakes up via many hairpins meaning it’s hard to have a wind-assisted ride… and it wasn’t windy on the day either. Just as we had Pogačar vs Vingegaard last week, we’ll get the pre-Giro Evenepoel vs Roglič test next week in the Volta a Catalunya and the race features three summit finishes.
The winning moment? It’s tempting to say when Pogačar made the belated announcement he was going to start the race. However it wasn’t so simple. Jumbo-Visma brought a strong team, Jonas Vingegaard had been winning plenty and the race started with the promise of a duel, a revenge match even. Only the contest would prove one-sided and Stage 4’s summit finish at the Camp des Loges saw Pogačar win ahead of David Gaudu while Jonas Vingegaard was further back, a hierarchy that would only become further entrenched.
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Things got off to a lively start with Pogačar attacking twice in the finale of the opening stage, his appetite for time bonuses meant even the six second offering close to the finish, a petit four of a time bonus, tempted him.
Many saw Jonas Vingegaard as the likely winner because his Jumbo-Visma team would ace the team time trial, put him in yellow with a good cushion of time and then he could defend. Yet come Tuesday’s TTT stage, the Dutch team duly won but only took 23 seconds on fifth-placed UAE Emirates. Symbolically Tadej Pogačar finished alone while Jumbo could have finished with the regulation four riders together. Yet by this point Pogačar had taken 12 seconds in time bonuses from the first two stages so Vingegaard was only 11 seconds up on the overall classification, no cushion. This was a relative win for Pogačar who kept his rival in range, plus Jumbo-Visma’s win came with its own opportunity cost, having selected heavier riders for this stage it meant fewer climbers to help in the mountains to come.
The rule change whereby teams started together but were given their own time when they crossed the line gave us plenty to talk about on a Tuesday and probably beyond as it’s likely to feature more often. Visually it lets spectators see the tactics at work far more than any long turns from strong riders, it’s possibly more egalitarian as a team able to afford seven or eight millionaires who can time trial and offer mountain support isn’t advantaged as much any more compared to a squad that has fewer of these valuable “Swiss army knives”; the team’s performance is marginally more dependent on its strongest rider rather than its fourth best.
If those 11 seconds looked insufficient for Vingegaard, it proved so at the Loge des Gardes summit finish. Surprisingly Vingegaard attacked one third of the way up the climb. Pogačar responded and the two seemed to be on a different level but they marked each other and the others were able to ride back. This allowed David Gaudu to counter. When Pogačar had to go again to fetch Gaudu – who was riding high on GC thanks his team’s solid fourth place in the team time trial – Vingegaard started to flounder once the road kicked up in the final kilometre and he’d finish the day 44 seconds down on GC.
Friday’s stage was cancelled by Storm Larisa, it wasn’t just risky to race in, the roads were blocked in places. A bike race might feel terribly important but local government officials deploying crews to reopen roads probably have other priorities.
Saturday’s summit finish stage to the Col de la Couillole revealed the precise hierarchy of the race with Pogačar winning, Gaudu able to follow him while Vingegaard was better than the rest but having to react to what Pogačar did. Tobias Foss did a huge amount of work, did this keep a lid on the attacks so that his leader wasn’t destabilised or did it suit Pogačar and Gaudu even more? Either way the stage prised open the time gaps further.
Sunday’s final stage has often seen the race turned upside down and when this hasn’t happened, it almost did. Only this time there was Hitchcock drama, it was a much more stable stage. Pogačar and his entourage were saying that because he lives in Monaco he really wanted to win on his nearby training roads in Nice, presumably his backers should be thinking of buying him holiday homes in, say, Oudenaarde and Courchevel as well. For once there no attacks on the climb to Peille because Tim Wellens, once the eternal attacker, is now a tow truck for UAE. The total lack of peripeteia was so evident that we had the four leading riders overall in the same respective positions on the Chemin Du Vinaigrier. At the finish the only position in the top-10 that changed was Jack Haig finishing tenth and while that’s solid for him, it was because Pierre Latour’s slipped to 14th place after losing ground mid-stage because of his persistent descending problems.
There was more than the overall classification. Jonas Gregaard did a great job to take the mountains jersey, attacking and taking points on every day he could except Satuday’s Stage 7. The sprints saw a mix, Tim Merlier won the opening stage to add some kindling to the heated topic of which sprinter Quickstep will take to the Tour de France; Mads Pedersen won the next day and his form is impressive ahead of the classics. Olav Kooij landed his biggest win so far and if Jumbo-Visma lost out on GC they’ll find plenty of satisfaction in his win and the team time trial, they lost to Pogačar but came out well ahead of most other teams.
The Verdict
We got the duel between Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard. Only if you scored each stage, Pogačar got the advantage on six of them, it probably would have been seven if the weather hadn’t cancelled one of the stages. We should mention the weather because the wind was all wrong, it didn’t blow enough to turn the sprints stages into spring classics; and when it did blow we got a see breeze, as in you could see trees being bent backwards like wooden limbo dancers. Paris-Nice is often one of the best races of the season, a regular highlight of the year and the weather is a factor behind the action, Mother Nature didn’t help.
The other factor is the finely balanced racing and this time there was no surprise, Pogačar’s strong performance in the team time trial and the first summit finish set the tone and he was voracious, extending his lead before taking a solo win in the yellow jersey. If this is his relaxed start to the season where he’s yet to go to altitude for training then he’s winning the mind games as well as the trophies.
For Vingegaard, it’s not the first time he’s finished second a week-long stage race in March to Tadej Pogačar given that’s exactly what happened last year’s Tirreno-Adriatico. The difference then is that he was Roglič’s understudy and today he’s the Tour champ. All the same, extrapolating his form from March to July is perilous. The challenge for Vingegaard, and everyone else, is Pogačar’s sprint, he can do it on the flat for time bonuses and when he goes at the top of a mountain pass he can not only win the stage, take the time bonus but also open up a gap of a few seconds. As we saw this week UAE are looking stronger and more cohesive and they didn’t bring their Tour team for a dress rehearsal either.
David Gaudu provided the plot twist in the week, almost matching Pogačar in the two big summit finishes and even out-sprinting him for one of the intermediate time bonuses although he never looked likely to overturn the race. He’s 40-1 to 20-1 with the bookmakers for the Tour de France but that only implies the market thinks you’d have to run this summer’s Tour de France 20 times for him to win. He was fourth last July, but 13 minutes down. This week he showed more consistency – he’s been DNF in Paris-Nice twice before – but there were only two summit finishes and when Pogačar jumped on Sunday, Gaudu said he didn’t have the legs to follow but he’s much closer now. Arnaud Démare is still riding the Tour de France but Gaudu’s request for support will be ever-more tempting.
Finally this might be one of the last editions of Paris-Nice that runs at the same time as Tirreno-Adriatico with calendar reform looming for 2026, something that would change the feel of both races. The Italian race was born in part because Italians wanted a stage race as preparation ahead of Milan-Sanremo, something the French enjoyed with Paris-Nice. So while we wonder about what happens between now and July, Sanremo is much closer, literally 50km along the coast from Nice. Many eyes are rightly on Pogačar and Vingegaard but quietly the likes of Arnaud De Lie, Mads Pedersen, Søren Kragh Andersen, Fred Wright, Nils Politt and more have been putting the finishing touch on their preparation for Sanremo and beyond, just as Wout van Aert, Julian Alaphilippe, Jasper Philpsen and others have been doing in Italy. And of course Pogačar.
The final stage of Paris-Nice and often a great day’s sport. Tadej Pogačar leads the race by 12 seconds ahead of David Gaudu but there’s a queue of riders further behind who can unlock the race with some long range moves.
Stage 7 Review: a big breakaway finally went clear and it included some unlikely members. Take Nils Politt and his huge carcass, no chance for the win but he got a big workout ahead of the classics. The bunch was led by UAE, Jumbo-Visma, and Ineos as if they have some innate muscle memory to tow the bunch on the way to a big summit finish. Kobe Goosens and Javier Romo were able to attack the start of the Col de la Couillole but their lead was melting faster than the roadside patches of snow in the sunshine.
It’s a long steady climb and Tobias Foss got to work and started to asphyxiate riders one by one, it felt as every minute a rider would be cracked. One Foss could work no more Chris Harper was the first to attack but a boomerang move that saw him reeled in and spat out and quickly a trio formed of Tadej Pogačar, David Gaudu and Jonas Vingegaard. The latter was hanging by a thread, at times dropped then pacing himself back while Gaudu looked nervous, asking Pogačar to share the work. The trio were marking each other to the point that their rivals behind were only a few seconds behind led by Simon Yates. Getting ready for the sprint Gaudu reached behind, perhaps to tuck a gel wrapper into his pocket, and this was the moment Vingegaard jumped but he was soon swamped and again Pogačar got the better of Gaudu for the stage win.
Overall the marking between the lead trio meant the others didn’t lose as much time as they might have on such a long climb, Pogačar and company kept the others at bay to ensure they could sprint for the stage win but didn’t pull out a big lead for the overall so the rest of the top-10 might fancy their chances today, especially if they can link up.
The Route: identical to last year’s final stage, it’s 118km and into the hills behind Nice. They leave for a neutral procession up the Var valley, a handy warm-up and then there’s hardly bit of flat road all stage. It’s all on the typical snaking roads of the region which constantly twist and turn their way up valleys and gorges and just the terrain where it’s hard for a team to control.
With 55km to go, the race climbs out of the Paillon valley for the climb to Peille – the Col de St Pancrace to locals – and this is the hardest climb of the day. It’s listed as 6.6km at 6.8%, so worthy of a small Alpine pass on these stats alone but it’s the irregularity that makes it hard work with early sections of 9% and even 12% as it winds up a narrow road with so many bends that a rider need only get 50 metres’ lead to be out of sight. It levels out further up and once over the top comes a twisting descent to La Turbie and Eze with the short rise to the Col and then it’s down the Moyenne Corniche to the coast before climbing the Col d’Eze.
Just like last year it takes the shortcut. This road is shorter, steeper and narrower. It’s much more of a wall-like climb, the Chemin du Vinaigrier will sting with over a kilometre at 13% before picking up the main road to the Col d’Eze and then dropping down the corniche cliff road back to Nice.
The Finish: the small rise around the 1km to go point, then a flat finish on the Promenade des Anglais.
The Contenders: Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is the obvious pick, he doesn’t need to win today but if he has to follow the moves on the road up to Peille then he can mark his rivals and we know he can take the sprint from a group of riders. He’ll need his team today for help but they weren’t around for long yesterday. His win though is far from certain, the more other teams scrap for the win, the harder he’ll have it and with only four teams having a stage win everyone else has plenty to aim for.
There’s a club of riders who are in decent form and if they can’t rival Pogačar in a direct contest, can ride clear of the field earlier and hope to build up a lead so they can race each other for the stage win. Ion Izagirre (Cofidis) has won this stage before in 2019. Neilson Powless (EF Education-Easypost) is arguably better on the shorter climbs and isn’t an immediate threat to close down on GC. Quietly Aurélien Paret-Peintre (Ag2r Citroën) has been having a good Paris-Nice, even if he managed to crash going up the final climb yesterday but that’s just the sort of thing to poke him into action.
While the final stage is often contested among the GC contenders, others can get a look-in from time to time. So Magnus Cort (EF Education-Easypost) has a chance here too.
| | – | | | Tadej Pogačar | | | Powless, Cort, Fraile, Yates, Izagirre |
Weather: sunny, 18°C and a light sea breeze.
TV: the stage starts at 11.35am CET, TV coverage begins around 1.30pm on France 3 and Eurosport/GCN just in time for the climb to Peille and the finish is forecast for 2.50pm CET. Channel hoppers will find the last stage of Tirreno-Adriatico and a likely sprint finish around 4.30pm.
The big summit finish stage of Paris-Nice and if it’s windy, fingers crossed it’s not that bad and yesterday’s storm damage has been cleared away. If you plan to watch on TV, don’t miss the earlier finish time.
Blown away: the stage was cancelled because of high winds but it took a while to get there. It was windy at the start and a plan was to move the start to the KM117 point and use the long finishing circuit to make up the distance. But this didn’t work with the timings so it was going to be start at the later point and race the final 80km. But the finish of the stage was almost as windy as the start and roads were being blocked by fallen trees and various governmental authorities weighed in and it was off. Riders did a quick ride through Tourves, presumably to keep the local mayor onside.
The Route: almost a copy of the 2018 stage early on except that took in an extra climb and its descent. If the route is similar, the labels are different, there’s a climb out of Gattières but this time it’s unmarked when in 2018 it was a second category climb. The climb to Tourette-du-Chateau – the Col Saint-Michel for locals – is a long drag up and then it’s across to the Col de Saint-Raphaël to pick up the Var valley and over to the foot of the day’s big climb and unlike 2018 where they turned right for the Col Saint-Martin, today’s it’s left for La Couillole.
The Finish: a long and steady climb. There’s nothing particularly technical to describe, the early parts have a wide road and the slope is so even all the way up although in the final two kilometres it just tightens up towards 8%.
The Contenders: can the breakaway get clear and build up enough of a buffer to stay away? Jumbo-Visma and Groupama-FDJ don’t have to work today, they’ll hope UAE does all the work but Tadej Pogačar’s team doesn’t have to toil from the start either. Certainly after a sprint stage that was ridden piano and yesterday’s cancelled stage some riders will be bursting with energy while a few others might find it hard to get going.
So there’s a chance for climbers like Clément Champoussin (Arkéa-Samsic), Stephen Williams (Israel-PremierTech) or Anton Charmig (Uno-X) to get away, ideally they’ll want to go in the breakaway with a team mate who can help pull on the front to help build up a lead.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) can’t sit comfortably today, he is only six seconds ahead of David Gaudu on GC and since tomorrow’s stage often sees results going to the wire, today’s stage offers a clean set-piece opportunity to gain some time. Just a few seconds on the line with the time bonus would suit him. His superiority makes it hard for the likes of David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and Simon Yates (Jayco-Al Ula) to get a look in, they can attack late on the final climb but almost need to take turns to dislodge Pogačar. It’s a climb to suit Dani Martinez (Ineos) and he could be allowed to get away and take a few seconds as he’s 1m42s down but is he 100% at the moment?
| | – | | | Tadej Pogačar | | | Martinez, Yates, Vingegaard |
Weather: sunny, 21°C inland and windy too, 15km/h from the west which could gust to 50km/h.
TV: the stage starts at 10.40, coverage on France3 and Eurosport/GCN begins around 1.30pm and the finish is forecast for 2.50pm CET.
A big day for the breakaway and a collection of climbs all with their steep sections. The big challenge could be the wind, it’s forecast to howl today.
Kooij uncaged: Jonas Gregaard (Uno-X), him again, took off to get more mountains points and then backed off to leave Rhone local Sandy Dujardin out by himself all day. We got the promised sprint finish and with Mads Pedersen launching early, Olav Kooij came past to get his first World Tour win. There wasn’t much else to report from the stage although David Gaudu grabbed the six second time bonus mid-stage after a leadout from Arnaud Démare who then mopped up the four second bonus to keep Tade Pogačar away. Also Kooij’s win was the last chance for the sprinters and it means Jumbo-Visma have two stage wins so far, justifying their selection of flatlanders.
It’s Kooij’s second World Tour win after a stage in the Tour de Pologne last year and the 21 year old sprinter is a rising talent, we’ll see if he becomes a pure sprinter or aims for the classics as well. He started out speed-skating at the age of six and riding his bike aged 12 according to his local newspaper, copying both from his father who was a skater who rode his bike when the canals weren’t frozen.
The Route: it’s no longer south, the race is almost by the Mediterranean and heads east today across to Nice. After the start it’s up a main road via some wide hairpins, a chance for the breakaway to go quickly but the battle might last longer.
The first climb starts out of Draguignan and there are a couple of tricky ramps among the houses and apartment blocks but it flattens out, it’s only once the road enters the woodland that it gets harder again, it narrows and there are some hairpins. The second climb is a gradual road to Callian but once it reaches the village there’s a turning for a sharp ramp. The third climb to Cabris is more steady, 5km at close to 6%.
With 40km to go it’s onto the finishing circuit and this crosses the finish line with 30.5km to go. There’s a left turn and road rears up on a backroad, it’s not just steep but narrow and twisting. Even once the slope levels out it’s still on this small road across to the intermediate sprint. From here it’s the main road, there’s 20km to go but it goes by quickly on the descent, it’ll be hard to chase.
The Finish: a twisting downhill on the main road into town and once in La Colle, the final kilometre is uphill, there are a couple of bends but they’re not sharp, it’s just they block sight of the finish line until the final 200 metres.
The Contenders: the breakaway stage. Saturday’s summit finish is likely to be reserved for the GC contenders and likewise for Sunday’s racing although there’s room then for those in and around the top-10 to ride off with the stage win. For everyone else it’s today or nothing but the prime contenders for today’s stage aren’t that far down on GC so they might not get much room; or they’re on team duty, a rider like Tim Wellens (UAE) is the archetype for today but is he allowed to race for himself? David de la Cruz (Astana) fits the bill, he’s infrequent winner but has two Paris-Nice stages. Simon Geschke (Cofidis) and Omar Fraile (Ineos) come to mind too but need a spin of the wheel of fortune to get away, let alone win. Magnus Cort (EF Education-Easypost) will like the finish if he can make it over the climbs, he’s in great shape though.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is the sweeper pick, if the breakaway can’t stick and it’s all back together then can win the reduced bunch sprint.
| | – | | | Magnus Cort, Tadej Pogačar | | | Wellens, Powless, De La Cruz, Geschke, Fraile |
Weather: sunny but windy. 19°C but the stat today is the 40km/h NW wind which could gust to 90km/h. The wind will drop during the course of the state but the gusts could persist across the course. These kind of gusts can be too much for racing, you and your bike can be scooped of the road and there’s little you can do so there could be a meeting to discuss things. But the wind model is one thing, the conditions on the ground another and if the gusts aren’t too persistent things can go ahead as planned, look for news later this morning.
TV: the stage start is 11.40am CET, TV coverage is for 3.00pm and the finish is forecast for 4.40pm CET.
The longest stage of the race and a probable sprint finish.
The Loges des Gardes unlodges Vingegaard: the day’s breakaway was reeled in by the UAE team but still allowed Jonas Gregaard to extend his lead in the mountains competition, he won’t keep it until Nice but his team is deserving its invitation.
The Loge des Gardes climb is a new climb but has few secrets, the 8% slope at the start thinned out the field and saw many dropped. Clément Champoussin supplied the first attack but it was a boomerang move, he flew out of the group, he flew back soon after. Jonas Vingegaard was the next to attack, perhaps thinking attack was the best form of defence because he was out of team mates. Only Tadej Pogačar could follow as the two quickly opened up a gap. Pogačar sat on the Dane’s wheel, at one point smiling to the camera. The pair cancelled each other out and were reeled in. David Gaudu attacked and got a decent gap. Then Pogačar went after the Frenchman and Vingegaard tried to respond but couldn’t get across. He began to flounder, his head shaking in the agony and this tell signalled trouble and one-by-one riders came past him. While Pogačar was celebrating the stage win ahead of Gaudu, Vingegaard was on his way to sixth place, 43 seconds down on the stage.
Pogačar’s in yellow and good luck to anyone trying to take the jersey off him. Vingegaard can try but surely won’t want to try anything spectacular for fear of it rebounding, better to recover and then try something more cautious. Gaudu would sign this morning for second place in Nice. Simon Yates might bide his time, he almost won the race on the last stage, we’ll see. The much promised duel isn’t over but we’ve got a good idea who is the stronger right now.
The Route: the start in St. Symphorien means crossing the Monts du Lyonnais. It’s over the hills to help a breakaway form with some hard terrain from the start. There are 13 points for the taking if a rider can clear the three climbs first but Uno-X’s Jonas Gregaard leads the competition with 14 points so any move going clear is after the stage win.
Then comes a dash down the Rhone valley. There are two late climbs, the first isn’t hard but it is exposed to the wind but it doesn’t look like the wind will be too strong. The second of which to Aleyrac was a 2nd category climb when tackled in 2015 on a day when a few heavyset sprinters were dropped. It should be a sprint finish in St.Paul.
The Finish: flat run to the finish with some street furniture in the final 5km, some central dividers and then a roundabout just after the flamme rouge which can be taken on both sides but the right looks faster, just. With 300m to go another roundabout but this time it’s closed off, passage to the right only, but it makes for a crucial chicane.
The Contenders: a likely sprint finish as if a break goes early there’s plenty of time to get the measure of them and bring them back later on. It’s down to the breakaway being loaded with rouleurs to make this hard but several teams will be playing their sprint cards today and so willing to chase as once today’s done, that’s it for the flat stages.
Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) was the pick for Fontainebleau only to get stuck by the wild finish and lack of lead-out trains but he’s still an obvious pick. Jumbo-Visma have the team to work all day for Olav Kooij and get a second stage win so far this week. As said in the preview for the opening stage there are many good sprinters here but not the bankers who win again and again. Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe), Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) and Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) could be in the mix. Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) has a stage win already and doesn’t win sprint after sprint but looks in excellent form.
| | – | | | Tim Merlier, Olav Kooij | | | Pedersen, Bennett, De Lie |
Weather: a top temperature of 20°C with some sunshine. There’s no Mistral wind down the Rhone valley, instead a southerly breeze meaning a headwind for much of the stage but it’ll be about 10km/h most of the day but it could gust to 30km/h later on, so a slender chance of crosswind action.
TV: the stage starts at 11.20am CET, TV coverage starts soon after 3.00pm and the finish is for 4.40pm.
Sausages: today’s start is in St. Symphorien – St. Sym for locals – which styles itself as the “world capital of saucisson“. Obviously a cured French sausage is bound to have its capital in France but anyway, it’s said a quarter of France’s saucisson production comes from here. This includes the Cochonou brand, the riders will pass the factory on their way out of town. The brand’s a staple of the caravane publicitaire at the Tour de France where close to half a million sample sachets are lobbed to the waiting public, one packet for seven metres of the entire route. With its iconic Citroën 2CV cars in red Vichy table cloth livery, it’s so French… or is it? Yes, but the company is part of the French Aoste Groupe which is owned by Spain’s Campofrio which belongs to Mexico’s Sigma Alimentos, itself a subsidiary of Mexican conglomerate Alfa. Salchichón?
The prospect of a Tour de France rematch this week in Paris-Nice has its obvious attractions. Underneath this though is a trend among many stage races to mimic the grand tours which means they’ve become the preserve of only a handful of riders. Are we having too much of a good thing?
Once upon a time Sean Kelly won seven editions of Paris-Nice, the Irishman was primarily a classics rider and sprinter but had the range to take some week-long stage races. The recordman for Tirreno-Adriatico is Roger De Vlaeminck, also a classics rider with range to take a stage race along the way. Only now these riders with six Paris-Roubaix wins between them would have very little chance at winning because of big changes to the rotutes. Both of these stage races have adopted long Alpine-style summit finishes in recent years. It changes reference points, the likes of Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel probably can’t put races on their palmarès that their predecessors could.
Paris-Nice often deployed Mont Faron as its summit finish, it’s tough but a mere four kilometre climb. There have been some bigger climbs, think of the visit to Vaujany in 1994, Valberg in 1999, it had the Montagne de Lure in 2009 and the next year finished halfway up Mont Ventoux. Yet from 2016 onwards a big summit finish has become an annual staple with the La Madone d’Utelle (pictured) and ever since the Turini, Colmiane or Couillole. Likewise in Italy, Tirreno-Adriatico has had a big “Alpine-style” summit finish every year since 2012, excepting 2019. Not that long ago these races were sometimes won by the likes of Fabian Cancellara, Davide Rebellin, Oscar Freire or Franck Vandenbroucke. Now they’re the preserve of grand tour contenders, and in vintages when they’ve not been this can often be explained because of bad weather forcing the big climb to be abandoned.
Other stage races can resemble mini-me grand tours like the Volta a Catalunya, the Tour de Romandie, the Tour de Suisse and Critérium du Dauphiné but since the first one tours a region that contains the Pyrenees and the other three are literally Alpine races, a summit finish of some kind is expected, it’s part of the terrain. That said, Catalunya hasn’t always had a big summit finish stage. Likewise Romandie and even the Tour de Suisse used to be far less mountainous than today’s routes. Again these races have also tilted towards becoming the preserve of grand tour winners.
Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico though, do they need a giant summit finish? Perhaps yes for TV audiences, having one big mountain stage is a crowd pleaser. It provides a satisfying, undisputable result where the long climb helps establish a hierarchy. Yet there’s an inflationary tendency here. The appearance of the Colmiane climb for Paris-Nice 2017 was promoted in part because of the record altitude for the race. Such big climbs can wow audiences but once the public has banked this and expectations have literally been raised, where next? Weather and logistics mean much more is hard.
A route with a lesser summit finish might look soft or diluted, “not as selective as last year” they’ll say. In turn a stage race won by a classics contender or the kind of rider who can finish 10-20th in a grand tour because big climbs are out of their range isn’t as prestigious. Carlos Betancur’s win in 2014 was interesting because it wasn’t a mountainous route but maybe that’s not possible any more? Only best days of Paris-Nice and Tirreno aren’t usually the summit finishes, it’s the stages with shorter climbs, twisty descents and the walls.
Also this tendency to gravitate to a winning format isn’t the preserve of stage races able to venture in the mountains. It’s also the classics season now and many of the Flemish classics have lost their subtle differences as they import more cobbles and the hellingen climbs. Het Nieuwsblad has become a mini Ronde van Vlaanderen by importing the Kapelmuur-Bosberg finish that used to be used by the Ronde. The Ronde itself doesn’t tour Flanders in the way it used to so that it can concentrate more climbs (and VIP tents) within a small area. Gent-Wevelgem used to be the “sprinters’ classic” but that’s too boring if it ends in a bunch sprint, they’ve imported more climbs as well as the “plugstreet” gravel tracks to split things up. It’s not just Flanders. Over in Wallonia in recent years the GP Le Samyn has imported more pavé, and over the border in France the GP de Denain has gone from being a sprinter’s race to a petit Paris-Roubaix. All this helps make these races more exciting, things happen because of the obstacles along the route and a race that’s 200km long and 100% certain to finish in a bunch sprint doesn’t sound that exciting for hours of live TV. Organisers can no longer just put on a race, it has to promise something compelling for TV audiences and absent any giant summit finish, obviously in come the pavé and sharp climbs. It’s great but again, more of the same.
Conclusion
There’s the joke where two diners in a restaurant complain, “the food here is terrible” says one, “I know, and the portions are tiny” says the other. Here saying that races have too many big climbs or a lot of cobbles risks sounding like a complaint the cooking is tasty and the servings are generous. Paris-Nice has supplied some great racing. Yet all the same, if this is good, it’s can be like dining in the same restaurant time after time. Paris-Nice increasingly resembles a mini-Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico a mini-Giro. Other stage races have gone down, and for, a similar route too.
Now a blog named after the gear for climbing in the mountains isn’t going to rant too hard about added mountains. At the time of typing, the first summit finish duel between Tadej Pogačar is Jonas Vingegaard in Paris-Nice is a few hours away and it’s all rather enticing. Yet a little variety in the week-long stage races can be entertaining too, maybe not every week-long stage race has to feel like a mini-grand tour?
The first summit finish of the race and it’s a hard climb which should see another round of Tadej Pogačar vs Jonas Vingegaard.
Jumbo, just: arch favourites to win the stage, Jumbo-Visma were just one second faster than EF Education-Easypost. It’s the second time the US team has lost out in a team time trial this season by one second after the UAE Tour; their consolation is that Magnus Cort took the overall lead.
Jumbo-Visma won but how much did they celebrate? They brought such a strong team on paper to the point that there’s reduced help for the mountains to come and Vingegaard “only” got 23s on Pogačar yesterday but a win is a win. Certainly UAE will be pleased with the result and thanks to earlier time bonuses Pogačar starts today just 11s down on Vingegaard. We should note the different styles: Jumbo-Visma could have finished with a regulation four riders; UAE had Pogačar attack the final rise to the line to finish solo.
Both Jumbo and UAE have something in common: they’ll be pleased Magnus Cort’s in yellow as EF will have to do some work today while Jayco-Al Ula and Groupama-FDJ will be purring with their times for Simon Yates and David Gaudu. Ineos were 48s down, not a result they’d have signed up for.
The organisers also had a win, there’s been a lot of discussion about the rule change and not only did it give more to talk about, it opens up possibilities for future team time trials, imagine a hillier course where squads have to decide whether to deploy a heavy rider first and lose them mid-way and so on. Now teams always have to manage their effort, it’s just this “new” format means it happens in front of our eyes, it’s the striking visual aspect that makes it work on TV.
The Route: a stage in three parts. First 110km across the plains without too much going on but it’s still 110km to do and the weather forecast looks grim, it might not be defining but it counts.
Second, after Vichy things get hillier and the climb of the Côte de Vernet is more than the stats suggest thanks to some steep sections and after it keeps climbing after the KoM point on a smaller backroad before descending to the Sichon valley. From here the road drags up to the Col de Beaulouis, one of those forever climbs that goes on and on, this time via the second KoM point and then at the top of the pass there’s the intermediate sprint (6s-4s-2s) at the pass itself, it’s all on a wide road.
It’s almost worth to keep sprinting beyond this as there’s a brief descent and then a short climb before riding into the town of Laprugne. On the way out the road narrows and then it’s down a narrow descent before a tight turn for the final climb. There’s not much time or space to move up in order to be ready for the summit finish.
The Finish: the third and final part is the climb to the finish. You can have uphill finishes in the massif central that drag up without being too hard. But this is 6.7km long and averaging 7.1%, and that includes a brief downhill and flat section near the top so often the slope is way more selective.
It’s got a steep start where it pays to be in position early but the slope slackens off a bit after. It often doesn’t feel like 8% except for a few hairpin bends where the gradient seems to pick up before and stay higher through the curve and after, these are the hardest parts of the climb. The blue section on the profile shows the slope easing but in reality the slope flattens off, there’s even a brief dip down and then an almost flat section across before it picks up again for the final kilometre.
The Contenders: a breakaway or Tadej Pogačar? The problem is that not many riders that far are down on GC today and among those that are, there are not many to pick from as a winner on this uphill finish if they get there in a group, especially when you subtract those on duty for their GC leaders. Still Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Dstny) comes to mind and longer shots are Stephen Williams (Israel-PremierTech) and Mikaël Cherel (Ag2r Citroën).
EF Education might tempted to pull so that Cort can do a miracle on the last climb and stay in the lead but if he was surprisingly good in the Volta ao Algarve, today’s climb has sustained sections at 8% while the Alto de Foia he won on is a gentle 5%. But this might help reel in the breakaway and it can also give Neilson Powless a chance.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is in form, finds terrain to suit and seems to have restless legs syndrome since the start of this race. The time bonus on the line will tempt him further.
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) can and has got the better of Pogačar in uphill finishes, the question is just how good his form is? Simon Yates (Jayco-Al Ula) and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) are also outsiders, Yates is good at going clear and staying away while Gaudu is fast for the finish but their problem is how to get the jump on Pogačar and Vingegaard and they’re still GC contenders so won’t get room. It’ll be interesting to see how Mattias Skjelmose (Trek-Segafredo) does. Romain Bardet (DSM) is the local but that doesn’t make him any faster, he’s just handy for a climb like this. Finally Tour of Oman winner Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar) thrived on the Jebel Al Akhdar climb, things slow on the flatter upper section and regroup, he’s got a good chance for the sprint if others mark each other.
| | Tadej Pogačar | | | Jonas Vingegaard | | | Yates, Gaudu, Martinez |
Weather: a strong chance of rain early on but the temperature’s warming up, 12°C and a 20km/h SW wind meaning a light crosswind for much of the stage.
TV: the stage starts at 12.30pm CET, TV coverage begins at 3.00pm CET and the finish is due around 4.40pm CET.
Thirsty work: today’s course passes through Vichy, a city famous for two things, first being the seat of the Vichy government during Nazi occupation but we can leave that. Also it’s a spa town known for its mineral waters. You can find many brands from this area, like Vichy Céléstins, loaded in bicarbonates it has a distinct taste. There’s also Saint-Yorre whose factory has a tap outside for passers-by to fill up bidons with water for free… only a sign in the window says it’s temporarily out of service and it turns out it’s been broken since 2017. There’s also Chateldon, marketed as a premium mineral water but it’s exclusive because supply is limited, the spring can only fill three million bottles a year; France’s Evian somehow manages that in half a day.
There’s been scandal recently as the OCLAESP health police raided Chateldon in December 2020 after a whistle-blower claimed they were using additional CO2 to dope the size of the bubbles, allegedly while the label on the bottles claimed the bubbles were natural. As many a cycling fan knows, OCLAESP raids generate headlines but any eventual convictions, if they ever happen, can take years.
One place OCLAESP don’t have to raid is the Charrier bottling plant on the side of today’s final climb, it is closed for good. It claimed to be France’s least mineralised water, as close to H2O as you can get out of the ground with few salts in it and so marketed on health grounds. The purity was also heightened by marketing claims that it was “full of life” thanks to dissolved radium which gave it “Super radioactivity”, a boast that probably wouldn’t help today.
The team time trial stage with that novel rule change that’s still a team time trial. How much of a lead can Jonas Vingegaard get on Tadej Pogačar today?
Remember sprint trains?: first a quick mention of Jonas Gregaard who drew the short straw and went a solo attack but got the mountains jersey for his efforts, helped by his attack on Sunday. With fewer and fewer teams actually being invited to races there’s less onus on them to provide “animation” but Uno-X duly supplied a rider to go up the road for the day, even if they had a contender for the stage in Alexander Kristoff.
Remember sprint trains, when a sprinter could hitch a ride on the back of several team mates and bid their time until the finish? Perhaps it started with the Flandria team in the 1970s, it became the way the Saeco team won in the 1990s and probably reached perfection with the HTC/Highroad team around 2009. These days teams still have lead outs and riders to guide them through the finish but no one team is able to control the race like times past. You can see it, the front of the peloton is not strung out in a line, nor even in arrow formation but often spread across the road – which can sometimes be a sign of a go-slow but obviously is quite the opposite with there’s 800m to go in a World Tour race, everyone is trying to get to the front.
Mads Pedersen got the win, helped by a lead-out into the finish from Alex Kirsch, and he just seemed the fastest in the finish and collects the yellow jersey thanks to being third on Sunday’s stage as well.
The Route: 32km around Dampierre-en-Burly, a small town close to the banks of the Loire river and dominated by France’s sixth biggest nuclear power station with its four reactors and their cooling towers which have been in the news of late, partly because of long maintenance saw them being closed just as energy prices were spiking going into winter; and also last summer when the Loire was running dry and they were wondering if the plant could return water used for cooling back to the river of whether this would make what was left in the river too hot to sustain wildlife.
Anyway the course is largely flat with 180m of vertical gain, triangular in shape and it suits big engines who can pull at 60km/h rather than teams that can plot their way around a technical course. The start and finish are at the base of the triangle, the zone north of this is woodland offering some shelter from the wind and the peak of the triangle is exposed. There seven bends and most of them can be taken at speed in the tri-bars, otherwise it’s long straight sections which often roll up and down. The hardest drag up comes with about 10km to go.
The Rules: the novelty here is the time is taken on the first rider to cross the line and each rider gets credited with the time it takes them to complete the course. This means two things:
- a team is no longer as fast as its fourth or fifth rider, it doesn’t have to finish as a group. If one rider sprints solo to the line and sets the fastest time, their team wins the stage
- a team with a specialist rouleur can let them go off the front to get the stage win but if they have a GC rider as well, then they get the time they cross the line with. Therefore teams with ambitions for the overall have to guide their leaders to the best time possible
You can imagine the tactics with teams in formation for the first part of the course but the closer the finish gets, the more likely they burn up riders who can take pulls that put them into the red while towing their team that bit faster.
Artifice, a gimmick? Perhaps but so is a team time trial based on the time of the fourth rider as well. It probably won’t change too much either although it gives us something to think about on a Tuesday in March. Paris-Nice actually has a long history of innovation and rule changes, some like air transfers, prologues and the one/three kilometre rule all come from this race and are features, others like the “best descender prize” have not stuck.
The Contenders: Jumbo-Visma have picked a team with this stage in mind and the idea to get Jonas Vingegaard not just in the lead but with a cushion on his rivals including Tadej Pogačar. They have the reigning world TT champ in Tobias Foss, former world champ Rohan Dennis, the wardrobe-sized TT specialist Edoardo Affini and Jonas Vingegaard won a TT in the Gran Camino.
Ineos have a very strong team, although just imagine if they’d brought Filippo Ganna and a couple of others. Next come a sweep of teams who ought to be close but it’d still be a surprise if they won. Soudal-Quickstep. EF Education-Easypost where just pipped in the UAE Tour, although only rider in Marijn van der Berg, is here from that day. Bahrain. Bora-hansgrohe. Jayco-Al Ula.
UAE have their work cut out. Tadej Pogačar has only done one team time trial since turning pro and in the 2019 Vuelta a España his UAE team finished 21st out of 22. However this was a day when Jumbo also lost time, a leak of water on the course caused carnage. Still team management are getting the excuses in, saying they didn’t have TT bikes over the winter because of equipment shortages, a reminder that while the heritage fades, it’s still the old Lampre team at times and you can’t imagine other teams having this problem.
| | Jumbo-Visma | | | Ineos | | | EF, Quickstep, Bora |
Weather: cold and cloudy, 7°C and a light SW wind.
TV: the first team is off at 2.15pm CET, TV coverage starts an hour later and the last team should arrive at 4.40pm CET.
A sprint stage and a good chance for Tim Merlier to get another win. The course has been designed with crosswinds in mind but it looks like Mother Nature’s holding her breath and it’ll be a calm but cold day.
Merlier finishes earlier: a hectic finale. The climb out of Milon-La-Chapelle saw Neilson Powless and Tadej Pogačar launch and for a brief moment Jonas Vingegaard was caught out. Onto the next climb of the 17 Tournants and Pogačar went again, this time taking the six second time bonus and while this time Vinegaard followed, but lost out in the sprint. Pogačar kept going over the top and Vingegaard followed along with Pierre Latour but the Dane wasn’t pulling; he had Olav Kooij for the sprint and soon they sat up to leave Latour.
Despite these attacks the field wasn’t shredded. Soudal-Quickstep guided Tim Merlier into the finish and when Quickstepper Florian Sénéchal got a gap, this forced Bora-hansgrohe to chase and Danny van Poppel was used up, prompting Sam Bennett to launch is sprint early while Merlier could bide his time and took a clear victory.
The Route: 163km and roughly south-east but the route has several pronounced changes of direction, a feature presumably designed to help ensure crosswinds at one point… if the wind obliges. Only today it looks calm so this should be a sprint finish.
The Finish: how long is a finishing straight? Today’s route picks up the D152 road with 13km to go and stays on it to the end, but there’s the autoroute junction and then the village of Ury to navigate. From here it’s one long straight road of 9km, sheltered by woodland. There is a roundabout with 500m to go but everyone goes via the left and it’s two lanes, the difficulty is that the exit is slightly over on the right, it’ll line out the bunch.
The Contenders: Tim Merlier and his Soudal-Quick-Step have come for stages like this although he lacks a pure lead-out rider but the likes of Yves Lampaert and Florian Sénéchal are capable. Today’s flat route and the dragster finish suits him well and as we saw in the UAE Tour he’s just proving better than the others.
The finish today has fewer traps so teams won’t get caught out so easily. Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe) should be close and Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) is suited to a course like this, especially given the cold conditions and he’s got Søren Wærenskjold as a powerful lead-out.
Is Jonathan Milan a sprinter or lead-out? The Bahrain rider is fast for a long finish to the point that trying to come off his wheel and go past seems hard for his rivals, yet he lacks the torque for a jump in the final 50 metres compared to the pure sprinters.
We can ask if Arnaud De Lie is a sprinter? Yes he’s got the power and bulk but there’s a lot more to him, so much that you wonder if preserving him from risky finishes makes sense. He can still win and while out of position yesterday seemed so quick in the closing metres.
A big boulevard finish ought to suit Arnaud Démare but that’s because he’s had a big train in the past, now Groupama-FDJ are trying to get him to manage without so that they can bring him and David Gaudu to the Tour de France and race on two fronts. He’s missed some racing, had Covid so that makes him a harder pick still.
| | Tim Merlier | | | Sam Bennett, Alexander Kristoff | | | Kooij, Démare, De Lie |
Weather: grey, cold at 7°C and the chance of rain. But it won’t be windy so this means the stage is likely to be defined by the sprint finish rather than the peloton being cut to ribbons by the crosswinds. They’ll be a SW wind at 5-10km/h but it could gust to 20km/h but even in the exposed terrain that’s probably insufficient for crosswind chaos.
TV: coverage starts on France 3 for locals, GCN-Eurosport or whatever channel you watch the Tour de France on around 3.15pm CET and the finish is forecast for 4.40pm CET. If it’s just an expected sprint, tune in late to watch them thunder up the long finishing line.
Paris-Nice gets underway with the now traditional hilly opener west of Paris.
The Route: 169km around the Chevreuse valley (see below) west of Paris. There’s a series of climbs, many uncategorised, and plenty of exposed roads. The two marked climbs are the same one, 500m at a steep 12%, and all on a narrow road in woodland but at top of the climb there’s no chance for a breather as it’s out of the woodland, a drag up and on exposed terrain.
There’s an intermediate sprint at the the Côte des 17 Tournants, normally a categorised climb when Paris-Nice visits but today it’s a sprint for the 6-4-2 second time bonus. The “climb of the 17 bends” is hardly Alpe d’Huez’s cousin, the bends are more slight kinks in the road rather than hairpins but it’s 1km at 6%.
The Finish: the race crosses the finish line halfway in the stage so it’ll be less of a surprise for the bunch. After the climb of the 17 Tournants there are exposed roads before reaching the town of Le Mesnil and La Verrière and here the road rises a touch after right-hand turn in town, followed later by a left turn onto the finish.
The Contenders: sprint or surprise? If it’s a sprint then the hilly course and the climb with 7km to go means our winner has to be able to cope with a climb or two. Think Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe), Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ), Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Bryan Coquard (Cofidis), Ivan Garcia Cortina (Movistar), Michael Matthews (Jayco-Al Ula) or even Edvald Boasson Hagen (Total Energies), all quality riders but you’re probably also thinking none of these names are prolific winners.
Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) fits the bill and is the form pick as he chases his first World Tour win. We can’t ignore Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep) who seemed the best sprinter in the UAE Tour but this just isn’t the course he’d design if he could but it’s up to rivals to put him into the red, similarly Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma) and Alexander Kristoff (UAE). Which brings us to Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) whose won a hilly sprint in this race before, wins regularly and looked in form in winning the Etoile de Bessèges time trial plus he can handle himself in a crosswind.
For surprise results, why not Tadej Pogačar (UAE) in case the race splits up and he’s in the front group?
| | Mads Pedersen, Arnaud De Lie | | | Sam Bennett | | | Démare, Matthews, Merlier |
Weather: cold and cloudy, just 7°C and it won’t be very windy today, 10km/h from the NW.
TV: on France 3 for locals, GCN/Eurosport in many countries and often on the same channel you’d watch the Tour de France. Coverage starts around 3.15pm and the finish is forecast for 5.00pm CET.
La Chevreuse: Paris normally hosts the finish of the Tour de France but you wouldn’t ride the Champs-Elysées if you wanted to get a ride in. and the city is adding more and more cycle lanes but for the sporting cyclist wanting a longer ride the options in the French capital are limited. To the east of the city is the Bois de Vincennes, a park with woodland; to the west is the Bois de Boulogne, the same with 4km circuit with a small climb although lap it and you’ll begin to know how a goldfish circling a bowl feels; if you have to try be sure to go during day as at night both of these parks turn into red light districts and drugs markets. Push on west past Versailles into the Yvelines department and you’ll reach the Chevreuse valley, whose roads feature on today’s stage. It’s where many Parisian cyclists head when they want a ride. There are small twisting roads, woodland, sharp climbs and it’s all scenic with mills, castles and more. There are other places to ride outside of Paris but they’re either further away, more crowded or just pan-flat so the Chevreuse is a choice destination. Photo via Flickr’s Charles Jacques.
Tom Pidcock finally looks back. He’s been away for the best part of 50km and much of it solo. With 10km to go it seemed his time was up as his lead was reduced to around ten seconds. Only he didn’t give up and he didn’t even seem to look back, all while the chasers behind couldn’t commit between them.
A bright sunny day, no gloopy gravel nor gusting winds. The early breakaway of the day saw Alessandro De Marchi (Jayco-Al Ula), Sven Erik Bystrøm (Intermarché) and Ivan Romeo (Movistar) got clear, all solid riders and if we know De Marchi as a breakaway specialist, it was a chance to see 19 year-old neo-pros to watch Romeo on the attack.
Early there wasn’t much else to write home about, except for the achingly beautiful course. The race styles itself as “the most southerly of the northern classics” but this strapline could be blunter, think “the most beautiful of the classics” because of the rolling hills, the Montalcino vineyards and all those old farmhouses and villas. Although if you think it looks pretty in March, come back on a warm day in summer and it’s twice as good.
The sporting action picked up on the approach to the Monte Sante Marie sterrato sector, an 11.5km slog with several lengthy climbs. The Strade Bianche is a relatively new race and the peloton is still feeling how to race it, establishing the reference points and learning to spot patterns. Monte Sante Marie is becoming the place where the action goes down; it was where Tadej Pogačar went solo last year. This time you could see teams in train formation trying to pace their leaders into the best position for the start of the sector.
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The first damage on the sector was the sight of Romeo losing contact with his two companions, presumably a parting moment of sweet sorry for the Movistar rider. Moments later Alberto Bettiol sprang out of the bunch and Andrea Bagioli and Tom Pidcock soon bridged across. Bettiol as a diesel workhorse made sense launching this far out, he can’t wait for the final sprint; Bagioli covering as a team mate for the likes of Alaphilippe seemed wise too, but Pidcock attacking from here? In his own words later on, “that wasn’t the plan” but in the moment any questions were soon settled when Pidcock doubled down dropped the two Italians on a descent.
One of the attractions of this race – and they are legion – is that the final hour just isn’t too tactical, the course quickly reduces the number of contenders. The chase group behind Pidcock only saw a few teams with more than one rider; including Ben Tulett – and briefly Magnus Sheffield – for Ineos; Groupama-FDJ had Valentin Madouas and neo-pro Romain Grégoire making an amazing debut, Bahrain had Pello Bilbao and Matej Mohorič. Even Jumbo-Visma were down to just Attila Valter and Tiesj Benoot.
Pidcock going solo was a surprise. One thing he lamented during his cyclo-cross campaign last winter was that he just doesn’t have the brute force of Wout van Aert or Mathieu van der Poel. So seeing him in time trial mode here was a surprise; you’d think he could surf wheels and use his lightweight build, handling skills and punch to perfect use on the final climb into Siena. Only there’s more to him and he was carving the gravel descents like a Super-G skier; behind rivals were visibly more cautious and some ill-at-ease, like skiers effecting snowplough turns.
Mathieu van der Poel briefly led the chase but his powerful attacks seemed nervy, he could accelerate but couldn’t press on. Soon he was on the wrong side of a split as the group fragmented and from then on his day was done. Instead the chase had Madouas and Grégoire, Vallter and Benoot, Quinn Simmons (Trek-Segafredo) Andreas Kron (Lotto-Dstny), Davide Formolo (UAE), Pello Bilbao and Matej Mohorič (Bahrain).
Pidcock caught the two leaders and Bystrom didn’t last long. De Marchi was a passenger for longer but on the unnamed Sector 9 sterrato you could see him trying to shake his quads as if they were cramping and sure enough on the next rise he couldn’t follow. Finally Pidcock was in the lead solo.
With 20km go Pidcock had 20 seconds, the gap was falling, but only just. Pidcock wasn’t wilting, his upper body was beginning to rock more but his feet were spinning like he was riding the rollers. He just kept going and danced up the final Le Tolfe sterrato. Behind big moves by Tiesj Benoot and Attila Valter chomped into Pidcock’s lead, and with 10km go he only had 10 seconds – something confirmed with a stop watch, it wasn’t the TV graphics going haywire – but these chase moves also thinned the group which was down to Benoot, Vallter, Madouas, Rui Costa and Mohorič.
Like the last openingsweekend Jumbo-Visma had numerical superiority but only just this time. They’d didn’t seem to be using it as well. If the victors get to write history, the losers risk having bloggers writing about them. This time Jumbo’s tactics didn’t work, but rather than blasting them for it, with hindsight we can probably say they were doomed because had Vallter taken some monster pull to reel in Pidcock, we saw for real in Siena that Madouas proved stronger than Benoot. This time Jumbo-Visma were going to get beaten. The chase was a typical stand-off, each rider wanting the gap to be closed but needing to keep something reserve. Pidcock began to extend his lead in the streets of Siena, 10s, 15s and 25s by the time he started the final climb at the Fontebranda gate. He was clear while behind the chasers risked being swamped by the closing peloton but they held on to contest the podium places.
The Verdict
A thrilling edition held in spring sunlight. Tadej Pogačar’s romp a year was impressive but the suspense vanished once he got an infallible lead. Tom Pidcock launched in about the same place but it was all so different this time. There was tension all the way to Siena as he never had a big gap and it looked like he was going to be caught. But he never gave up, he protected his 10 second lead while the chasers supplied tension, trading attacks and cracking rivals but never quite able to get the breakaway back. Pidcock joins the likes of Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel as a Strade Bianche winner, that feels logical. And yet he still seems impossible to catalogue as a rider, today’s ride also hints at more range too. We’ll see in the coming weeks.
Paris-Nice starts this Sunday and this year’s Race to the Sun has attracted two stars in Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard. The pair duelled in the Tour de France last summer, now we’ll get to see if they can do it on a wet Wednesday in the Auvergne. Easier said than done in a high stress race with trapdoors in the opening days, a team time trial with a twist, and some rivals who will pounce if the two mark each other.
A quick look at the route first so we know what to expect in the coming days. Stage 1 this Sunday is hilly circuits west of Paris, the GC contenders will have to watch out in case the bunch splits and for crashes in hectic moments. Stage 2 is either a procession to a bunch sprint or a manic Monday in the crosswinds, we’ll see which way the wind blows.
Stage 3 is a flat team time trial on a triangular-shaped 32km course just by the Loire river that is exposed to the wind. The novelty here is riders get the time they cross the line with, when normally a team’s time depends on the fourth or fifth rider. No longer is a team only as quick as its fifth rider. Teams can burn through riders like booster rockets as they approach the finish. Whatever the rule tweaks and tactics, this stage rewards big teams with hulking helpers and aero analysts.
Stage 4 is a ski station summit finish, of sorts. It’s not alpine but auvergnat in central France although the long-range forecast suggests it could actually snow. After a succession of ascents on lumpy roads to add to the climbing, the final climb is on an awkward road with 6km at 7%. Stage 5 is a likely sprint stage but watch out for the mistral wind. Stage 6 is a tough day out with several “wall” climbs, normally a breakaway day but the GC contenders can exploit the terrain.
Stage 7 is the big summit finish stage on the Col de la Couillole but it’s a steady climb that’s ridden fast and being on a good wheel makes all the difference. Stage 8 is the now classic dash around the hills behind Nice where the sharp climbs and twisting descents make for a frantic finale, many times in recent years the overall classification has been up in the air in the final moments of this stage.
There are time bonuses with 6-4-2 seconds for each day’s intermediate sprint and 10-6-4 seconds at the finish line.
The Contenders
It’s hard to see past Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, harder still to pick between them. Neither has won this race, both would like to. And yet they don’t have to win so if they mark each other someone else can ride away with the spoils.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Emirates) looks like he can do it all, he’s won small bunch sprints and solo summit finishes alike and more, he seems to be setting the weather for sport. This season his form has seen him winning against big names in Andalucia. However he’s not coming to the race with his Tour de France team, and he could be on the back foot after the Stage 3 team time trial. If so he’ll have to go on attack later in the week and try to find a way to unpick the Jumbo-Visma padlocks.
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) got the better of Pogačar last July thanks to a strong team and he can hope for more of this and his team has mastered Paris-Nice in recent years. Vingegaard might not pack the same sprint as Pogačar but his team looks stronger on paper for the team time trial so he doesn’t have to quibble over time bonuses. However this collective strength for the flat opening phase of the race – including bringing house sprinter Olav Kooij – comes with risks later on, Tobias Foss and Rohan Dennis can be versatile but only so far in the mountains where Vingegaard risks being isolated.
Dani Martinez (Ineos) has just won the Volta ao Algarve and was third in Nice last year. The team time trial suits his team. He misses the zip to match Pogačar and Vingegaard but if he doesn’t follow their initial attacks he’s excellent at pacing his way back but this rather implies he could be third again, it’s hard to see how he rides off with the yellow jersey. One way is to gamble and Pavel Sivakov is a second card to play and we’ll see how Ineos race, will they take risks, or try to assure a podium by steady riding?
It’s great to have Pogačar and Vingegaard here but one of the attractions of Paris-Nice over the years has been how finely balanced the racing was. Simon Yates (Jayco-Al Ula) has been an expert here, surprisingly good in the time trials, at ease on the climbs and willing to roll the dice at times too. Toppling one big name is a big ask, two is a lot and the form is unknown. Lucas Hamilton and Matteo Sobrero could have their moments too and offer good support.
Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) had a 2022 to forget and but will have fond memories of this race having won here in 2020 and 2021, only each time it felt like he was at the limit of his possibilities on the long climbs; this year’s course with the extra summit finish in the Auvergne won’t help either. Bob Jungels should be worth watching as well.
David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) is in great shape having been on the podium last weekend in the Boucles Drôme-Ardèche but surely he’d sign today for a third place finish in Nice? He’s got to master the opening stages to avoid splits and if his team has big engines for the time trial, he surely won’t be leading after Stage 3 so how to attack and win outright? Plus he’ll want his legs do the twitching rather than being asked all week about that Discord with Arnaud Démare.
Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar) won the Tour of Oman and will want to improve on last year’s debut here where he finished 8th. Mattias Skjelmose (Trek-Segafredo) is one to watch, frankly he’s unlikely to win but he’s a rider on the up and worth watching for clues about the future. Romain Bardet (DSM) is coming into form and his team might like a high GC finish for the points it brings but does he ride steady or instead look for a stage win? Bahrain bring Gino Mäder and Jack Haig, both have made the top-10 before, the latter three times over. Ion Izagirre (Cofidis) is a regular in the top-10 and comes with a decent team but historically they’ve bombed in team time trials so he’s likely to have things even harder here. Neilson Powless (EF Education) has been one of the in-form riders this year but how to take time in the mountains?
| | Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard | | | – | | | Dani Martinez, Simon Yates | | | – | | | Sivakov, Powless |
TV: coverage on France3 for locals from 3.10pm to 5.00pm CET each day, mirrored on Eurosport/GCN in many countries, it should be on the same channel you watch the Tour de France on. There will be daily previews here which will list more precise times.
With the racing taking a brief lull, time to tot up the wins by team so far this season.
Also a quick glance at the promotion/relegation standings, it’s early but a regular reader request.
UAE Emirates top the table with 11 wins, five of these from Tadej Pogačar. Juan Sebastián Molano got a surprise sprint win in the UAE Tour which probably counted for double as he won on the same day the Abu Dhabi ruler and UAE Vice-President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum attended the race. Plus even if Pogačar didn’t take his almost habitual GC win, Adam Yates took the big summit finish for them. Tim Wellens looks in great shape and has already got a win in the Ruta Del Sol. It feels an age ago but Jay Vine took the Tour Down Under. They look capable of winning on almost any terrain, the big test is how they line up behind Pogačar at the Tour.
Soudal-Quickstep are next. They’ve just had a great weekend with Julian Alaphilippe winning the Faun Ardèche Classic, Tim Merlier winning a stage of the UAE Tour and Remco Evenepoel taking the overall in the UAE Tour. And yet they were almost invisible in the Belgian openingsweekend. It’s interesting to see the team’s transformation to stage racing, the pivot to Evenepoel’s ambitions doesn’t exclude the classics but it can alter the focus, especially for a team whose identity has been so closely linked to results in March and April.
EF Education-Easypost are the surprise starters with 10 wins already, that’s more than they got all year in 2022. Can they keep it up? Quite probably yes given Richard Carapaz is yet to get going, Magnus Cort can pop up anywhere and Neilson Powless is one to watch in the Ardennes. Still, it’s unlikely they finish the season so far up the victory rankings but they’ll look for quality, Carapaz to be a menace in the Tour de France.
Another surprise is that Jumbo-Visma are only on seven wins. They’ve taken six in the last week thanks to the dubbel in the openingsweekend in Flanders. The O Gran Camiño is “only” a 2.1 race but the team hit it hard, symbolised by Jonas Vingegaard sprinting for the opening intermediate sprint on the first stage. He won the overall by more than two minutes.
Six wins for Ineos and all from different riders, including Tao Geoghegan Hart with his first win since the Giro. Plus signing Thymen Arensman is looking dynamic already. They’re bound to keep winning, but as the biggest budget team around they’re held to high standards, a season without a grand tour win can feel like a missed year but with Egan Bernal still managing injuries that’s a tough ask, expectations need a reset.
Movistar are doing well. Sure it’s still not yet March but six wins is solid – they had two all year in 2020 – and it’s also the manner of the wins. New recruit Ruben Guerreiro is delivering already, Fernando Gaviria has a win and looks competitive and Matteo Jorgenson’s win in Oman achieved the alchemy of converting promise into a win, ditto Einer Rubio in the UAE. It was said Alejandro Valverde helped get the best out of everyone but it looks like they can turn the page as well.
Intermarché-Circus-Wanty have six as well and 15 podium places. 36 year old Rui Costa symbolises the management’s “Storage Wars” policy of bidding for old lots in the hope of being able to find something to restore to old glory, likewise for Lilian Calmejane and Mike Teunissen but this is only part of the story, the musketeers also have a win from 22 year old Biniam Girmay while Gerben Thijssen and Rune Herregodts should get results soon too.
Trek-Segafredo have five wins with two from Mathis Skjelmose, who is not the next Jonas Vingegaard but not far off, a similar build and style, right down to the ethereal pedal stroke. There’s a lot riding on Mads Pedersen and Jasper Stuyven for the classics but the former especially can pick off grand tour stage wins if needed, and quietly Antonio Tiberi had a solid UAE Tour as he continues his progress although this morning he’s making the news for the wrong reasons.
Cofidis have a spring in their step this year, none more so than Bryan Coquard who got his first World Tour win in the Tour Down Under, his next challenge is to keep on winning into spring and summer. The team can race on several fronts with Axel Zingle for cold wet classics and Jesus Herrada for sunny days in the hills, Guillaume Martin in the mountains. Their challenge is that big win, they can be strong in smaller races and win from breakaways but how to win a big race front the front group? They’ll take heart from last weekend’s riding where Anthony Perez took a classy win in the Faun Drôme Classic with a solo move that was underpinned by Victor Lafay and Guillaume Martin, he could go clear in part because rivals were wary of the latter pair.
Bahrain are only on three wins, they should be on more and it’s not just a pun about their “Victorious” team name, no they’ve had 15 podium places already this season so keep coming close to the win. Jonathan Milan looks ever-more important to them, he can win sprints and more for them. Looking ahead it’s also a crucial season for Jack Haig and Gino Mäder, both full of talent but how to find opportunities in grand tours when your first name is not Tadej, Remco or Jonas?
Three wins but the glass looks very much half-full for Jayo-Al Ula. One win in the Tour Down Under “at home” with team leader Simon Yates making the trip worthwhile, another in the Saudi Tour from Dylan Groenewegen which promotes the same tourist resort as the team’s eponymous co-sponsor. Plus another in the UAE Tour on the World Tour calendar. So far it’s typical “Greenedge” as the team is good at targetting wins and delivering.
Arkéa-Samsic are up into the World Tour, now they want to stay there. With Nairo Quintana a distant memory the team’s switching its focus to bringing on young French riders. This could be a crowded field with both Ag2r Citroën and Groupama-FDJ vying for the same role; these two rivals are more open to hiring established foreign riders but also have bigger commitments to developing young riders via their feeder teams… something Arkéa-Samsic doesn’t even have because the budget’s right. Anyway Kévin Vauquelin’s got them two wins and he can deliver more.
Team DSM are on three as well. The youngest team in the World Tour, the hard part is going to be scoring wins, there’s a lot of promise but converting this into wins is hard. If anything three wins is good because they’ve had just four podium places this season, the lowest of all the WorldTeams but at least the conversion to wins is solid. Still in Sam Welsford they’ve got a very solid sprinter, he’s one for the flat dragster finishes but already showing big power and the ability to rub shoulders, literally, with the best sprinters in the world.
Bora-hansgrohe are the surprise underperformers, just one win thanks to Sam Bennett in San Juan. They’ve had fourteen podium finishes so far this season which suggests they’re hardly struggling. Matthew Walls and Jordi Meeus can bring more sprint wins but the team looks built for the hilly stage races to come. Max Schachmann, Lennard Kämna, Bob Jungels, Sergio Higuita, Jai Hindley and Aleksandr Vlasov can each deliver plenty.
Ag2r Citroën never score high, they don’t go big for sprinting and are a team more focussed on the summer stage races. That said they’ve invested big in the spring classics over the years after spotting this is where to earn beaucoup points to keep in the World Tour. But here they’ve scored rather than won. Just the other day team manager Vincent Lavenu said “when our sponsors pay big amounts, there’s a duty to get the results” in a broadside aimed at Greg Van Avermaet. But this can be turned the other way, why is management spending big sums on a 37 year old rider who is by all accounts a consummate pro and all-round good guy but his win rate was declining even at BMC, let alone CCC, and that’s before Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel ate his lunch.
Astana are still struggling, much like last year. Simone Velasco got a decent win for the team. Mark Cavendish is the marquee signing and by all accounts happy with his debut but his story is one of quality over quantity, he doesn’t need ten wins in 1.1 races, just one stage win in the Tour de France although a win or two along the way are probably necessary steps for confidence. Cees Bol came with Cavendish but isn’t an automatic lead-out à la Mørkøv or Richeze, he’s built for the classics as well and can score and have his own chances. Samuele Battistella is a quality rider but an infrequent winner, he’ll at least score UCI points for the team.
Groupama-FDJ have won with Stefan Küng, a win that’ll give them and him some cheer given the number of times he’s been runner-up and with the “show me who you’ve beaten and I’ll show what kind of rider you are” French idiom, well he beat a quality field in the Algarve. The team rely on Arnaud Démare for a lot of their wins but he usually takes a while to get going, if he can be prolific wins in February and March are the exception. The team have been fielding Paul Penhoët for sprints and he’s probably overdue a rest or just a shot at some 1.1 Coupe de France sprints where he might land his first win.
Alpecin-Deceuninck are the only winless team now. It’s too early to say the team has problem but they’ve completely missed the opening phase of the season. Yes it’s Mathieu van der Poel’s team so once he’s in action, they’ll win soon enough… starting this Saturday with the Strade Bianche? But in recent years they’ve done well without him, there’s been a lot more to the squad and as a World Tour team that’s what they need. There still is depth with Jasper Philipsen leading the way; only he crashed in the Omloop. They’ve got a lot of sprinters and having lost Jay Vine are even more made for the flatlands although Quinten Hermans should be handy in the hills.
- What’s a win / methodology: .1 UCI wins and higher. Wins count when a rider is representing their team, so a win in a national championship is counted; but not if a rider is racing for their country or joining their development team for one race.*
Promotion / Relegation Watch
Two months into a three year cycle we shouldn’t extrapolate too much from the standings but readers have been asking about the standings so see for yourself, the red line separates the top-18. The chart illustrates the troubles for Astana and Alpecin-Deceuninck, it’s not just a lack of wins but points in general. Teams in red are second-tier ProTeams and you can see Lotto-Dstny are riding high and guess who it’s thanks to… Arnaud De Lie of course with 657 points.
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Dylan Van Baarle has gone clear on the Haaghoek pavé and is joined by Florian Vermeersch, Jonathan Milan and Mathis Le Berre. They’re about to tackle the climb of Berendries where Milan will crack, then Vermeersch will pop on the next climb. This left Van Baarle with only Le Berre for company and little to worry about since the Frenchman had been in the early breakaway from the start.
The race got off to an ordinary start with an early breakaway going clear without much of a fight. In the move were Jelle Wallays (Cofidis), Mathias Norsgaard (Movistar), Mathis Le Berre (Arkéa-Samsic), Louis Blouwe (Bingoal-WB), Adam de Vos (Human Powered Health), plus team mates Alex Colman and Gilles De Wilde (Team Flanders-Baloise).
Things took a twist when the wind picked up all of a sudden and, aided by the gusts, a group of 14 riders got away with 96km to go. It had six of the seven Jumbo-Visma riders but also other topfavoriten like Arnaud De Lie, Magnus Sheffield and Fred Wright among them. They got 45 seconds on the peloton where several teams were forced into a chase. On the Holleweg pavé and this group shrunk to six but with hindsight it was a warning as to just how alert Jumbo-Visma were going to be. The move was shut down while the early breakaway of seven was still clear.
Moves were being made and Jumbo-Visma seemed to cover each one. De Lie crashed with 50km to go on the approach to Wolvenberg, wiping out on a corner. There are worse places to crash, but only just. Still he was up and riding soon although it looked like his chase, a large part of it solo, could be costly in a race where just being out of position for a climb can be ruinous. But no, soon after came the Molenberg and a select group got clear across the top and De Lie was keeping company with Tom Pidcock, Stefan Küng and Tim Wellens.
Onto the Haagehoek cobbles again and Dylan Van Baarle made his move, and was joined by Florian Vermeersch (Lotto-Soudal), Jonathan Milan (Bahrain) and Mathis Le Berre, the latter still having something left after being in the early break. The quartet here didn’t have the feel of the winning move. Onto the Berendries and Milan, a hulk of a rider, was the first to be dropped on the slope. Next came the climb of Elvenberg and Vossenhol and it was Vermeersch’s turn. Van Baarle’s efforts meant the move was now looking more serious, he had Le Berre but the Frenchman was barely a passenger and Van Baarle could settle into the kind of long range effort he does best. Not for him searing attacks uphill or a sprint in town against others, much better a test of stamina while away solo and arguably the further away from the finish the better.
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Still Le Berre impressed. Having been in the early breakaway he jumped onto the counter-move. Sure, as a neo-pro who’d been up in front all day Van Baarle tolerated him sitting on much more than if Vermeersch had tried this. Bahrain led on the approach to Geraardsbergen and their work cut into Van Baarle’s advantage.
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Up the Kapelmuur and Tim Wellens launched with Matej Mohorič behind. Arnaud De Lie gave chase as well, his brute power visible as he charged up the cobbles in the big ring. Metres behind Christophe Laporte was marking him and the four linked up.
Van Baarle was well clear though, a cushion to manage. As ever the motos seemed to offer some help but this is in part the leader’s privilege, get yourself clear into a winning position and the media need to picture.
Three of the four kept chasing, the presence of Laporte must have weighed on their minds but it wasn’t stopping them. Better to reach Ninove with a shot at second place than get swamped by the group behind. Only this is just what happened in the final straight when the peloton, if we can call the group that, caught them in the final metres. Arnaud De Lie and Christophe Laporte were both overtaken by others but sprinted and pulled out a lead to secure the other podium spots.
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The Verdict
A good day’s sport because of the action happening from so far out, the final hour had plenty going on and which is why the cobbled classics are so rewarding, even when the winning move goes clear it only became obvious it would succeed later on.
The clear lesson from the day was the strength of Jumbo-Visma, they made the race; and they were so omnipresent they stopped others from racing too. At times it felt like they could have ridden in security guard uniforms rather than their yellow and black kit. And Wout van Aert is yet to join them.
Sure Soudal-Quickstep struggled but we’ll have to see if this is a bad day rather than a theme; it could be both mind you. Kasper Asgreen pulled out ill, there were crashes for Tim Declerq and Florian Sénéchal. But if the Belgian press wants to roast the team in tomorrow’s papers Patrick Lefevere will be ready with his reply should Fabio Jakobsen win in Kuurne. The team got a sixth place thanks to Ballerini; several other teams will be hoping for more too.
Dylan van Baarle won and did plenty solo and should be saluted for this. But if Jumbo-Visma won because of the strongest team, surely Arnaud De Lie was the strongest rider. Luckily bike races aren’t won just by being the strongest, it’d be boring if it was so simple. De Lie though brought entertainment with his busy style and willingness to get stuck in. A late entrant – the original plan was to spare him today so he could ride Kuurne – he seemed at ease on the course (crash apart) and in his own words, “I think I was in all the moves“. The sight of him launching up the Kapelmuur in the big ring, or sprinting in Ninove when caught by the chase group and not only staying away form them but also getting the better of Christophe Laporte who’d sat on, shows what he’s capable of.
The Belgian classics season opens this weekend. Yes the season has been raging for a month already and we’ve had plenty of action so far but the openingsweekend in Flanders always marks an increase in the intensity with fierce racing where riders scrap for position on narrow roads ahead of steep climbs or bone-shaking cobbled paths and where the action comes thick and fast in the final hour.
The Course: Gent to Ninove the long way, 207km with a course that spirals around to take as many difficulties as it can in the second half. The first cobbles come after just 36km with the Haagehoek and they’re chased by the Leberg hill. Added back to the race, the Lange Munte pavé come after 96km and mark a change in the race as from here the cobbles and climbs start to come thick and fast, as you can see on the profile above.
Removed last year, the Molenberg is also back and with 50km to go. The moneytime is with 18km to go and the start of the Muur van Geraardsbergen. It starts climbing in town and then enters the woodland section which is steep with rough cobbles before reaching the chapel at the top which gives the climb its Kapelmuur ,”Chapel wall”, nickname. Don’t forget the twisty descent where it’s hard to retake lost ground for a moment, gaps established over the climb can stick.
The final climb is the Bosberg, which at 1.3 kilometres is long for a climb in Flanders. The 5% average slope isn’t fierce and there are no pinchpoints or bends to exploit, it’s just a test of brute force after 190km where some attack and others hold on with all they’ve got left. Over the top and there’s 13km to go from here until the streets of Ninove.
The Finish: a new finish but nothing exciting. On the contrary, it’s further outside Ninove on the nondescript bypass road. Anyway for the race it’s a big wide road that dips a touch and then rises to the line in the final kilometre.
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The Contenders
How to win this race? The Geraardsbergen-Bosberg combo is so often crucial with what’s left of the race fragmenting on the slopes of the Kapelmuur. This Saturday offers a slight headwind up the Bosberg and to the finish which can help a lone escapee while others hesitate in a stand-off but it can equally keep a lid on things.
None of the galatico riders are here, starting with last year’s winner Wout van Aert. So Jumbo-Visma make up for it in numbers with Christophe Laporte, past winner Tiesj Benoot and new recruit Dylan van Baarle. Now they’d all love to win here but the team’s focus this spring has to be on Flanders and Roubaix. Still of the trio Laporte is very consistent, a regular top-10 and a decent win rate when he can take his chances, he can sprint or go solo while Benoot and van Baarle are strong but less versatile, ideally they’ll want to barge clear solo.
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Soudal-Quickstep rely on firing riders forward to give them an option on the win. This is a previewer’s predicament, as who to pick? Yves Lampaert has got strength and experience but doesn’t have a fast finish, up to him to go solo. Kasper Asgreen is hunting for the form of old but he can go solo and still pack a sprint. Casper Pedersen, Florian Sénéchal and 2021 race winner Davide Ballerini are all fast finishers whose best chance might be combining to ensure a handy lead out. The team will have bigger goals for later but a win here gets the Belgian media off their backs.
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Ineos bring three youngsters in Tom Pidcock, Ben Turner and Magnus Sheffield. Of the trio, Turner looks the pure classics contender – although he’ll make a handy helper in a grand tour as well – and he’s a form pick too having recently won in Spain. Pidcock’s a confounding rider who can win on many a terrain and is hard to bet against, but which route to victory here, he could fly up a climb but has he got the power to stay away solo? Sheffield has more of this on tap and combined they have a good chance of a result.
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Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) can handle a sharp climb and take a bunch sprint, he’s one of the most versatile sprinters these days. New recruit Søren Kragh Andersen is worth watching as he can sneak away in the finale and pressure others to move, it’s an obvious tactic to play and the question is whether both are in shape to pull this off as this is their first race of the season.
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Arnaud De Lie has the form and the ability but winning here would involve more than he’s put together so far. The “Bull of Lescheret” will have to fight for position more than ever, cope with the climbs and then use his sprint to stampede past some big name rivals. If so it’d be a huge win for Lotto-Dstny as the Belgian team hasn’t won a major cobbled classic (major as in Dwars and Nokere don’t count) since 2005 when Nico Mattan won Gent-Wevelgem. The team can also fire Victor Campenaerts off the front.
If many eyes are on De Lie, how about another rider with a bovine nickname? Stefan “Muni” Bissegger (EF Education-Easypost) is better known as a time triallist and his nickname comes from the Swiss-German word for a young bull. He likes the classics and all that beefy build means a decent sprint making him not so much a dark horse as a black angus but watch for him this spring.
Ag2r Citroën bring experience in Greg Van Avermaet and Oliver Naesen who were third and fourth here a year ago but both need harder, more attritional race to see others fade away. On the youth side Stan Dewulf and Benoît Cosnefroy offer promise but the latter’s had a disrupted start to the season already, although in part that means he’s under the radar.
As ever Bahrain come with plenty of menace. Give Matej Mohorič an inch on a flat road and he’ll gladly take a mile on his rivals. Jonathan Milan packs a mean sprint and more, a dangerman if he’s there in the finish while Fred Wright is the joker card to play in search of the big win.
UAE have a strong team on paper with Tim Wellens for the breakaway and Pascal Ackermann for a sprint but can the latter cope with the climbs, he might prefer Sunday’s Kuurne finish. Veteran Matteo Trentin is on hand for guidance and can sniff out a win.
Groupama-FDJ bring a solid team with Kevin Geniets in good form and Stefan Küng has just won the Algarve TT but as ever his challenge is he’ll be beaten in a sprint so he’ll want to get away solo but is heavily marked.
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Trek-Segafredo always bring a coherent team for the spring classics but assembling the win is the hard part. Jasper Stuyven is their kopman who can go solo or win a sprint alike.
Never say never for Total Energies with Peter Sagan and Edvald Boasson Hagen but arguably Anthony Turgis and Dries Van Gestel are more motivated than ever. DSM have Nils Eekhoff plus Cadel Evans race winner Marius Mayrhofer who wants to be a classics rider more than a sprinter. Bora-hansgrohe bring Jordi Meeus for the sprint or Kuurne and Nils Politt as an ever-present threat but still hunting for his first classics win of any kind.
Intermarché-Circus-Wanty are good at creating upsets but their problem today is that they have some good sprint options but if there is a bunch gallop, normally someone else is faster, but watch Mike Teunissen who’s left Jumbo to get more opportunities. Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X) has a win already but can he cope with the climbs, team mate Rasmus Tiller can. Finally never say never for Sep Vanmarcke as the other day his team tweeted he wasn’t ill , as if for once he wasn’t the victim of misfortune.
| | – | | | Jasper Philipsen, Christophe Laporte | | | Tiesj Benoot, Arnaud De Lie, Ben Turner, Jasper Stuyven | | | Casper Pedersen, Matej Mohorič, Davide Ballerini | | | SKA, Wellens, Lampaert, Sheffield, Pidcock, Asgreen, Milan, Wright, Sénéchal |
Weather: dry, cold and mostly cloudy. The wind will blow from the north at about 15-20km/h.
TV: live coverage on Sporza for locals and Eurosport/GCN internationally. Coverage starts at 1.30pm CET and the finish is around 4.00pm CET. By all means catch it all but the last hour is where the big action should come.
Women’s Omloop: stay tuned as this race follows the men with the finish around 5.15pm CET and there’s a thorough and informed preview over at procyclinguk.com.
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne: Sunday’s race is more sprinter-friendly but has delivered suspense in recent years as valiant breakaway riders have sometimes taken the win. The finish is forecast for 5.00pm CET.
Einer Rubio won Stage 3 of the UAE Tour, attacking at the foot of Jebel Jais with the help of a brief leadout from his Movistar team mate Albert Torres. He then went away solo and held on for the win. It’s a big victoryr on climb normally all about being able to sit on a wheel while team mate mates set the pace; it’s not the story of someone sneaking away for a plucky win.
Rubio will be Movistar’s leader for the Giro. We’ll see what he can do, you’d think they’d probably sign for a top-10 and a stage today? He’s got a couple of things in common with Jai Hindley, they both won the tough GP Carpdarco and they both rode for the same U23 team in Italy’s Abruzzo region, VC Aran Cucine Vejus before turning pro, an unusual route.
It’s openingsweekend in Belgium. There’s a jolt as the sport swaps sunny climes of the Mediterranean and Middle-East for the pale weak light of Belgium but the intensity of course goes up. One reader emailed the other day asking about things to do on a visit to the Flemish classics and one suggestion in reply was to buy a newspaper just to feel the weight of content dedicated to the classics and cycling, and all the tangential stories around it. Scan the papers and they’re packed and it’s far from Remco this, Remco that. Tom Boonen’s split up with his long term girlfriend, not normally something to cover here but it’s providing a lot of column inches in Flanders.
Arnaud De Lie took the train to Oudenaarde to join his team’s Omloop recon ride, not quite news you need to know but it shows how every angle is covered. Workers are filling in potholes. The first people to park a camping car on the course have arrived, and been interviewed. At best all this is tangential to the sport but you can have your fill.
But there’s more, take Patrick Lefevre saying the recently he could have signed Wout van Aert but he wanted to keep doing his cyclo-cross, so the deal was off. Lefevre added, with a salty flick worthy of Salt Bae, that he’s spent too long doing cyclo-cross and that he ought to have won the Ronde by now. Van Aert promptly labelled his next ride on Strava, a 6 hour session including a climb up the longest side of Mount Teide, “cyclocrosser’s training” as a prod back. It’s gentle stuff but shows the palimpsest of rivalries, stories and more in Belgium, someone says something on TV one night; someone else labels their Strava rider in response. It’s a level you don’t get elsewhere. Anyway, if you want to join in then Het Nieuwsblad, Het Laaste Nieuws and Sporza offer plenty and translation engines are very good at putting it into English or whatever your first language is.
One subject that hasn’t been a drama because it’s been well-managed is Tadej Pogačar’s race programme. Yes is riding Paris-Nice and won’t do the Strade Bianche. He’s changed his plans for the season. All this was decided a long time ago but has only come out lately. Not riding his team’s home tour was a big deal and if he’d announced he wasn’t doing Tirreno-Adriatico back in January it could have been a story for a day rather than a note. Plus it keeps his rivals guessing. The one day goals are Milan-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders. Once he’s done with the Tour of Flanders that’ll be it for Pogačar for a good while. Perhaps we’ll see him in the Tour of Slovenia again, if not then it’ll be the Tour de France.
SPRINT VERDE (16.7km) Concello de Guntin
1 – 11 Jonas Vingegaard (TJV) – 20 pt (+ 3'')
2 – 35 Ion Izagirre (COF) – 17 pt (+ 2'')
3 – 15 Rohan Dennis (TJV) – 15 pt (+ 1'')— O Gran Camiño (@ograncamino_igt) February 23, 2023
Meanwhile in Spain Jonas Vingegaard starts his season today and at pixel time he’s hardly easing himself back into the sport, instead he’s taken the first intermediate sprint of the day in the O Gran Camino race.
Now to slower starts, as Alpecin-Deceuninck are now the only team without a win after Groupama-FDJ and Ag2r Citroën both triumphed last weekend. What’s striking is just how much of a slow start Alpecin have had, the entire team has 117 UCI points, teams like Q36.5 are on double that, Bardiani is on four times that. Of course it’s still February and once Mathieu van der Poel is on the start line he’ll score. As L’Equipe pointed out (Sunday’s paper edition) his win rate is an astonishing 23%, as in he’s got 40 wins in his career for 170 race days. Jasper Philipsen will add more but still, the newly promoted team have yet to get going. Astana are on 157 points as well, a slow start as well and they seem to have long term challenges as well. It’s far too early for “relegation watch” but we can see which teams are under pressure, not for the licence but just to get going.
Finally, talking of measuring performance problems, Shimano’s Dura-Ace power meter has got a roasting from DC Rainmaker in a recent review. The blogger is known for his detailed analysis, not for him a “hot take” or a “first impression review”. It’s an problem for consumers and the manufacturer Shimano which seems to have released a premium product that has issues with accuracy and consistency when it ought to function like a Swiss watch; although an issue reduced because, while the rest of the 9200 Dura-Ace group was released late in 2021, getting hold of a 9200 power meter has been hard and good luck finding one for sale in 2023. But it’s also an issue for teams and riders who face the same problems, they might have units made available to them but word is even these can have issues.
The route’s been unveiled and so time for some quick stage-by-stage notes. It looks like a hard edition with some promising “new” roads saved for the final weekend.
The race will take place between Sunday 4 June and Sunday 11 June.
Stage 1
Announced last month, this takes place on the flanks of the Massif du Sancy, the area visited by the race last year when David Gaudu mugged Wout van Aert in the sprint and also on roads that the Tour de France will borrow in July when it will also use bigger mountain passes during Stage 10. All this isn’t a coincidence, the region wants to promote the area. First a big loop towards Le Mont Dore, then four laps of a finishing circuit. It’s a lumpy stage with some small roads but nothing fierce.
Stage 2
Another hilly day in the Auvergne region, another course with a finishing circuit that avoids some of the bigger climbs. Who ever won the previous day has a good chance of striking again today. If you want detail in the finishing circuit, note Saint-Paul-de-Senouire is Saint-Pal, and the Côte des Guêtes is the D20 road to the village of Connangles, a regular wide road.
Stage 3
Not to name names but recent editions of this race have been so hilly that sprinters have shown up, collected their road book and discovered there’s not a single stage for them; at least they got a week to work on their climbing ahead of the Tour. This stage though does suit the sprinters, if any come.
Stage 4
A 31km time time trial. It’s no dragster course but still suits the specialists with a 10km false flat drag up to the finish, all through rural farming country full of charolais cattle.
Stage 5
If it’s late into the Tour de France and you get a sense of déjà vu it could just be this stage as it overlaps with the route of Stage 19 on it’s way to Salins-les-Bains, a spa town once renowned for its salty waters and today the kind of place you might ride through and remark on its charms but conclude that it’s seen better days. The final climb is hard, a forest backroad that should select the winner before a fast descent on a wider road.
Stage 6
Out of the Jura and into the Alps, the graphic above suggests not much is happening until late but the route will sap the riders. The big question is will much happen later on? The Col des Aravis is a big ring climb but that just means the speed is higher before the finish to Crest-Voland where the finish at 1,218m means tackling half the Col des Saisies. It’s got a hard start but in avoiding the whole climb it’s a bit of a softer stage that’s open to all and someone from the breakaway will fancy their chances.
Stage 7
4,000m of vertical gain in under 150km and you can see the substantial flat sections, it’s really 4000m in 100km which is beaucoup. The Col de la Madeline is a staple of the Dauphiné and Tour de France over the years leading the riders over to the Maurienne valley. Then comes the Croix Fer summit finish. But look closely and it’s via Albiez-le-Jeune to the Col du Mollard and this is a “new” way up for the sport – used in the 2015 Tour de l’Avenir – the road has about 45 hairpin bends – double Alpe d’Huez in less distance – before picking up the main road to the Croix de Fer and a very hard slog to the top.
Stage 8
If life should ever bring you to Grenoble with a bike, this is a textbook ride to do in a day. Starting in the suburb of Pont-de-Claix, it’s up the Isère valley via the balcony road to the Col des Mouilles before dropping to the valley and then comes the glorious Chartreuse Trilogy with a side route up Mont Granier before the Cucheron and Porte and the descent back to Grenoble.
It’s here the race reprises the climb of the Bastille above Grenoble. It’s not a new road but almost as nobody in today’s peloton has done it. Used seven times before, the last occasion was a prologue in 2000 but it’s probably infamous for the finish in 1977 when Bernard Hinault – who’d taken a few wins but was still just a promising rider – was leading solo in the yellow jersey but descending the Col de Porte, crashed at speed on a bend and had to be pulled out of the woodland below the road and was put back on his bike. He completed the rest of the descent and rode to the Bastille where he got off his bike, shouting “I want to quit” but his manager Cyrille Guimard put him straight back on the bike and he won the stage and race. If Bernard Hinault wanted to give up it suggests it’s hard and it is.
Teams
The World Tour 18, plus Lotto-Dstny, Total Energies, Israel and Uno-X. The same teams will do the Tour de France.
The Verdict
This race sprawls over the entire Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes mega region and this year’s edition even crosses in the nearby Bourgogne-Franche-Comté too rather than sticking to the actual Dauphiné area as the name suggests but a rant about this will be saved for when the race is actually happening in June. Otherwise this is an enticing route because of the final weekend. The start is a bit plodding, scenic but without much more but the time trial stage will shake-up the GC, the stage to Salins should have a lively finish. It’s the last two stages that stand out, the hairpin-heaven ascent of the Croix-de-Fer is a novelty but also strategic, the twistier a climb the more a rider will pay for not being at the front. The final stage offers plenty, traditionalists might long for a 250km stage but they don’t happen any more in the Dauphiné, instead this is another concentrated stage with few moments to rest, all before the vintage climb to the Bastille.
We’ll have to see who rides but the course shouldn’t leave much doubt about the winner, a 30km TT and two solid, if compact, mountain stages. Last year’s edition didn’t scream Jonas Vingegaard but looking back with hindsight at the body language atop the Plateau de Solaison and there was a message, no?
Tadej Pogačar rode off to win the Clasica Jaén Paraiso Interior, leaving others in the dust (photo from Gomez Sport / race website). Yes it’s only a 1.1 race in February so just one thought rather than exhaustive analysis: UAE are riding much better as a team and their recruitment is starting to pay dividends. We saw this with Pogačar’s previous race, Lombardia but the new hires should reinforce this. Good news for him but for neutrals seeing a team riding a grand tour in train formation might be less inspiring.
Rankings
UAE also go top of the UCI rankings for the year as of today, finally knocking Intemarché-Circus-Wanty off the top spot. The “musketeers” had been leading thanks to wins in Majorca and Valencia and placings and scrapping for points and placings as they did so well last season. There’s not much to report on the three year ranking as it’s very early. Astana lag like last year but surprisingly Alpecin-Deceuninck, still winless, have only 108 points when normally their sprinter-heavy team is good at results, they were once reliant on Mathieu van der Poel but really are not anymore. They’ll surely pick up but have had a slow start.
The women’s rankings are more pressing of course as World Tour licences are up for grabs for the top-15 teams. UAE’s development team has two asterisks, built out of the Valcar team it collects their points from last year but won’t be moving up as you can’t have a main team and a development team together and so the red line is drawn after the sixteenth place. The other asterisks teams are second-tier pro teams looking to move up. As you can see among the promotion contenders Ceratizit-WNT are off to a decent start in their promotion quest, Human Powered Health even better as they try to stay up. Meanwhile current World Tour team Israel-PremierTech-Roland face the drop.
Giri
Staying with women’s cycling and the Giro d’Italia Femminile and the men’s U23 Giro have both been awarded to RCS for the coming years. This should bring more capacity and support to the women’s race and the chance for RCS to “cross sell”, where towns that want the men’s Giro with its established large audience are encouraged to take on another race as well. We see ASO doing this where towns hoping for the big ticket of a Tour de France stage are steered to holding a stage of Paris-Nice, the Dauphiné where geographically possible, and now the Tour de France Femmes. Also one often underappreciated skill of grand tour organisers is they way they’re really plugged into regional and local government, a big network of contacts to help build the route and get the roads closed for the race.
Kool as a cabbage
The women’s UAE Tour saw two stage wins from Charlotte Kool, the apprentice trouncing her former master Lorena Wiebes each time, although a crash for Wiebes the first time and a powerful headwind the other time probably explain plenty too. Kool is an obvious delight for headline writers in English…but of course it means “cabbage” in Dutch.
Say it right
On the subject of names, Matteo Jorgenson won Stage 3 of the Tour of Oman yesterday. It’s with a hard-J, “Jaw-genson” rather than “Yorgenson”. And FDJ-Groupama’s neo-pro Paul Penhoët has a string of top-10s to his name already, his name is said “Pen-wet”. There’s a nice anecdote to share about Penhoët but that’s for the day he wins.
Arkéa vs Cofidis
Arkéa has extended sponsorship of the Arkéa-Samsic team until the end of 2025. It’ll keep the team on the road and presumably help them made additional signings if necessary. Arkéa? It’s a banking brand in Brittany and South-West France. Curiously it belongs to the Crédit Mutuel banking group, of which consumer credit company Cofidis is also a part. So here we have one bank with two World Tour teams? Normally teams can’t share owners and there’s even a page on the UCI website to list teams that can’t race together for fear of collusion, eg Groupama-FDJ and Groupama-FDJ Conti development team. The answer for Arkéa and Cofidis is that Crédit Mutuel is only a loose umbrella for these entities, they’ve got different management, offices and crucially even compete against each other for some consumers. In fact it’s got to the point where Arkéa’s been causing trouble for the wider group as it wants more independence, a spat in the otherwise sleepy world of rural banking. Still, for now, it makes Crédit Mutuel a big backer of pro cycling and with Ag2r and Groupama as other big sponsors, France’s mutual finance sector is all over pro cycling.
The Vanishing Paper
Arkéa-Samsic’s a team with red kit and was down to seven riders when it was raided by police during the 2020 Tour de France, a similar situation for the Bahrain team in 2021 when they too had red kit, seven riders and a gendarme roust. Anyway, remember the academic journal that had a paper proclaiming how it found traces of tizanidine, a muscle-relaxing medicine in samples from three cyclists competing in “international three week cyclist race in France”? Well an eagle-eyed reader points out that this paper has been retracted, jargon for binned. The testing method might be valid but the privacy concerns meant you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce the team involved and this was a probably a breach of academic procedure, great that they could detect this substance from hair samples but they didn’t need to explain in such detail who they got it from. It doesn’t mean much for the sport and the police investigation rumbles on slowly, the substance involved isn’t banned by WADA but it is closely-regulated in France and so any team doctor carrying it and dispensing it might have some explaining to do.
EPO in a pill
Staying with pharma, GSK has got US approval for Daprodustat, a pill that “increases endogenous production of erythropoietin”, the hormone that promotes red blood cell growth. In plain English, EPO in a pill. For too long in pro cycling a lot of riders and team staff spent time, energy and money acquiring and transporting EPO, a furtive cold chains. Now it comes as a tiny pill, presumably a lot easier for genuine anaemics with a clinical need who don’t have to inject themselves which is the main point of course. If it’s convenient for patients, it’s much less so for dodgy dopers. It is already on the WADA banned list, in part because of collaboration between GSK and WADA. Easy to consume, easy to detect.
Pogačar vs Vingegaard in March?
To finish on a more optimistic note, let’s circle back to Pogačar who’s changed his racing plans this season in order to find new challenges and stay fresh both physically and mentally. L’Equipe writes this might include doing Paris-Nice rather than his habitual Tirreno-Adriatico, if so this raises the possibility of an early clash with Jonas Vingegaard. The Dane took the Tour with some fine individual riding and the backing of a very strong team, now we’ll see if they can do it again on a wet Wednesday in the Auvergne? We’ll see, Pogačar’s not certain for Paris-Nice and if he is then Jumbo-Visma may think about their plans in the light of this.
Many sports are bringing in procedures to deal with concussion. For years a knock to the head has been part of the rough and tumble of sports but medicine has shown that one hit can cause brain trauma and crucially a second or repeat injuries can compound this and cause permanent brain damage.
Pro cycling’s started this process too and it’s very much a learning issue for team medics, race doctors and officials. There are guidelines and procedures which have been borrowed from other sports but they run up against cycling’s very nature of travelling across the landscape. James Knox’s disqualification from the Tour Down Under was instructive as it raised issues but I wanted to wait and take stock of the situation rather than replay one case.
For most sports there are two paths to reduce concussion and brain trauma. First is to reduce head injuries, for example in youth soccer some have adopted the practice of not heading the ball, or are trying to cap the amount of headers a player can make. In cycling helmet use helps mitigate this. The other path is to examine participants who have taken a knock to the head. In field sports like soccer or rugby this is easy with players benched while medics perform health checks to test their cognitive function. Cycling has borrowed from this with shared guidelines from ice hockey, equestrianism, soccer and rugby but it’s here where the problem comes for cycling because you can’t rest a rider for a few minutes to perform checks because the race is riding away.
In a sport where just closing a ten second gap to the peloton can be tough, let alone getting going again after a crash, a bike change, waiting to get a medic on the scene and then doing the checks which can take minutes. Sometimes a rider can be so far behind they have to be disqualified because the broom wagon’s gone by and they’ve had to reopen the road to general traffic.
That’s the pocket-sized card for concussion checks, literally a cut-out and keep guide to have in a race vehicle. It’s important to stress this is just a guide and something done in the moment following an incident, there’s a longer checklist to go through after the race and the race doctor is usually tasked with the follow-up, they should ask after the rider involved or get team staff to monitor them.
Stopping to do a concussion assessment is the right thing to do so losing time shouldn’t be a consequent penalty. Easier said than done to correct this. First some races can run to a tight timetable, especially early on the course and a rider could find themselves out of the race by stopping for too long as police or marshals reopen the roads to traffic so even trying to pace a rider back after a check can be out of the question if there are traffic lights or roundabout priorities to respect. The concussion check has to be done at the side of the road rather than when a rider holds onto the doctor’s car and the medic’s car isn’t a specialist taxi or motor-pacing service, and while we’ve all seen how easy it looks in the Tour de France, not every race has convertible cars, nor medics and drivers who are so experienced. Remember we’re dealing with riders who might have sustained a head injury. Pacing back with the help of the medics car is not ideal. Maybe a waiting team car could be better? Yes, but still risky. Maybe a vehicle where the rider can get inside and is transported? But in the time you’ve taken to read that one you’ve probably worked out that the car couldn’t just drop the rider back in the field, they’d have to find a place to stop, get the bike off the roof and it’d be complicated, who regulates this?
Which means even if some sort of compensatory pacing or travel is allowed, the next question is how much? A footballer can sit on a bench and return to the field of play after 10 minutes. Is the rider towed back to the peloton? Not always, imagine a multi-rider crash where other riders are trying to make their way back, anyone who’s stopped for a concussion check should probably be allowed to rejoin these chasers, but not get an advantage beyond this. So it’s almost as if an extra commissaire is needed to work out who could be given some assistance back and they in turn have to know the location of riders and time gaps, much easier said than done.
One issue that doesn’t seemed to have happened yet is a rider being stopped from racing – disqualified for their own good – if they display “red flag” symptoms following a crash, only for subsequent tests to reveal there’s no trauma; take a random example where someone shows outward symptoms like slurred speech because it’s because they their tongue in the fall; or what someone looking at a rider mistakes for a convulsion is just cramp. Now a medic should be able to tell the difference but given there are few medics around, others are given the authority to exclude a rider from the race like commissaires, team staff and race officials. This extended authority to exclude a rider ought to be a good idea given the precautionary aspect but you can imagine the online outrage if a rider is ejected by someone who earnestly believes they’re doing the right thing but turns out to be wrong. Hopefully it doesn’t happen but it’s just something to be aware of, there’s a grey area when non-medics are tasked with diagnosis.
Another issue is whether riders stay in the race. The sport was founded on the myth of resilience and endurance rather than speed or skill. Riders were celebrated for overcoming adversity of the time with ideas like Nietzsche’s Übermensch and it’s a theme that persists today, the Tour de France is special because it is so gruelling. We’ve probably all seen the meme where cyclists mock footballers who dive at the slightest touch while the hardy rider hauls themselves out of a ravine. But the football dive is all about incentives, the chance of getting a free kick from the referee or removing a rival from the field of play. Now road cycling has its own incentives too as a cyclist who suffers a fall may feel compelled to get back on their bike before the gap grows, and downplaying or hiding symptoms becomes part of this. They may feel loyalty to team mates or pressure from management. One aspect here might be to normalise withdrawals so it just becomes one of those things, that riders and team managers alike know it happens to a lot of riders and it happens often.
There could be wider policies such as rider substitutions during a stage race. This is changing the nature of the sport and perhaps a step too far? After all a rider who falls and loses skin or breaks a bone doesn’t get replaced and which teams have riders spare who can travel with a race just in case.
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Conclusion
Concussion checks are the right thing to do and there’s an awareness campaign to make everyone in the race convoy aware of the likely symptoms. They’re handy to know for a group ride too.
The big issue is the addressing the time cost of stopping riders beside the road. Just pacing a rider back isn’t as easy as it sounds, hanging behind a car at 60km/h or more is risky at the best of times, more so if a rider might still have brain injuries. Finding reliable ways to mitigate the penalty is hard, a solution that works in the Tour de France has to work in the Tour du Poitou-Charentes as well. There are practical challenges like working out how to get a rider back to the race and also cultural ones like overcoming the almost instinctive instinct to jump back on the bike.
The thing to cheer though is that at least riders are being checked, the real problem was when nobody cared or noticed. It’s not an intractable problem but solutions, if the sport can find them, are going to be clumsy and imprecise.
- some of the images are of riders who’ve crashed but without concussion
Time for an update on the wealthiest people in pro cycling. If you thought this meant Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel or Egan Bernal, think again because this is about the people rich enough to hire these stars. As usual the point isn’t to fawn at the wealth but a “follow the money” piece so you know where some of the money coming into the sport originates from.
In part one here we’ll look at the team owners and sponsors and next week, others in and around the sport…
If you don’t know who Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan is, you probably should. He’s first as he’s probably the wealthiest person here, and likely by a long way. The sixth son of the founder of the United Arab Emirates and brother of the UAE’s President, he is the national security advisor of the UAE, think spy chief with a diplomatic role as well, often working back channels in the region and beyond. Look at the UAE team website and he’s not on the board. So is he involved in pro cycling? Let’s follow the money for not only does he have that security role, he’s got a big business portfolio too and many of his corporate jobs are linked to the UAE team. Look at the jersey and you can spot companies like FAB, a fast-growing bank that recently looked at taking over Britain’s venerable Standard Chartered bank; the big state-holding company ADQ; and G42, a technology company with a Covid vaccine sideline, and one common trait is that Sheikh Tahnoun chairs them all. He also chairs Chimera investments, a venture capital company… that owns Colnago which supplies the bikes to the team. To use a US comparison to exaggerate things, it’d be like the head of the CIA also chairing JP Morgan, Exxon, Microsoft and Trek and putting these names on the front of a cycling jersey… but of course the UAE is a smaller place and run by its royals. Still you get the picture and his business interests make him a top sponsor of the team.
He’s a sportsman, a keen cyclist, triathlete with a long interest in Brazilian jujitsu. If you want to read more, the Financial Times has a free long read on him. Just the fact that he’s behind sponsorship qualifies him for the list and he’s a figure anyone on the planet should take note of. Other royals are behind the team too, the crown prince of Dubai Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktou, aka “Fazza”, is also a cyclist but it’s “TBZ” who has so much of his business on the team jersey.
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Next comes James “Jim” Ratcliffe, the main owner of Ineos, a private petrochemicals company. He left a career at oil major BP to buy up unloved chemical factories and Ineos has grown so big that it’s moved into oil and gas exploitation to source the raw materials and energy for itself. It made Ratcliffe into Britain’s wealthiest man at one point although he’s in Monaco now. When Sky pulled out of cycling Ratcliffe bought the team having also owned a sailing team and backing an ice hockey team. His interest in sport is still growing, he’s behind French football club OGC Nice and is a sponsor and part owner of the Mercedes Formula 1 team – making him Lewis Hamilton’s boss if you like – and Ineos has branched out into other sports like the sponsored marathon record attempt. Now he’s in the running to buy Manchester United. Why? Because he can and it must be fun to own all these teams but they help with dealmaking too, especially the Formula 1 connection which offers VIP opportunities galore. There are cross-connections with Dave Brailsford of the cycling team now working with the Nice football team. You do wonder for the cycling team though, it’s said Ratcliffe knows his cycling but all the same he wants the big wins and the relative dry spell in the Tour de France despite the biggest budget in the sport must frustrate. Which might explain the second round of attempts to sign Remco Evenepoel (they tried when Quickstep signed him the first time as well). Either way the team has an almost unlimited credit for now.
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Australians love their sport, and if there’s a bigger sports fan Down Under than Gerry Ryan, I’d like to hear it. He’s the man behind the Jayco-Al Ula team and has bankrolled the team ever since it launched as Greenedge. Ryan started out building camper vans and caravans and forty years on Jayco has been a big success that, with the auto industry having pulled out of manufacturing, is said to be Australia’s biggest vehicle manufacturer. But there are only so many caravans to sell and he’s become super-rich with the Walking With Dinosaurs show to which he owns the rights, and his media and entertainment business also stages other shows although he’s a multi-millionaire among some of the billionaires here. He’s involved in more business and he’s been a generous donor to other sports too like basketball as well as owning race horses. How long can he keep funding a pro team? On and on, we keep asking this question and he’s still there and while his businesses like Jayco, the Mitchelton winery or BikeExchange (his son’s venture) have appeared, it’s Ryan who’s really paid the bills. He stepped into help the team after it almost fell into curious hands in the Manuela incident but will be breathing a sigh of relief as the team signed a deal with the Saudi Arabian tourist project Al Ula.
Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa of Bahrain, or “Prince Nasser” in short, the man behind the Bahrain-Merida team. He’s 31 and went to Sandhurst, the British military school and loves nothing better than to spend hours in the saddle… with his feet in the stirrups as he’s a keen equestrian and has a stable of endurance horses. He’s also into other sports, especially triathlon where he’s done the Kona Ironman, indeed his Instagram account has pictures of him in army fatigues and triathlon suits. Bahrain is an island in between Qatar and Saudia Arabia and sits atop substantial oil reserves and like other nearby nations has is spending income from these resources on ways to diversify its economy. The country is a monarchy where the king appoints the government and chairs the judiciary and Prince Nasser, as one of the king’s seven sons, holds a certain authority, some of which he’s used to condemn dissent within the kingdom. The state has seen uprisings and crackdowns and has the kind of human rights record that makes it hard to cheer for the team.
Now for Edward Hult, CEO of EF Education First in the US and son of Bertil Hult who founded the language school and became a billionaire. They’re not merely sponsors of the team, they now own it. Bertil Hult started out with next to nothing while Edward, the third son, was born in Switzerland and grew up wealthy and seems to have been groomed for the business, getting a doctorate in management before joining the family business. They’ve got plans for the team and having bought it, are now investing. They’ve signed Richard Carapaz and from the sounds of things others on the team are purring about their new contracts.
Who is the boss of the Soudal-Quickstep team? Patrick Lefevere might be most people’s answer but he’s the general manager and of course, the mouthpiece with his regular media interventions. But Zdeněk Bakala might be the right reply. The “wealthiest” feature started here in 2012 but there’s only name left a decade later and its him. As the Soudal-Quickstep website says, “At the end of 2010, Czech Businessman Mr. Zdenek Bakala took over the team, which is managed by a Board comprising eight members”. Bakala left Czechoslovakia before the Iron Curtain fell, the story goes he went to the US with only a handful of dollars and a sandwich in his pocket, started out in finance and then went into minerals and has become a billionaire thanks to coal mines, steel plants and iron ore in the Czech republic and Ukraine. The Quickstep team’s changed sponsors over the years and he’s said to have helped top up the budget over the years and he’s had wider ambitions with the surprisingly clumsy attempts at breakaway leagues but despite this, cuts a discreet figure in cycling. By contrast he’s a known person in Prague whose interests now extend into the media and philanthropy but he’s not fallen for the siren sounds of politics unlike other billionaires and arguably done better for it. He’s a keen cyclist and said to ride his bike incognito along the shores of Lake Geneva where he’s resident.
The bosses of corporate sponsors like, say, Movistar, Cofidis or Deceuninck may have a passing interest in the team but they’re not so involved, the sponsorship is a corporate decision rather than an individual pet project. However some sponsors, first is Willi Bruckbauer who founded Bora, the cooker extractor company and co-sponsor of Bora-hansgrohe. A carpenter and kitchen-fitter who enjoyed bike racing in his spare time, he didn’t like the typical extractor hoods above the hob and had one of those eureka moments to came up with the extractor system on the side of the hob. Bora’s grown and grown and for a while was an exemplar of a Bavarian Mittelstand company, a mid-size manufacturer but seems to be growing beyond this. It’s still in Bavaria and Bruckbauer is cycling-crazy, in a good way. The company’s swank new headquarters have a cobbled driveway up to the main entrance… laid by the Amis des Paris-Roubaix from the same “blue” stones as used in Northern France (pictured), a detail that Bruckbauer insisted on. Cycling and business are interwoven and the team is growing, the squad and the company’s profile was catapulted by signing Peter Sagan for 2017 and they now have a deep roster.
We could also add Fritz van Eerd to the list, the boss of Jumbo supermarkets has been an influential sponsor at Jumbo-Visma, supplying credit to hire the likes of Tom Dumoulin and Wout van Aert, the latter just when the supermarket chain was expanding out of the Netherlands and into Belgium. But Van Eerd stepped down from the chief executive role following a tax investigation. There’s also been motor racing sponsorship and if the van Eerd family aren’t big cyclists, they’ve been more than just transactional sponsors. Anyway Van Eerd says he’s stepped away pending the investigation and hopes to return.
The Israel Start Up Nation team is backed by Israeli-Canadian real estate billionaire Sylvain Adams, a keen cyclist who has migrated to Israel and has been spending his fortune to promote the country. You might play Velogames and spend an imaginary 100 credits, Adams does it with his cash. He part-funded the Giro’s start in Tel Aviv and has hired Madonna in the past to perform in the country. It’s sometimes odd that he gets to call his team “Israel”, is the team representing the country, the government, the people when other teams that sport a national identity are backed by the state itself. A mogul in Canadian real estate, when it comes to cycling Adams’ record is perhaps not so shrewd, he bought the Katusha licence to get into the World Tour but his well-funded team was relegated at the end of last year. But it depends on the point of view, he’s in for the long haul, wants the team back in the top flight and backs a women’s team in the World Tour too so he should be a fixture in the sport for time to come and just making it back into the World Tour is surely the start of his ambitions.
Staying in cycling’s second tier teams brings us to the Q36.5 team. A new outfit, it’s sponsored by a cycling clothing brand whose mission is to try and keep the body as close to the ideal temperature of 36.5°C. Now clothing sponsorship is valuable with brands like Rapha and Castelli bidding to back the top teams… but not valuable enough to pay for a whole team, especially Q36.5 which is a new brand first out for recognition, bumper sales can follow. Which is where Ivan Glasenberg comes in, a South African businessman and Swiss resident. He joined the commodity trader Glencore and rose to become its chief executive and grew the business, even expanding directly into mining. He bought more shares in Glencore, which paid out more dividends, which allowed him to buy more shares and so on. The company has not been without controversy although as Mr Glasenberg’s lawyers would surely point out, the allegations have been against others in the company and not him. This had prompted the stock price of Glencore to fall but it reached a record high late last year. Glasenberg’s stepped down from the role and among other things, got into road cycling after being a race walker in the past. He’s made an investment in Q36.5 which is an Italian company from Bolzano but with a retail presence in Swizerland, a flagship store in Zürich. In short the sales of Q36.5 can’t be enough to fund a pro team alone so Glasenberg’s helping to get the team and brand going.
Conclusion
Oil, gas and mining fund a lot teams, Gulf states back three teams now (UAE, Bahrain, Jayco-Al Ula) while billionaires who made their fortune in this area back three more (Ratcliffe, Bakala and Glasenberg) but this also reflects the money in these sectors.
Having done this feature several times in years past, what’s striking is just how many past names have vanished. Some have got out of the sport, some have seen their wealth vanish, a few have seen both happen, only Bakala is here a decade later.
Fancy yourself as a master manager, a dazzling directeur, the Carl von Clausewitz of the car convoy? Fantasy cycling games like Velogames and others can be fun. I’ve come close to winning a few fantasy grand tours, many more times I’ve DNF’d after a shocking start where I soon stopped checking the standings. But they can also reveal things about the sport and our preferences.
The first thing is to know the rules and the route. The Velogames system – I like its simplicity but no affiliation, take your pick among many more – is big on stage wins, take the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana this week, there’s 150 points to the daily stage winner and 300 points for the overall win. So two sprint stage wins are as handy as the overall: it’s very different from the UCI points scale. There’s homework to be done on the course, this year’s Paris-Nice has a team time trial instead of a likely sprint stage so you might pick fewer sprinters.
You should pick riders who will score. Obvious, but studies show football fans can disproportionately bet on their own team’s success, it can be down to loyalty and familiarity more than rational behaviour. Similarly your biases can lead to pick riders you like. Now your real life fantasy might be to mastermind a pro team and share in the glory of your preferred riders. Or you might support a local pro from near you and get them in your team. A game has no such agency, the “fantasy” premise sounds dreamy but it’s downright misleading, think “arithmetic contest” instead and pick riders who will harvest points rather hiring imaginary pals.
Don’t be too clever. You might have your eyes on a promising rider due for a breakout performance but you want a banker, not an espoir. That emerging talent may not emerge during the very race you’ve selected them. And winning isn’t everything, you can often find “cheap” sprinters who will get top-10s.
Know your team too. The likes of Ineos, Jumbo-Visma and UAE Emirates all have quality support riders who could lead and win for themselves were they on another team. But they’re not, and they won’t. There’s every chance they’re paid to do a job mid-stage and sit up before the finish. These teams can come with multiple leaders but apply some kremlinology to work out who is the real leader, things like whose bike is placed on the outside of the team car for easy access or judge body language.
Pick riders you don’t like. Again you are not picking friends to ride around Italy, France or Spain with. You might even have suspicions about the ethics of a particular rider. This is revelatory as for a fantasy league there is no need to parse their bio-passport so they can be a good hire. And the results are totted up right after the race so you can win before any sample turns positive. It might feel like it as you scroll through the drop-down menu options but your pick is no reward nor endorsement. If you wanted to win a fantasy San Juan then Miguel Angel Lopez was an obvious pick for your team; even if real pro teams won’t go near while there’s an ongoing police investigation in Spain.
Also pick from teams you don’t like. You may find a team backed by an authoritarian regime with some questionable management off-putting; in pro cycling this could be one of several squads. Just remember you’re not signing up as a co-sponsor, nor vouching for them.
There are some statistical quirks to exploit. For years Quickstep have had an uncanny ability to win more often than place, so everything else being equal, if you can’t decide between some riders, maybe get the Quickstepper. Likewise if you’re struggling to fill the last places on your team with any remaining credits, a Quickstepper is useful as there’s a chance they’ll win and if not they’ll deliver assistance points. You can pore over stats and data but sports history helps too, Cofidis haven’t won a Tour stage since 2008 and just don’t win much so their riders are often a harder pick. That said they’re on the up, while Quickstep are hiring more helpers to pull for Evenepoel and won’t be firing riders forward all the time.
So far, so fantasy. You can try to tilt things but ultimately luck will play its part and predicting the results of a bike race is hard going, as anyone who tries to write a race preview or places bets knows.
Anyway, it’s all just fantasy but imagine trying it all the real world? An actual directeur sportif has to to hire riders according to a matrix of performance, contractual availability, marketability and their personality to fit into the team, plus make sure there are no skeletons in their bio passport and more. Above all do this within their budget, all while some teams have varying amounts of credits to spend. If you had to do it for real, what choices would you make?
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It’s still January, just. The cycling season feels like it’s been roaring for some time now. We’ve had one day races, stage races, a time trial, a summit finish at 2,600m, controversies and more.
The road cycling season is starting earlier and earlier. The Tour Down Under, the Vuelta San Juan too, the Tropical Amissa Bongo are all known fixtures of course. But in Europe things are earlier. The GP La Marseillaise used to mark the opening of the season in Europe, it’s been superseded by the newly promoted Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana which happened week earlier, plus we’ve already had the Challenge Majorca races. This early slot meant snow forced course changes, although it’s bad luck too.
There are no training races. Sure the big names will wait for major races and some can use races as a step to something bigger, but precisely because of this others are given leadership roles and other goals. With teams of 30 riders some almost have to target the January-February part of the season to get a look in. For those teams in the hunt for points every result counts and in this time of year can be quite lucrative. It doesn’t make these early season races the be all and end all of the sport of course. There’ll be a point later this week where Bessèges feels like the centre of the universe but of course it’s ephemeral.
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With the added intensity comes more risk. One of the Challenge Majora races was criticised for the tricky finish into Alcúdia where the finale seemed to tour the town’s roundabouts before curling around the town’s medieval walls before a short finishing straight. Unsafe? It looked like it and several riders took to social media to say say too. The grey area here is that there’s no solid rule. There is a handbook for race organisers, the UCI Specifications, and this mentions the finish line. Here’s the relevant bit:
The finishing straight should be as long as possible, at least 200m. It should also be sufficiently wide, at least 6 m, and ideally 8-10m. The road width must be consistent and must not narrow at all. Of course these specifications can be adapted depending on the type of finish. The road surface must be in excellent condition.
You can spot the contradiction, “the finish line should be… at least 200m…. of course these specifications can be adapted”. It turns out the specifications aren’t very specific. Plus this isn’t the actual UCI rulebook either, although the rulebook stipulates organisers should follow the specifications.
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To falling foul of other parts of the rulebook now… and Miguel Angel Lopez has won the Tour de San Juan. He was ejected from the Astana team, the press release saying the team “discovered new elements showing Miguel Angel Lopez’ probable connection with Dr Marcos Maynar”. Maynar’s a sports doctor with a sulphurous Wikipedia page but never mind that. It’s lesser know but actually in the UCI rules that any pro who uses outside help such as a coach or nutritionist is supposed to do this with the approval of their team and there should be to be a paper trail of approval and shared work. For example if Dr Maynar suggested, say, eating more spinach, then this prescription would be given both to Lopez and crucially copied to the Astana team. This seemingly never happened and would be a breach of contract. Lopez says this is excessive. Obviously the unsaid aspect to Lopez’s ejection is the ongoing police investigation as part of Operacion Ilex. Of all the doctors to seek advice from Miguel.
There was more cheerful news from San Juan. The Argentine region is buying into cycling, it’s building a brand new indoor velodrome to host the 2025 World Championships. Or take Sam Welsford winning two stages, he’s been a rider to keep an eye on since swapping the Australian team pursuit squad for the road with DSM. Fourth in the Koksijde Classic, third in the Scheldeprijs last year, he quietly impressed with his long sprint that suggested a lot of power under the hood. DSM have struggled in seasons past to get their first win, now they have three in a weekend with Marius Mayrhofer taking the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road race.
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Team DSM only got a one year licence from the UCI rather than the standard three year ticket, the UCI press release saying “the second and third years of the licence [are] conditional on the provision, during the season, of additional documents related to the financial criterion.” How come? Dutch cycling news website WielerFlits has the answer: it’s because the company DSM is in the process of a big merger with Firmenich, a Swiss chemicals company and so technically the sponsor is changing and the outlook isn’t certain and therefore the UCI didn’t award the longer term licence.
Skipping back to DSM on with three wins already, only five World Tour teams are without a win this season: Ag2r Citroën, Alpecin-Deceuninck, Arkéa-Samsic, Astana and Groupama-FDJ. Again it’s still only January, the “team without a win” story becomes more stressful for a squad come March or April.
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L’Equipe had a feature and interview with Axel Laurance (€), the rider who finished second to Wout van Aert in the Bretagne Classic (ex GP Plouay) and took a stage of the CRO Race, results that meant when the B&B team was vanishing he attracted interest from other teams. Quickstep was one and he tells the paper he met with them and left with the impression that “I knew I’d have a place”, only once the B&B team officially imploded and he was free to sign elsewhere, he called the Quicksteppers… who they said they didn’t have the budget left. So he went back to Arkéa-Samsic and Ag2r Citroën who’d expressed interest, only by now they’d filled up their rosters. Which left Alpecin-Deceuninck and he’s had to join their development team for a year as the World Tour squad is full. As he rues, the lesson is to always get a job offer in writing. And as Nairo Quintana must surely know, sign it.
Laurance is one of the lucky ones, as getting a contract with a side team that’ll mean he can’t do a World Tour race this year is still a job. As readers shared last week, Chloe Hosking has been left high and dry by this and so have many others, the French regional press is full of similar stories with riders out of pocket over travel expenses and more. Again the solution must be that teams changing sponsors should show some proof of the new income source by, say, 1 August, rather than being able to spin out the licence review process into November. Sure it’s only January but August isn’t far away when it comes to preventing repeat fiascos.
“Nairoman, Nairoman, he’s not a cyclist” goes the lyrics to the song from Colombian TV commentators as they play up the idea that he is no mere bike rider, he’s a superhero. As for Nairo Quintana, well he just wants to be a cyclist and for the music to play on. In a defiant press conference where many expected he’d announce his retirement, Quintana launched a surprise attack, saying he’ll fight and he still wants to compete in the biggest races and by implication he wants a contract with a European team, not for him the demotion of racing for a local Colombian squad like Miguel “Superman” Lopez.
Arguably Quintana could have won the 2015 Tour de France were it not for a big time loss on the opening stage in the crosswinds. Yet more times than not he seemed to sense which wind was blowing and could handle himself in the crosswinds like a mini-Flandrien. But if he could master the echelons, a media storm is another matter.
Background
From March 2019 the UCI banned the use of tramadol, an opioid pain killer, in competition. Cycling had a problem where some riders were using this drug in races, with concerns it was making some riders clumsy and crash-prone, plus it is addictive and so powerful that if you need it you probably shouldn’t be racing a bike. When the the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) tested stored samples for tramadol it found over 4% of cyclists were using tramadol. The UCI asked WADA to ban its use but in the absence of WADA moving the UCI went ahead by itself. Cycling’s governing body wrote its own rules to ban tramadol, setting its own penalties and running its own testing regime.
Fast-forward to 2022
Two samples taken from Quintana during the Tour de France showed tramadol announced the UCI in August. The samples were a week apart, and given the drug has a half life of about seven hours in the body, it implies repeat use. Consequently Quintana’s results from the Tour de France, including his sixth place overall, were disqualified.
Technically Quintana wasn’t done for a doping offence. It’s nuance but tramadol wasn’t and still isn’t on the WADA banned list (although it will be next year). Remember cycling’s governing body had created an extra rule and with it a corresponding penalty, namely disqualification of results. But that was it, there was no ban and when the news broke of the two positives Quintana was planning on riding the Vuelta a España, and eligible to do so. Only he decided to pull out saying he wanted to prepare his defence, and unsaid, presumably the relationship with the Arkéa-Samsic team had broken down.
In a twist of fate Quintana and Arkéa-Samsic had agreed a new three year contract and the team announced the deal, but it hadn’t been signed by both sides. Only the tramadol case appeared at this exact moment and the pens went down. Had Quintana signed perhaps he could still be in the sport as the French team might not be able to break the contract if it was only over a UCI health rule breach; although they might have tried to cite damage to their image. Anyway without speculating too much things could have turned out differently if just the timing had been different.
Out of contract, Quintana and his entourage were suggesting last year that he was close to a deal but things ended up with some teams openly denying any links. Things went quiet until last week it was reported the Corratec team, a newly promoted ProTeam, was interested. But team manager Serge Parsani said they didn’t have the budget, plus they’d signed up to the MPCC group of teams. The MPCC has led on the issue of banning tramadol for years before the UCI took up the cause but the MPCC’s own rules – I’ve read them so you don’t have to – do not to block a team signing Quintana. Yes these same rules say member teams can’t hire ex-dopers but again, but remember technically this isn’t a formal doping case. But good luck to a new team saying it’s not technically against the rules to sign a rider found to have used a substance the MPCC has long tried to ban. Make a Venn diagram of teams that are not in the MPCC and those that have room to recruit an extra rider and it’s bound to be small.
Quintana’s problem though is more than finding a vacancy. There’s a saying in politics that “if you’re explaining, you’re losing“. It’s much easier to have an internet meme with a picture of Quintana and block capitals declaring “two positive tests for a banned drug”. Trying telling the public that Quintana wasn’t actually done for doping and that he’s taken the regulatory punishment and is eligible to race, well it’s nuance that few teams looking to hire him want to explain. Plus it all happened in the Tour de France, so add “disqualified from Tour de France” to the same meme and it’s disastrous.
Still, there is some explaining to do. Quintana denied tramadol use but that’s hard when two tests separated by several days are involved, one sample could be contaminated but the odds on two? Still his defence team appealed and tried to blame the testing protocols saying it could have created a false positive, but didn’t come up with much to say how or why, and lost. There are no easy answers but as he took questions from the Colombian media in today’s press conference he set out his ambitions and options but the one big unanswered question is the how and why of the tramadol tests. These questions can also go to the Arkéa-Samsic team too.
Eligible to race under the rules, Quintana’s problem is now one of reputation and it’s here we can see how much the sport has changed. Not long ago a rider with an actual doping conviction and a poor reputation at that could still expect a contract. If this was happening a decade ago Quintana could have probably got a ride at, say, Lampre (their rider Michele Scarponi stayed on the books despite getting a ban for working with Michele Ferrari), Astana (even the UCI tried to cancel their licence) or Katusha (they signed Danilo Di Luca after his CERA sabbatical); or look at Vacansoleil hiring both Riccardo Ricco and Ezequiel Mosquera despite all their excess baggage. In many cases tainted riders came cheap and the teams were incentivised to hunt points. Today several teams crave points but they’ll do it without Quintana. Plus age is probably another factor though, he’s about to turn 33.
Conclusion
Nairo Quintana’s cycling career isn’t over yet, he’s vowed to fight on. Technically the tramadol tests aren’t doping cases but good luck explaining the nuance and alas it’s not something he’s attempted either. Perhaps in the past he’d have got a contract from teams who wouldn’t ask many questions but these days teams are acutely aware of reputational risks. Whatever Quintana could bring in terms of results and a following is outweighed by the still unexplained tramadol tests.
Just over a year ago it was worth highlighting the looming relegation race for 2022. It felt like a significant story and the further the season went on the more the more frantic it got. Now a fresh promotion/relegation cycle begins over the next three seasons things for the men’s World Tour and things seem less urgent, the thing to note is that the rules have changed.
Things will be hectic on other fronts though as several men’s teams are hunting for automatic invitations to the Tour de France. Also the Women’s World Tour licences for the next three years are being decided at the end of this season and so the women’s peloton faces the same promotion/relegation as the men did last season.
Same system, new rules
Promotion and relegation works on a three year basis where the annual UCI points haul for a team is added together to compile a three year ranking. This time it’s points from 2023, 2024 and 2025 will be combined.
There are changes for this new three year cycle: more points and more riders. For more points – the full tables are available in “UCI Points and Rankings Tables” – the summary is that the three grand tours, the five monuments and the world championships now offer more points. For more riders, while points would go to the top-5 on a grand tour stage, now it’s down to 15th; also the previous ranking of teams was based on their ten best riders. Now it’s the top-20 scorers whose points are counted.
Overall these changes a probably a sensible move, it corrects the imbalance where winning a small 1.1 race brought more points than a Tour de France stage. But it makes the Tour and other big races even more important: is this entrenching their dominance or just reflecting it? And a team with a deep roster where the 15th or 20th rider might have some points will be even more ahead than a smaller team with a handful of scorers. The upshot is a “rich get richer” scenario, for example winning the Tour de France, with the stage victories and other results along the way, should deliver roughly an extra thousand points this year.
What now?
A year go the line from many teams was “we’re not worried about points, we will just race the best we can and the points will follow“, only the more the season went on the more you could spot the panic among team managers; at one point the Israel-PremierTech team owner Sylvan Adams even threatened to sue the UCI and launch a rival Tour de France.
First we should note these rankings don’t really concern the top teams. Given the big races get even more lucrative, the likes of Jumbo-Visma, UAE, Ineos, Bora-hansgrohe, Bahrain and Quickstep won’t be too bothered as they stand to collect even more points. The stress is for other teams who could be sucked into the relegation battle.
Now teams are acutely aware of the need to get points but begin the new cycle with purpose instead of panic, they’ll aim to score where they can. We might see the likes of EF Education and Jayco-Al Ula entering some races they might have overlooked before but now can hope to score; for Arkéa-Samsic the challenge is going to be having to attend all the World Tour races while also sending riders out to score in smaller races.
It’s human nature to see a long deadline as something that doesn’t require immediate attention so while some teams ease back it could create space for a team to hustle for points this year while rivals sit back. But after a frantic season it can also make sense not to stress riders in the first team briefing of the year.
There’s a moving target here. While a football team in a league knows how many rivals it has to beat to go up or avoid going down’ or a cyclist in an elimination race knows they just have to avoid being last across the line, here things are not so clear cut. Promotion/relegation is based on being in the top-18 teams so the scenario depends on the number of ProTeams keen for promotion and how they fare. Lotto-Dstny, Israel-PremierTech both want to get back to the World Tour, Total Energies is ambitious, Uno-X keen too. New team Q36.5 has big backers who are only a signing or two away from a World Tour bid, plus keep an eye on Human Powered Health which has ambitions too.
One year cycle, a big deal too
Promotion and relegation is three year thing, but if a Pro Team team finishes first or second in the second tier team rankings it will qualify for an automatic start in the major races next year, something Total Energies and Lotto-Dstny enjoy this year. This is a big deal as while a team like Israel-PremierTech will always hope for an invitation, the certainty is much better, a team gets to pick the calendar it wants. So while teams lay the foundations for a World Tour licence in 2026 this year, the likes of Israel, Lotto, Uno-X and Total Energies are going to be scrapping to finish first or second among the ProTeams this year, this is a contest to watch from time to time as it should be close.
Women’s World Tour teams
There’s also promotion and relegation for the Women’s World Tour. There are 15 teams in the World Tour and if a 16th team applies then they will all be ranked on the basis of two years, namely 2022 and 2023 and the best 15 make the cut. Now we don’t yet know if a team from the second tier is applying but we can assume the likes of AG-Soudal and Ceratizit will. So there is a promotion/relegation battle in the women’s peloton which will be decided during the year and it settles licences for 2024-2026 included. For each team their best eight riders count for points. It’ll be frantic for some team managers but the reduced women’s calendar compared to the men (there are only five 1.Pro one day races for women compared to 33 for the men, three women’s 2.Pro stage races and eight 2.1 stage races) means there’s less chance to go shopping for points and to arbitrage the calendar.
Here are the tables showing how many UCI points are available in every kind of road race. It’s not the stuff of dreams, but if you need to know how many UCI points are on offer in hurry it can be a nightmare to get the answer. Visit the UCI website, find the rules pages, select the right PDF to download and then scroll past 70 pages. Here it’s all on one page.
The big news for 2023 is the points have changed significantly with the grand tours, monuments and world championships becoming even more lucrative and gone are the days when a win in the Elfstedenronde or Paris-Chauny brought more points than a Tour de France stage win.
First, the table below is for the World Tour races, if it’s a stage race then it’s for the final overall classification. What’s new for 2023 is that the grand tours get more points and there’s a new column where the five monuments get more points over other races, plus the Strade Bianche is upgraded too.
Next comes the points per stage in the World Tour stage races. This has been almost doubled for the grand tours, plus across all stage races points are now awarded well beyond first five or top three as before, now it’s down to 15h place or 10th respectively.
Next you can see points on offer for final place in the secondary competitions of a grand tour, the mountains and points competition and new for 2023, this is almost doubled too. For a practical example of what this all means, in the last two Tours Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard have got, give or take, 1,800 points with 1,000 for the overall win then more from stage wins, placings and also taking the mountains competition. Apply the new points scale and they stand to collect 2,700 points for similar results.
Next comes a daily award for leading a World Tour stage race, a nice bonus but one that’s more in media attention than points. It’s unchanged for 2023.
Now comes arguably the most important table here because it’s for races outside the World Tour and this is where teams hunting points can find a lot of rewards because of the breadth of the calendar. Winning a stage race overall or winning a one day brings the same points haul, which makes one day races very important. The season-opening Challenge Majorca races are a good case study, they are each Class 1 races and so win one day’s racing and a rider banks 125 points, but if it was a stage race only the final overall would bring this many points.
Next two tables below shows the points on offer for stages in non-World Tour races and the daily points for leading the race too, the change for 2023 is more points for the podium in a .Pro race and points to fifth.
Next comes the national championships, split into A and B groups, where A is defined as a nation that started at least one rider in the previous Men’s Elite world championship road race. These points matter because often when we look at the teams with few wins and placings in the year, several of their best results can be from national championships in smaller nations, the kind with only a few pros. Sometimes we’ve seen big name riders skip their national championships but smaller teams hunting points ought be paying business class return for their lesser riders to go and grab the jersey and points.
Now comes the Continental Championships, think the European championships for the best example. Other regions are supposed to have them but they can be thin on the ground. 2022 has Asia, Oceania and Europe in the calendar for now. If these championships have a team time trial and/or a mixed relay time trial event, the small table below also applies.
Now for the Worlds and Olympics, obviously big events but the UCI is keen to big them up even more with the points on offer and for 2023 they get a big increase, the winner got 600 for the road race before, now it’s 900 making the Worlds and Olympics the most lucrative one day races when it comes to points.
For the last of the tables, here’s the mixed relay time trial at the worlds which the UCI is keen on promoting.
How to forfeit points
As well as winning points by results, riders can lose them. The UCI rules include various penalties for bad behaviour, including points deductions. They concern cheating like taking short-cut, to using sidewalks, ignoring level-crossing red lights, littering and other misdemeanours, right down to failing to sign on for the day’s racing or show up for the post-race press conference if invited. Any team manager worried about scoring points should remind riders of all of these.
Rankings and points don’t matter…
…if they did then they’d be readily available and easily understood. One reason for this blog post is so I can have all this season’s points tables on one ready page for reference. These points still count for the teams and their promotion-relegation issues and Tour de France qualification. In the coming days we’ll look at the points race in 2023 and beyond.
The Tour Down Under resumes and there are some subtle changes from race organiser Stuart O’Grady who gets to run his first post-Covid event, in comes a prologue time time trial and out goes the Old Willunga summit finish.
As yet there’s no sign on social media of riders cuddling kangaroos so that looks like another tweak. Right now the women’s race is on and one more significant change is everyone is hosted in the Hilton Hotel, no dormitories for the women any more. Stage 3 today/tonight/tomorrow (Tuesday arvo for locals) is going to be the decisive showdown and features the Corkscrew climb in the final so if you want some action before the men’s race starts, tune in.
Prologue, Tuesday 17 January
A prologue, a novelty for the TDU. It’s road-bike only, no TT bikes because of the hassle of transporting them around the world only for a seven minute outing. The course has several corners as it works its way through the Oval park and along the river but it’s not as tricky as feared, riders can carry speed through the corners and most of the roads are wide, the toughest part looks to be the chicane-style bend towards the end.
- Forecast finish: 8.30pm / 11.00am CET / 10.00am GMT / 05.00am EST
Stage 1, Wednesday 18 January
A trip through the Barossa vineyards and a likely sprint finish in Tanuda. As the profile shows it’s not flat so several will be interested in the mountains points on offer twice and Menglers Hill can be just enough to make life hard for some sprinters.
- Forecast finish: 3.20pm / 05.50am CET / 04.50am GMT / D-1 11.50pm EST
Stage 2, Thursday 19 January
The coastal stage to Victor Harbor. The crossing of the Fleurieu Peninsula can cause trouble if the wind is up as it’s often on exposed scrubland. The race almost reaches the finish only to head out for a lap around Mount Billy and the Nettle Hill KoM point which is mainly on a big road north before turning at the top onto a backroad to go south and for the traditional finish in Victor Harbor, complete with the right bend-left bend in the final kilometre.
- Forecast finish: 3.30pm / 06.00am CET / 05.00am GMT / D-1 midnight EST
Stage 3, Friday 20 January
On paper the decisive stage of the race with the Corkscrew climb. The approach to the climb matters a lot as the race thunders down a gorge where riders will scrap for position, a nest of nerves to see who can hold their place and not brake. The climb doesn’t take its name from the local wineries instead it’s got several hairpin bends, a rarity for South Australia and an obvious draw for local cyclists. It’s 3.7km long and the gradient hits 10% with the bends towards the top as an ideal place to shake off riders. There’s a fast, twisty descent into town and a flat finish.
- Forecast finish: 2.30pm / 05.00am CET / 04.00am GMT / D-1 11.00pm EST
Stage 4, Saturday 21 January
The Willunga stage… only without Old Willunga Hill. There’s more vineyards and a likely sprint finish but watch out for any splits if there’s a breeze as the course changes direction abruptly making echelon-formation obvious and so creating a self-reinforcing phenomenon.
- Forecast finish: 2.50pm / 05.20am CET / 04.20am GMT / D-1 11.20pm EST
Stage 5, Sunday 22 January
No Willunga summit finish, instead it’s a hilly circuit with five climbs of Mount Lofty which isn’t that mountainous nor lofty, it rises for about 1.5km, then levels out and dips briefly before kicking up to the line again, on average it’s 2km at 7% and all on a wide road, it’s hard to make a stand out attack. Still, the difference here is that the final stage is not about one final climb but instead the accumulation of effort and if someone like Michael Matthews or Daryl Impey is in the lead here, whether they can be distanced. The multiple laps bring close to 2,500m of vertical gain and ensure we get the GC contenders together to dispute the final.
- Forecast finish: 2.30pm / 05.00am CET / 04.00am GMT / D-1 11.00pm EST
The race has time bonuses of 10-6-4 seconds for the first three on Stages 1-5. They’re crucial to the outcome of the race given the slender margins between the riders, plus there are 3-2-1 seconds at the intermediate sprints. The prologue this year will spread things out a touch though.
The Contenders
It’s always a difficult pick as the race is often finely balanced, a time bonus here, a split there and voila, there’s your top-10.
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Jayco-Al Ula have two riders to cover the two paths to victory in the race. Michael Matthews has won opening time trials before, can handle short hills and and bunch sprints alike so he can place and take time bonuses as often as possible, all with team motivated for the win made up of Australians who have been training for this moment. The Corkscrew climb is going to be a big test, and the final stage to Mount Lofty as well. Here’s where Simon Yates comes in, handy in a time trial especially if it’s got corners and changes in pace and he can handle himself in a sprint among a small group and he excels on the climbs.
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Ineos look like the big rival outfit. Ethan Hayter can do it all, from time trials to uphill sprints although his weakness can be scrapping for positions but we’re likely to see Geraint Thomas shepherding him down Cudlee and Kangaroo creek into the Corkscrew climbs. Luke Plapp is one rider whose form is a known quantity as he has just won the Australian road race title with a show of form and tactical sense while Magnus Sheffield capable of placing well in the prologue.
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UAE bring a good team but have they got the hustle? Jay Vine was a surprise winner of the Aussie TT championships, proof there’s a lot more to him than the uphill only specialist. George Bennett is suited to the climbing parts of the race, he might have to take some longer range risks with someone like Yates. New signing Michael Vink is also said to be in great shape and the likes of Marc Hirschi and Alessandro Covi ought to win big this year but might be in service of others this week.
On paper Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) is the archetypal rider for this, great at short time trials, suited to punchy climbs, he’s won week-long stage races. But form’s unknown and just putting an end to the rotten luck of last year with injury, illness and mishap would be a booster. Jai Hindley a grand tour winner but how to scrap for the bonus seconds? Hard and he’s unlikely to just ride away.
Rohan Dennis (Jumbo-Visma) is a dark horse pick, form unknown and he’s won uphill finishes in the TDU before but jostling every day for time bonuses is harder work. Ben O’Connor (Ag2r Citroën) is always up for having a go, expect him to try on the Corkscrew and again on Mount Lofty.
Daryl Impey (Israel-PremierTech) no local but another southern hemisphere rider who has been able to train all summer and he’s long been suited to this kind of race, he’s won the Corkscrew stage on his way to the overall win in 2019. But he’s 38 now and won’t have it so easy. Corbin Strong could be one to watch, the Kiwi rider’s a finisseur who might be able to learn from Impey.
Among others Paddy Bevin (DSM) crashed hard in the criterium race at the weekend, Simon Clarke (Israel-PremierTech) has been sick with Covid so their chances are down. Geraint Thomas has been ill of late too and he normally doesn’t sandbag so he’s probably on team duties. Pello Bilbao (Bahrain) is a crafty rider but form after time in the damp Basque Country is unknown. Soudal-Quickstep have some solid riders but who stands out? EF Education have Alberto Bettiol and new signing Mikkel Honoré but by now we’re trying to imagine scenarios where some riders whose form we don’t know might sneak away for a win…
| | Ethan Hayter, Michael Matthews | | | Simon Yates, Luke Plapp | | | Sheffield, Vine, O’Connor, Impey, Bennett, Hindley, Schachmann, Strong |
TV: the local broadcaster is Channel 7 and its bogan offshoot 7 Two, with over four hours of coverage a day, including pre and post race chat… and a lot of ads. Sure bills have to be paid but outside Australia it’s on Eurosport/GCN in many countries with fewer ads, plus it’s on NBC Peacock in the US.
Note the finish times for each stage, they’re estimates as long as the wind isn’t blowing it’s been easy to tune for the final minutes of each day and catch most of the action.
Ten riders to watch this year. Some are suggestions of rising talent to keep an eye on, others will be familiar names but with their own challenges.
The hard part is picking ten riders among a vast cast of characters and the multiple plot lines tha help make the sport so compelling. Still, let’s get a move on…
In a relatively quiet transfer market, Richard Carapaz was probably the biggest move, switching from Ineos to EF Education. It’s notable as a grand tour contender leaves the triumvirate of UAE, Ineos and Jumbo-Visma. Second in the Giro, he came back for the Vuelta and when the GC bid fell apart in the opening days he still won three stages. Carapaz’s problem, if we can call it as such, is that he can likely finish on the podium of a grand tour but the top step is elusive. It’s probably why Ineos let him go, for them a podium might be satisfying, yet tinged with disappointment for the old days; at EF it’s a huge result. The top stop isn’t beyond him either because he’s tenacious to hang with the best and while others mark each other he can slip away, it’s practically his modus operandi. Not for him a regular attack on the steepest ramp of a summit finish, instead he’ll sneak off on a false flat. Changing teams can mean integrating into a new environment but he’s done Movistar and Ineos and will find two Ecuadorians and more Spanish-speakers. His season’s likely to revolve around the Tour but his team will be grateful if he can take points in other summer stage races long the way. Team mates Neilson Poweless and Andrea Piccolo are also interesting to follow this year.
Carlos Rodriguez is on the rise at Ineos and finished seventh in the Vuelta last year, a result that could have been higher were it not for a crash that left him raw and sore. Still 21 – until February – he’s starting his fourth season as a pro. Last year saw him take his first two wins, the Spanish national championship and a stage of the Tour of the Basque Country. Put this together and we already have the picture of someone with precious endurance and the ability to win. So what comes next? Continued progress in stage races including in time trials as he’s on course to become the complete package. There’s talk of a move to Movistar but if he’s that good, would Ineos let him go? Watch for the burgeoning rivalry with UAE’s Juan Ayuso, both have plenty in common as they’re wise and eloquent already but we’ll see if sections of Spanish media try to build them up as opposing characters. Likewise Thymen Arensman joins Ineos and could take on leadership roles soon.
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Danish cycling is on the up and Matthias Skjelmose is a pick for a rising talent in hilly races. The Trek-Segafredo rider might not be a familiar name, even to readers of a dedicated cycling blog, but in six stages races last year he finished no lower than fifth overall. A nice stat but let’s note the range, second in the mountainous Tour de l’Ain one week, third in his home Tour of Denmark the next week thanks to second place in the TT stage. So the 22 year old can climb and TT and we saw it all in the Tour of Luxembourg, floating on the climbs and flying in the time trial on his way to the overall win. Repeating these results would be decent but we’ll see if he can translate more podiums into wins and how he can do on slightly harder stage races.
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Quinten Hermans finished second in Liège-Bastogne-Liège last year, a result you can’t fluke and got a string of other results including second to Marco Haller in the Bemer Classics race in Germany, and ahead of Wout van Aert. He has been popping up here and there in hilly races and showing a handy sprint from a small group. Long a dedicated cyclo-cross racer, there’s more to the world than the quagmire of Belgian municipal parks and he can bring range to Alpecin-Fenix which is a team very much suited to flatter races as Hermans can place on shorter climbs. Maybe the Flèche Wallonne is too much but look for a wall here or there.
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Many of the top teams aren’t just packed with top talent, they’re congested as riders can find it hard to get opportunities for themselves sometimes. Some who work for a leader could perhaps themselves lead another team. For Eddie Dunbar just working for a leader was proving hard, he wanted to ride the Giro last year but didn’t make the selection. Now the Irish rider’s signed with Jayco-Al Ula in order to do what his new management call a “grandie” and get his chances at a win along the way. We’ve seen him at the front end in races but taking on leadership and then delivering results isn’t the next step, it can be a leap. Also his new team doesn’t race on every front all the time, the kind of races Dunbar could thrive in, like hilly one day races in Italy or medium mountain stage races in France or Spain aren’t always on the team’s schedule.
Mark Cavendish is after that Tour de France stage record. Yet what if he doesn’t get it, does his career end with a flop, a bum note? Not really, his palmarès is so extensive that most will have him down as the greatest ever sprinter, as said before here the only races he hasn’t won are Gent-Wevelgem and Paris-Tours and they’ve changed with more climbs and off road sections. Still the narrative this year will be all around the binary question of whether he can surpass Eddy Merckx’s tally of Tour stage wins or not. Achieve the record and it’ll be a remarkable story, even more so because – as of today at least – he’s still starting the season without a team and building a lead out and developing their split second reflexes take time. In many ways the only thing that counts is one Tour stage win but expect every result between now and July to be analysed for clues. Beyond all this there’s all the question of what comes next, his love for the sport and attention to detail suggests there’s a team manager in the making.
Julian Alaphilippe as the double world champion back in his normal jersey. His contract runs to the end of 2024 but for a star any deal on a renewal or transfer is likely to be shaped or even done in the coming 12 months. The best way to increase your value is to become a grand tour contender and a spell in yellow would be ideal too, certainly the latter option’s on the cards for the Tour de France Basque beginning. Patrick Lefevere raided his piggybank to retain Alaphilippe in 2019 but he went public with criticism recently, the Belgian manager is a trained accountant and openly moved the Frenchman on his ledger to the liability column, even if Alaphilippe’s troubles have been down to accidents and injury but it’s likely Evenepoel is both the focus of Lefevere attention and budget and race programme. We’ll see how much he can shape his future, he’s 30 now and the trademark jack-in-the-box explosivity might be harder to find. Still, as the photo above shows at his best he can beat Van der Poel, Van Aert and Pogačar combined.
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Arnaud De Lie had a great start to his pro career, all those wins and placings meant Lotto-Soudal were close to staying in the World Tour until late in the season; without him they’d be floundering. Sometimes it was the manner of his wins, the unrefined brute force in an uphill finish was like early Peter Sagan. Yet he’s kept his feet on the ground, literally as he still helps out on the family farm. He gave a vintage interview to L’Equipe the other day that could have been by Poulidor or Pinot, saying he saw no point in moving to Monaco, and if he ever felt like a change of scenery all he needed was the village fête or to drop by the nearby Libramont fair… an agricultural trade show. But already there are voices saying he needs to focus on cycling, that time spent shovelling manure is recovery time forsaken. He’s also the Walloon air to Philippe Gilbert and can learn lessons from him about how to manage this label. In short can he build on last year’s success and show in the World Tour races?
Biniam Girmay because the Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert team can look like a bunch of happy-go-lucky raiders looking for long shot results but in Girmay they’ve got someone they can bank on. He’s capable of making the selection in the cobbled classics and then winning from the sprint, he suggested this in the E3 last year and confirmed with the win in Gent-Wevelgem days later; plus he smoked Mathieu van der Poel in the Giro. He’s got the range to win sprints and get over short climbs. The team can probably still try some breakaway efforts, there’s no harm in having Taco van der Hoorn up the road but how much can they play these wild moves when they have Girmay is something to look out for. He’s up for riding the Tour de France but this year’s route doesn’t have many of what we’d have called a “Sagan stage” a few years ago, one of those uphill finishes where the heavyset sprinters might struggle but the Worlds just after might suit. Yes being Eritrean is interesting but it’s still something for us all to fathom, as cycling fans we admire the scenery, the fans fervour for the sport and the emerging talents but we should be aware it’s a secretive, totalitarian regime as well.
The final pick is Thibaut Pinot who’s just announced he’ll retire at the end of the year after 14 seasons as a pro, all at FDJ. He’s had his highs and lows, it’s this blend that has made following him so compelling over the years and there’s every chance that this continues this year, there might well be a setback, sometimes that’s been a precondition for an ensuing highlight. He’s down to ride the Giro but given all the time trials a win on GC looks tough but a high finish and a prestigious mountain stage win is possible. As we saw the Tour last summer he was making the breakaways but converting this into a win is a big ask. Still if he can select his days in May it could pay off leaving him with energy to spare come July too and he can leave the sport “by the big door” as they say in French.
As ever to pick ten is to leave out hundreds of other stories. Mathieu van der Poel brings excitement but can he also keep up the consistent results? Can Wout van Aert finally win the Ronde or Roubaix? Is Primož Roglič over his injuries? After crashes and illness, can Kasper Asgreen turn things around and is Quickstep still the Wolfpack on the pavé? Tom Pidcock’s been the third man of cyclo-cross this winter, pointing out he’s much lighter than his beefier rivals but does this give him range in road races, he’s still a blank canvas when it comes to the road who can strike from Sanremo to Liège. One huge question is whether Egan Bernal can recover? During the pandemic lockdowns Eurosport showed Tour de France highlights and one that was worth watching again and again was Lilian Calmejane 2017 stage win but that’s a long time ago, can he find winning ways at Intermarché? Can Marc Hirschi discover the form of old? Fred Wright is due a breakthrough win. Samuele Battistella is just one to watch but there’s one Astana rider above already, the Iron Man of Castelfranco Veneto won the U23 World Championships in 2019 and has been getting consistent results in time trials and on hilly courses. Peter Sagan says he’s over his Covid complications, will results follow? When can the likes of Pavel Sivakov and Tao Geoghegan Hart find their opportunities? Is Fabio Jakobsen going to rule the sprint roost? How much can Tim Merlier win as Quickstep’s second sprinter? Will Fernando Gaviria find winning ways with Movistar or is he on the slide? Even if Guillaume Martin remains artistically erratic, can he find winning ways?
Done with the brown paper packages tied up with strings? With the new season less than a week away there’s plenty to look forward too and with this in mind, here are a few favourite things for the year ahead.
I was thinking of doing “ten predictions for the year” but the prime question of “who will win the Tour de France?” felt impossible to call and so all the rest of the predictions got binned as well. If our central forecast is a new duel between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar, there’s little between them. UAE’s recruitment, and they way they rode in Lombardia, shows they’re upping the support for their leader while Jumbo-Visma have been hiring well too, although Primož Roglič is going to the Giro. Whether it’s a duel or something else happens thanks to action from other riders, who knows but it should be fun to watch. This time last year the battle to salivate over was Egan Bernal taking on Roglič and Pogačar in July and of course all changed.
Staying with the Tour de France, one thing that won’t change is the route. It’s intriguing because of the hard start in the Basque Country and then the Pyrenees coming up fast, nobody can ease their way into the race. The Puy de Dôme summit finish is enticing although the fear is we’ll all be sick of the Poulidor-Anquetil duel tale from 1964. The Alps have a lot to offer right to the end. It’s the whole route and the way the race is approached these days, even the sprint stages come with added pathos if Mark Cavendish is trying for that extra stage win.
The Tour Down Under is back after the Covid hiatus. Sure it’s a hors d’oeuvre to open the season but when you’re hungry after the long winter fast it’s mouthwatering. Past editions have been an interesting for the delicate way time bonuses settled a lot of the top-10, the TDU’s had the finesse of a track points race, only raced in the Outback, only his has been something for connoisseurs of countback. Now the men’s race has a prologue time trial and a more classic feel of a stage race with added climbing, this year’s course has the the climbs of Corkscrew, Willunga – sans Richie Porte, nor a summit finish – and Mount Lofty. Will it be better? Hard to say but it’ll be different to watch and as ever seeing the new bikes and jerseys in the austral sunshine is a special moment.
The spring classics offer action galore and arguably the period from late March to April is an extra grand tour. Two particular races come to mind, Strade Bianche and Paris-Roubaix. Strade Bianche is a new race in a sport where the Amstel Gold Race look is still an upstart. There’s no settled tactic to triumph in Sienna, the winning move can go anywhere and it’s this element of uncertainty that makes it compelling, plus it is so seductive with the Tuscan landscapes, a grande partenza from the Flemish landscapes. Paris-Roubaix is much less scenic but it too can take many forms with breakaways coming and going and where riders can seem out of the action after Arenberg only to be contenders later on, it’s the sheer length of this race with slow motion form of action at times that can be so gripping.
The Giro d’Italia is shaping up nicely. The bid to attract Remco Evenepoel with three time trial stages was dampening spirits, because sure it’s exciting that he plans win a second consecutive grand tour… but watching him do it if he rode away with the maglia rosa with ten minutes on his next rival then it might not be so gripping. But now there are plenty of more contenders with Primož Roglič, Geraint Thomas, João Almeida and Aleksandr Vlasov, all are excellent against the clock. Viewed from here just the thought of writing the Giro contenders preview is interesting, and Evenepoel and the others will be worth watching closely this spring.
Talking of things worth watching, hopefully this includes the Netflix Tour de France documentary due for release this summer. There are films about teams but too often “behind the scenes” access is really staged scenes filmed by communication agencies, it’s PR. There are some exceptions, “El Día Menos Pensado” about Movistar an obvious example. And while Netflix seems to be casting around for subscribers by supplying content for every niche interest, this docu-series is promising thanks to the access and amount of footage accumulated, it’s across many teams.
Not that we need dramatised series for excitement. Live TV is often so great that there are days when you turn off the TV or close that browser tab and know you’ve watched something special. We seem to be in period where the breakaways have more chance of making it. Long range attacks in the mountains can pay off, creating a virtuous cycle as it encourages more to try them, blowing the race apart and so making them work. Similarly those “nailed on sprint stages” aren’t so certain either, in part with organisers throwing in something to spice up the finale, or just because teams race everything more aggressively. Seeing scripts being ripped up can confound a race preview or two but all the better.
The dash for points isn’t over but as a new three year promotion and relegation contest begins it’ll just feel less urgent, no need for weekly spreadsheets here or in a team car either. But the battle to get the automatic invite to the Tour de France for 2024 could be interesting, Total Energies and Lotto-Dsnty qualify automatically because they topped the rankings last year but who will be the top two teams in the Pro Conti ranks by the end of the 2023 season? Israel should mount a good charge as well, Uno-X can keep up their progress and then there’s a second group of teams in this level who will be scrapping for results in the short term but in the medium term will be after more than points in order to move up, they’ll want to sign star names and become “must have” teams. Also if one or two can secure deeper funding then they’ll be set to qualify for the invitations and in time move up. In short, the scrap among these second tier teams is a secondary story with less urgency but one to watch both for in-race tactics but also slower, longer terms plans.
Back to bigger things and the World Championships in August should be great. For starters, August means many racing with their Tour de France form and this in turn means we could get a more interesting start list in Glasgow. Also there are all the other disciplines at the same time meaning even more action together, like a cycling-only Olympics. If this concept works – and France is hosting a multi-discipline worlds in 2027 but the format’s untested – it could be a good showcase for the sport. Ideally we’ll even see riders mixing and matching, if someone’s in peak form for the road race then why not also use it for the track or mountain bike?
Women’s cycling continues its rise with more races, more TV airtime, more professional teams and more to enjoy. This blog’s niche focus is on the men’s side – click elsewhere for women’s race coverage, I try to link to previews from others – and so I can just be a fan of women’s cycling and sit back and enjoy it all, especially as it’s increasingly aired on regular TV so there’s sport but also more with many interesting characters and personalities. The big test is to see how many broadcasters who show the men’s Tour live will exercise their option to show the women’s race live as well.
The Vuelta a España feels like a long way away and the route announcement due this week never gets as much attention as the Giro and Tour. Round here I don’t know Spanish roads so well so analysis is harder but it’s more general to the sport, teams diligently do pre-Giro and Tour recon rides but the Vuelta much less so. Anyway the various white jersey competitions are in need of a rethink given they are designed to signal promising Under-25 riders. Only gone are the days of admiring an eighth place in the Tour de Romandie or nodding approvingly when a neo-pro survives deep into a Monument classic. Now they win outright and reshape the sport. The Vuelta will see Juan Ayuso and Cian Uijtdebroeks in action, plus many of Groupama-FDJ’s new recruits so it’ll be interesting to see these names in action together, a big version of the Tour de l’Avenir.
The route for the 2023 Paris-Nice is out and here’s a more detailed stage-by-stage look at the route ahead between Sunday 5 – Sunday 12 March.
The novelty is the team time trial, back after a 30 year absence and with an innovative new rule change as well.
Stage 1
The traditional opening stage in the Yvelines department to the west of Paris, race organisers ASO have a long-term contract to start the race here. There are familiar roads in the Chevreuse valley including the Côte des 17 Tournants – climb of the 17 bends – but hardly Alpe d’Huez’s Parisian cousin, the 17 bends are more slight kinks in the road but it’s still a climb where being at the front is advantageous before the finish in La Verrière.
Stage 2
Flat to Fontainebleau but not a straight line. The X-factor is the weather forecast because if the wind gets up, and a breeze is sufficient given the exposed terrain, then the peloton can be split to pieces and the course with its change in direction seems designed with this in mind.
Stage 3
The team time trial is back. A staple of the sport for many years, the discipline has fallen out of favour of late, only Tirreno-Adriatico regularly has one. Otherwise it’s become rare, Vuelta a Espana uses it from time to time, the Tour de France last had one in 2019 and the Giro d’Italia hasn’t had one since 2015. The Critérium du Dauphiné in 2018. But Paris-Nice? Not since 1993 when ONCE won and their rider Alex Zülle went on to win the overall. The course here is flat, close to the Loire river and the just-reopened giant Dampierre nuclear power plant.
The twist here is a rule change where the time won’t be taken on the fourth of fifth rider like usual, but the first rider across the line from each team. So a team can burn through their riders along the way and then have their last rouleur “lead out” their GC leader; or adopt another strategy to unleash their best time trial rider and take the stage win. Either way no longer is a team as fast as their fifth rider. It’s novel for Paris-Nice but has been used in team time trials in the past, indeed the concept of a TTT has changed a lot of the years but that’s for another day.
Stage 4
A route into the Massif Central, more specifically the Montagne bourbonnaise for the first uphill finish. After Vichy, it goes over the Col du Beaulouis, used in 2020 and at the top was an intermediate sprint despite being the hardest climb of the day… and again this time there’s a sprint despite it being a proper pass.
Then comes the summit finish at the La Loges des Gardes, a mini ski-station and activity park and a “new” summit finish that’s probably worth a recon. It’s via a small road that regularly tops 8% making it a selective finish.
Stage 5
A start in St. Symphorien – home of the Cochonou saucisson that is a big Tour de France sponsor – and then over the hills to help a breakaway form before a dash down the Rhone valley. There are two late climbs, the first isn’t hard but it is exposed to the wind. The second of which to Aleyrac was a 2nd category climb when tackled in 2015 on a day when a few heavyset sprinters were dropped. It should be a sprint finish in St.Paul and as ever, watch out in case the Mistral wind’s blowing.
Stage 6
The “wall” stage with a collection of climbs all with steep sections before the finish in La Colle-sur-Loup just behind Nice. There’s no map yet so the exact route isn’t know but it looks like the final climbs are on narrow backroads.
Stage 7
The summit finish stage with the Col de la Couillole on the eastern flank from the Tinée valley. At 1,678m it’s a high climb but arguably the length is the defining feature, 15km at 7% is a lot for March and it’s largely a gradual climb, riders will crack one by one under the pace.
Stage 8
The now traditional dash around the hills behind Nice with the steep climb to Peille, Eze and down to Nice before tackling the Col d’Eze. Look closely at the profile and the final climb has a steep middle section, this is not the traditional route up but a copy of last year’s route with the the Chemin du Vinaigrier and a kilometre at 13% before picking up the main road.
The Verdict
The novelty is the return of the team time trial and at 32km there’s the chance for the big squads to take time and the rule change is a curiosity, it’s a break from the UCI rulebook but organisers can ask for derogations and if it works, maybe it could become a feature and it’ll give team managers plenty to plan and something to talk about on a Tuesday afternoon.
The other early stages offer sprints but will be enlivened if the wind gets up and race takes on the familiar pattern with an uphill finish in the Massif Central, the Rhone valley, a hilly stage, summit finish and the now classic Nice-Nice stage. All the ingredients are there for a lively race.
Teams
The 18 World Tour teams, with automatic invites for Total Energies and Lotto-Dstny and wildcards for Israel-PremierTech and Uno-X, the same as the Tour de France. It’s an obvious choice for Paris-Nice and the Tour de France but we’ll see if anyone else gets a look-in at the Dauphiné in June or if the World Tour is this de facto 18+2+2 selection.
Riders
Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) is the headline attraction and thanks to the team time trial, already the obvious pick for the final win. Last year’s runner-up Simon Yates returns while Romain Bardet and David Gaudu take part and will hope to avoid hopes being dashed in the crosswinds.
Ten neo-pros to watch this season from hulking sprinters to towering time triallists, as well as promising classics contenders and stage racers. This year’s list has a coincidental family angle with two famous sons and a brother as well.
We have to begin with Groupama-FDJ as the team has signed seven neo-pros, all of them from its own Continental development team. This alone is remarkable for the in-house shopping and the way it internalises the recruitment process. But also because one quarter of the team changes. In a normal situation this could prove disruptive but since all the riders were together under the same umbrella it could be easier to manage, we’ll see. Marc Madiot has said he will send many of the new signings together to the Vuelta in August. Let’s pick two riders among them.
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Romain Grégoire (19 years old) has been racing on a bike since the age of six and long had a keen interest in horse riding too but first made a name for himself in cyclo-cross. Last year he was fresh out of the junior ranks, he got stage wins in the U23 Giro and Tour de l’Avenir, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège too as well as the European championships (pictured). He’s a versatile rider whose limits are in the high mountains so while French fans have high hopes for him in the coming years, he’s not the next Bernard Hinault. The “everything but mountains” idea invites thoughts of Alaphilippe but Grégoire’s not quite got that jack-in-box explosivité.
Lenny Martinez (19), also pictured, is the latest from the Martinez family. His grandfather Mariano was born Spanish but became a French citizen and won the mountains competition in the 1978 Tour de France. Lenny’s father Miguel won gold in the mountain bike race at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 among other wins and tried the road but it wasn’t for him although he’s kept riding and racing. You can imagine the DNA and the cultural inheritance here and there is a “like father, like son” aspect here with Lenny as a pure climber who weighs 52kg. At a team training camp he hit 6.7w/kg for a 20 minute effort and it was in May’s Mercan’Tour Classic that he put this to work, shredding the group on the Col de la Couillole and leaving many big names gasping for air.
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Jensen Plowright (22) is Groupama-FDJ’s eighth rider to turn pro, only he’s leaving the development squad to join Alpecin-Deceuninck, a good signing for them and besides, the French team has several sprinters already. A pure sprinter, it’ll be interesting to see how he fits in on a squad already full of sprinters, and they’ve signed fellow Australian Kaden Groves, but if he gets a chance he should be part of promising generation of Aussie sprinters with Blake Quick joining Jayco and Sam Welsford in his second year at DSM.
Staying with sprinters, Gleb Syritsa (22) began 2022 on the Spanish national circuit, racing for a club in Barcelona where he took sprint win after sprint win before attracting the Astana team and being invited to race for them as stagiaire where he quickly got results including a stage win the Tour de Langkawi. An impressive rise through the ranks? Sure but it’s not quite the tale of amateur rags to World Tour riches. First he’d been part of the Russian track cycling programme and taken world titles as a junior. Then the Russian Lokosphinx team roster was absorbed by the Catalan club as a means to allow the riders to keep racing in Europe rather than being subject to restrictions or conscripted. He’s a hulking sprinter whose bulk and 85kg looks a lot to haul over any hills but he’s actually far from being the first sprinter to get dropped when the road goes up and that’s him in the picture racing for second in the Arctic Race of Norway.
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UAE have signed Swiss wunderkind Jan Christen (18) on a long term contract until 2027, only he’ll turn pro with them later this year and will spend the first part of the year continuing an apprenticeship in a hospital and racing on the road with the Hagens Berman Axeon Continental development team. He’s won titles on the track, in cyclo-cross, mountain bike and the road from national to European to World Championships. When asked by Blick, a Swiss magazine, what he’d like to win, he replied “everything. The Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, the Worlds” but then again, who wouldn’t? While media training might be part of his pro curriculum in the years to come, Christen’s talents suggest he’s got a shot of winning across multiple terrains.
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Thibau Nys (20) is the reigning U23 European road race champ and beat Filippo Baroncini, the 2021 U23-World Champ and Juan Ayuso (both neo-pro picks for 2022). For many though Thibau is the son of Sven, the cyclo-specialist who ranks among the very best. He’s been a long term project for Trek who brought him up via their Lions cyclo-cross team and now he’s joined Trek-Segafredo as he’s keen to improve on the road. As a Belgian ‘crosser at heart, he’s obviously keen on Paris-Roubaix and the Ronde and will keep up the winter sport although of late a back issue’s been holding him back. Look to him in the classics and he’s got a handy sprint.
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Movistar have seen Spanish talents like Carlos Rodriguez and Juan Ayuso turn pro outside of Spain and this pains the management. So they couldn’t let Ivan Romeo (19) go after he won the Spanish junior road race and time trial titles in 2021. He’s a very different rider though, tall and heavy and if some articles online try to suggest he could be the next Miguel Indurain, well Romeo’s already excited to do the cobbled classics and add more weight to the team’s performances beyond the mountains.
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Leo Hayter (21) is an Ineos signing and the Londoner ought to be a familiar name because of his brother, and now team mate, Ethan. Comparisons are inevitable, especially as Ethan’s making a name for himself fast as the track cyclist who can perform in time trials, win hilly sprints and take one week stage races as long as they’re not Alpine. Leo is lighter and more of a promising stage racer in the making and left the British system and its track focus. He won the U23 Giro last year and convincingly so and has been British U23 time trial champion, that’s him above with bronze in the Wollongong Worlds and if he can TT that well and climb so well, then you can see why he’s a promising stage racer for Ineos. Getting a look in for GC isn’t obvious but as a Brit on a British team he should get time and space.
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Joshua Tarling (18) also joins Ineos, and straight out of the junior ranks. He was unbeaten in international time trials in 2022, including the junior Worlds title in Australia. He should should be easy to spot as he is 1.94m tall and weighs a reported 88kg which means he’s even bigger than his new team mate Filippo Ganna. A big engine, a big draft, watch for him in the time trials and helping team mates in the classics and some of his ambitions remain on the track and the Paris Olympics.
After an Englishman, a Welshman, now a Scot from Kelso in Oscar Onley (20) who turns pro with Team DSM having been on their development team. After trying several sports including running, he got into cycling in his teens and started to rise up the ranks, including a stint with Ag2r’s junior team. 2022 was a breakthrough year. A crash at the start of the Giro della Vallee d’Aosta hurt but he recovered to win the final stage and then some solid results from them on. But things got spectacular riding with the World Tour team in the autumn and the Cro Race because in two small summit finishes he was narrowly beaten by Jonas Vingegaard, and after the pair had distanced the rest. This performance saw DSM bring forward his signing, presumably in part because he showed what he could do but also to ensure he didn’t go elsewhere. He’s now signed until 2027 and we’ll see how he fares, the battle against Vingegaard easily invites extrapolation to grand tours but that’s a long sweep to make.
Neo-pro?
Technically a rider aged under 25 on their first two year contract in the World Tour or Pro Conti level. But it’d be too easy to pick among riders with a pro season already as prospects to watch so all the riders cited above are first year pros.
Finally if you have any local tips please share in comments below, picking ten means leaving many others out, for example citing Ethan Hayter meant leaving out fellow Londoner Thomas Gloag who’s joining Jumbo-Visma…
Happy New Year as we embark on another lap around the sun. Here’s the calendar of pro cycling races for 2023.
It’s packed with all the international men’s and women’s pro events. So whether you’re making plans for next season, want to visit a race, or just need book sofa time or plan a work “meeting”, here it is…
You can view the calendar on the page here or at inrng.com/calendar all year and you can also download it for your phone, desktop organiser etc.
The best way is to subscribe so that all updates are quietly pushed out automatically to your diary by Google. Here is the iCal link to copy-paste into your device:
https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/357ced2dddef0fa3e9054a6a66dc828baea4df386d396c58ddb75f446b9792b6%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Google/Android users can click on Google Calendar link on the calendar frame above and for more tech support, see inrng.com/calendar.
What’s new?
The big change is the World Championships are in August. This post-Tour de France slot means many stars coming out of the Tour, men and women, will be in peak shape to contest the races in Glasgow. In reaction to this some races move to fill the gap normally occupied in September by the worlds. Among the races in September is the 1.1 Classica Andorra Pirineus, a new race in Andorra.
La Vuelta Femenina, the official women’s Tour of Spain, goes to May and stretches to a week and the women’s calendar in general gets more races. The RideLondon Classique stays on the calendar with guarantees of live TV.
The season begins again in Australia with the Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans Road Races are back. For the men, the Euro season now starts with the Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana which has gone from a 1.2 up to a 1.1. There’s a one day race in Muscat ahead of the Tour of Oman making it twice as lucrative to make the journey for UCI points. The Deutschland Tour gets an extra day. Sadly the only high level race in Colombia, the Tour Colombia 2.1, isn’t making a post-pandemic comeback, the organisers are short of funds.
There are several more new races and as ever this is the calendar but reality can mean postponements and cancellations.
Here are the answers to the Christmas quiz. Well done to all who tried.
1. Dressed in red and white, he’s delivering the goods amid the cold conditions. Name this bicycling Santa Claus?
Zingle bells, Zingle bells, Axel Zingle all the way, oh what fun it is to win a stage of the Artic Race of Norway. The Cofidis neo-pro had a solid debut season this year with three wins, each in hilly races with harsh conditions.
2. Who won the Tour of Turkey?
Paddy Bevin (Israel-PremierTech) took the overall win during a spring peak of form that also saw him take a stage of the Tour de Romandie. He’s moving to Team DSM next year where he should prove a useful signing when it comes to scoring points in hilly races, starting with Down Under.
3. Name a World Tour win by a guy named Jesus.
Jesus Herrada won a Vuelta a España stage this year.
2022 in Review
4. Name a town in Australia that has an ocean saltwater swimming pool.
If you watched the World Championships on TV you will have images of Wollongong’s coastal attractions amid your neurons as much as Van Vleuten’s late attack or Evenepoel’s solo move given the cameras lingered on the pool so much.
Embed from Getty Images
5. See the picture above, what happened next?
Benoît Cosnefroy thinks he’s won the Amstel Gold Race as the finish line speaker has announced it to the crowd… but the photofinish is about to say otherwise. Note the Polish flag in the background, a clue, as Michał Kwiatkowski was declared the winner moments later.
6. Who won the Tour of Britain?
Gonzalo Serrano (Movistar) won Stage 4 of the race and took the overall lead, and two days later the final three stages were cancelled following Queen Elizabeth’s death and with Serrano declared the winner. The team was getting desperate for points, but from September onwards everything seemed to go Movistar’s way.
7. Name a Tour de France stage winner who was facing unemployment this time last year?
Simon Clarke following the implosion of the Qhubeka team. It was only just before Christmas that Israel called him with an offer and the rest is history. The team will have been ecstatic with the victory but he’s a useful addition all year as a rider known for his planning and attention to detail.
8. Everyone knows Primož Roglič was a ski jumper, right? Name a Tour de France yellow jersey wearer from last summer who’s been a champion in another sport.
Yves Lampaert was a Belgian champion at judo in the U-16 / <42 kilos bracket. But his farmer parents found it increasingly hard to take time off to take him to training and competitions and he swapped the tatami for tarmac, taking up road cycling where he could start training from the farm gate.
9. Which pro had the most wins in 2022?
Lorena Wiebes looked unstoppable for any classic sprint finish around and moving to SD Worx will be interesting as DSM could build their race plan around her in 2022, while her new team has a deeper roster of riders with their own ambitions and maybe fewer engines for Wiebes’ sprint train.
10. Which men’s World Tour race had the least finishers?
The grim weather and ‘flu outbreak of Paris-Nice? Non. The Covid-calamity Tour de Suisse? Nein. It was the Tour of the Basque Country with 54 finishers. A quirk? Perhaps but the final Arrate stage is infamously tough and once helpers have done their job they can peel off early in the town of Eibar, and many of those that carried on were outside the time limit. It’s a race many pros rate as one of the toughest on the calendar but this reputation isn’t promoted outwardly although there are no easy races these days. To paraphrase someone else, people go to altitude for the GP Le Samyn these days.
Geography
11. What was the highest altitude summit finish in the men’s World Tour this year?
The Col du Granon in the Tour de France was a highlight, but the highpoint in altitude was in La Vuelta and the Hoya de la Mora finish in the Sierra Nevada at 2,512m won by Thymen Arensman, a rider to look out for in 2023.
12. Colle San Carlo, Passo Carrabile, Passo dello Stelvio, which is the odd one out?
The Passo Carrabile, Italy’s most common pass. You’ll see signs all over the country for them, only you won’t find them on a map, there’s no Strava segment and you shouldn’t break out a sweat as this means “driveway” or literally a passage for a carriage, it’s not a mountain pass but the lowered section of kerb that vehicles can pass over in order to get on or off a road.
13. Which World Tour race went through Balsac?
Paris-Nice Stage 3. Out a recon ride which informed the race preview that the hills in the finale could prove too much for the sprinters that day. Along came Balsac, and in the moment a Krabbé-esque thought that the world might divide into those who might think of Honoré de Balzac, and… well Thomas De Gendt noticed it.
After going through Pussay yesterday. We are now heading to Balsac. pic.twitter.com/WgWsOlNZ28
— Thomas De Gendt (@DeGendtThomas) March 8, 2022
Business
14. What line of business is Groupama in?
Insurance, it’s Groupe des Assurances Mutuelles Agricoles, the Group of Mutual Agricultural Insurance, in case you need to know. These days they don’t just insure tractors and barns but are open to all customers.
15. Which team sponsor has the biggest market capitalisation of all?
Total Energies, the oil major… that has a second tier team. You can’t buy equity in that many team sponsors but if you added up the stockmarket value of DSM, Deceuninck’s parent company Mohawk, FDJ, Movistar and Segafredo they’d still be a fraction of the €150 billion value put on Total.
16. Who is the richest man in pro cycling?
Probably Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the UAE as his wealth is hard to quantify but he’s a prince and also active in business and the security services, his Wikipedia page is a gentle introduction. Others suggested Bernard Arnault who has become the “world’s richest man” by some measures and because his company LVMH has a stake in L Catterton which in turn owns Pinarello but this doesn’t quite put Arnault in the sport… perhaps he’d have qualified if LVMH’s subsidiary Sephora had backed the B&B/Paris Cycling team after all?
Stats and trivia
17. When was the last time Paris-Roubaix started in Paris?
The race starts in Compiègne these days, about a third of the way between Paris and Roubaix but obviously the name lives on out of tradition… and it sounds more grand too. Wikipedia seems to state by default the race starts in Compiègne and serves up cards to Google for many years which are wrong so this was another “double check Wikipedia” / don’t Google it question. The last real start in Paris itself was 1901, then the départ was moved to the suburbs but wider Paris until 1965 when it was essentially the same race though. In 1966 when it started in Chantilly, much further from Paris as the organisers, increasingly frustrated at the race ending in a bunch sprint, got the race zigging and zagging more towards the finish to include more of the pavé we cherish today.
18. Name a grand tour winner who never won a one day race.
Chris Froome comes to mind, all three grand tours of course but not a single one day race to his name although with all the other stage races as well he surely doesn’t loose any sleep over this. He’s got medals from the Olympic time trials so has stood on the podium in one day races. It’s largely by design as for most of the last decade he’d stick almost exclusively to stage races and in some years he didn’t do a single one day race.
19. Which rider wore the yellow jersey for the shortest amount of time?
Riders have donned the jersey on the podium only to get stripped of it so technically they never really had it. But wearing it in the race? I though the answer was Marinus “Rini” Wagtmans who took the jersey for one stage in the 1971 Tour de France, and on a day with three split stages so he only had it a third of a day. A team mate of Eddy Merckx at Molteni, Wagtmans taking the jersey seemed intolerable for Merckx who duly sprinted for the next time bonus to get the jersey for himself on the next stage hours later. However in 1974 there was another split stage, 239km marathon from Dieppe to Harelbeke where Patrick Sercu took yellow… and then another stage after on the same day, a 9km time trial (labelled a team time trial but ridden solo and each team’s best five riders’ times were combined). Sercu wore yellow for the 9km and 11 minute effort and that was that.
20. World Tour teams are capped at 30 riders today but they have been bigger before. What was the biggest team ever?
Is there a right answer? Mapei in 2001 had 42 riders. It was really a pro team with a development squad included, while the likes of Paolo Bettini were winning the big races, a promising rider called Fabian Cancellara was beating Bradley Wiggins in the 2.5-rated Tour of Rhodes in Greece. A long time ago? But today’s World Tour teams can have in-house development squads and subject to some rules, riders can move between them for different races so we’re almost back to 2001, just with more structure.
The problem though is what counts as a team, the idea of a team as a fixed entity that registers a certain number of recruits is a most recent thing. In the comments Gabriele cited the Mercier-BP-Hutchinson and the informative mémoire du cyclisme lists 34 riders, some of whom were recruited or dropped mid-season… plus another 25 “uncertains” who might have ridden in a jersey at one point or another during the year.
History
21. This could be the hardest grand tour stage ever. To save readers from squinting at the profile, it’s 247km and goes via the Glandon, Madeleine, Aravis, Colombière before the Joux-Plane. Name the day’s winner.
What a stage, even among “Queen Stages” this is royalty. Jacques Michaud of the Coop-Mavic-Mercier team won Stage 18 of the 1983 Tour de France. Imagine that, 247km and those passes, with close to 7,000m of vertical gain. It’s tough any time but came in the third week of the Tour and the stage took 7h45m. But if that sounds gruelling, the previous day was also over seven hours, in the Alps and 223km.
22. The Tour de France will start in Italy in 2024. Which Italian town did the race first visit for a stage finish?
Sanremo in 1948.
23. If you want a groupset today it’s Shimano, Sram or Campagnolo. Name three more alternative groupset manufacturers from the past.
Hoarding a stack of magazines linked to the 1989 Tour reveals a lot more choice with Mavic from France, Suntour of Japan, Italy’s Miche and more from that year, and more in different decades.
Chief Commissaire
24. Apart from the label, cite two differences between a prologue and an opening time trial.
First a prologue is capped at 8km. Second, should a rider crash out and not finish the prologue they can still start Stage 1 and they will get the same time as the last rider from the prologue.
25. Do riders have a racing licence from the country they represent or the country they reside in?
Residency. This makes, for example, the Monaco federation, more influential than it might otherwise be as it can network with a lot of riders.
26. Some races have neutral starts or roll outs. What’s the maximum permitted distance between neutral start and the real start?
10km… in theory but it’s sometimes longer in practice. For example Milan-Sanremo is already the longest race on the calendar at 293km… but there’s 13km on top too; the Tour de France had a similar distance for the roll out of Stage 5 as the race got clear of the street furniture of Lille.
Nicknames
27. Who is the Taureau de Lescheret, the Bull of Lescheret?
Arnaud De Lie. A “neo-pro” to watch the write-up here tried to brand him the “Cowboy” on account of the family cattle farm but in no time the Taureau de Lescheret name stuck instead, even better as it evokes the old format of “noun + place”, à la Eagle of Toledo. He’s adopted it as well, even doing cow horn victory salutes.
Embed from Getty Images
28. Name the grand tour podium finisher from this year who has a bovine logo?
Juan Ayuso. He turned 20 after finishing third in the Vuelta. But he’s already got the bovine horns identity on his website and social media, has the physique of an older rider and by several accounts the wisdom of one too.
29. Name a rider from the past with a bovine nickname?
Thinking of the formula “Bull + Place” that we’re familiar with from De Lie, Raymond Mastrotto came to mind, the Taureau de Nay. The 1962 Critérium du Dauphiné winner was from Nay at the foot of the Pyrenees, which is also home to FDJ stalwart Mathieu Ladagnous who is about to start his 18th and final season as a pro, all with the same team.
30. Which retiring World Tour rider’s fan club has this logo?
Hideto Nakane of EF Education-Easypost.
31. Which rider is nicknamed Nono by team mates?
Another Arnaud this time, Arnaud Démare and the nickname doesn’t have the same traditional ring; it’s just the diminutive of Arnaud, ‘naud.
Real names
32. What does Pogačar sort of mean in English? And Vingegaard?
A baker, a cake maker. Literally “Wing garden” but gaard implies a farm; some readers suggested vineyard but it’d be an odd Danish name given there are traditionally few vines in Denmark, no? But happy to be corrected.
33. Name the rider whose name is an anagram of Ghosted Tandem.
Thomas De Gendt.
34. Name two unrelated World Tour pros who share the same surname.
Among 100s of pros you’re bound to have many homonyms. Lucas Hamilton and Scott Hamilton. Carlos Rodriguez, Christian Rodriguez. The more unusual pairing is Geraint Thomas and Ben Thomas being names in two different languages, plus both have a track pedigree.
Tech
35. Name a men’s World Tour race won in rim brakes this year.
Tadej Pogačar on Stage 6 of Tirreno-Adriatico for a road race, or Matteo Sobrero in the Giro’s final stage, a time trial. An anecdote or a small footnote in history as the last outing for the stirrups?
36. Bianchi, Lapierre and Orbea can sound more exotic than Trek, Scott or Giant to English-speakers but what is their literal translation in English?
Whites, The Stone and Orb.
37. No need for the precise year but which was the first decade when you could get major race results online? Now the internet was invented in the 1990s… but France had the Minitel and, again leafing through the stock of 1989 magazines, there was “36.15 Miroir C”, the URL equivalent of the time, for the Miroir de Cyclisme magazine. During July they had results, an exclusive online interview with Greg LeMond featuring questions submitted via Minitel from readers… and a quiz. Many publications had a presence online, here’s L’Equipe’s ad for its online service, taken from the newspaper pages.
Picture round
38. Name the rider from the picture above. Jay and vines. Jay Vine
39. Name the rider from the picture above. War and Peace but Peace is cropped out. Bar. Gil Scott-Heron. Warren Barguil… just.
40. Name the rider from the picture above. Evita the Musical. Evita Muzic. The FDJ-Suez rider is French but her father has Slovenian origins and Muzic means musician. In an interview with the Bistrot Vélo podcast, Muzic said she was even named in tribute to Eva Peron.
No news on Qavendish. With the British champion spotted on a Wilier bike, Mark Cavendish’s move to Astana-Qazakhstan seemed to be a done deal, La Gazzetta reported it as such… but no more since. Only there’s no need to hurry any announcement.
Why no news? Are lawyers haggling over whether he has to take part in the team’s annual rap video? Did the bike test prove unsatisfactory? At first Astana didn’t have room for Cavendish and fellow “Parisian” Cees Bol given the rule limiting the team to 30 riders. But Christian Scaroni, signed from Gazprom, has vanished from the team’s listing on the UCI website which, if it’s not a database error, frees space for both signings. This could be the issue with riders holding valid contracts to ride with the World Tour squad needing persuasion, and the UCI’s approval, to be moved aside.
Either way there doesn’t have to be announcement by the end of the year, the Quick-Step contract expires but a pro can be hired mid-season if need be. The ink on a contract could be dry by now, or Cavendish and a team, be it Astana, Human Powered Health or another, could reach agreement at some point next year too. No rush… even if it does feel like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle that’s waiting to be completed.
After Astana, onto another state-backed sponsorship story and yay, Team BikeExchange have got a real outside sponsor for the first time in ages. Doh, it turns out to be the Saudi government. BikeExchange is a small business whose entire annual revenue is smaller than the contribution paid to the pro team by benefactor Gerry Ryan, who has a son on the board of the firm. Now the team has a new title sponsor in the Saudi tourist resort Al Ula (they were already sponsors, but in 2023 they step up as naming rights sponsors). Many will ask was there not a more normal consumer products company available as a sponsor? “Sportswashing” is the term – as a label it doesn’t quite hit the mark but that’s for another day – but a hypothesis is that any government backed agency trying to buy good publicity and recognition will always outbid a product or brand trying to reach more defined marketing goals.
Staying with sponsors, Paris-Nice could have a team time trial mid-week instead of the solo one, a first in 30 years. The official route is out on 5 January. As the Ardoisier blog points out, many of the stages that are leaking out to the local newspapers between Paris-and Nice have a sponsorship twist. One day’s start seems to be in the place where the Tour de France white jersey is based, another day’s start next to a major publicity caravan sponsor’s factory. It’s almost as if pro cycling is nakedly commercial.
The 2024 Tour de France will start in Firenze, Italy and finish in Nice which makes for a very unusual route as the race will reach the Alps after five days, early for a big showdown in the mountains, especially as the second day will feature two ascents of the San Luca climb above Bologna. Summit finish is stretching things but to use a handy comparison, one climb up the Via San Luca is worth about two Mur de Huy ascents so it’ll tell us plenty, early. Spare a thought for the Giro boss Mauro Vegni who must be frowning as he reads accounts of Italian cities queuing up to pay Le Tour instead of Il Giro… but that’s business. Also he’s said to get on well with Christian Prudhomme and ASO and they work together in the forum of major race organisers, they’re more often allies than rivals.
One thing to cheer up Vegni is that his race becomes more important in one aspect: all three grand tours will be even more lucrative when it comes to points as the UCI has revised the allocation of points for next season and beyond. 2022 was the year many finally clocked how the UCI rankings worked and winning a grand tour stage didn’t bring many points. For example in 2021 Tim Merlier won a Giro stage and then a Tour stage and earned a combined 220 UCI points… but in winning the Koksijde Classic and Elfstedenronde he got 325 points. We’ll take a closer look at the new tables in the coming year and it’s probably the right move but will come with some consequences, for example the likes of Pogačar and Vingegaard have got around 1,800 points for their Tour wins lately, thanks to 1,000 for the overall and almost as much again from stage wins and placings, the daily gain from wearing the yellow jersey and also taking the mountains competition along the way too. Similar performances would land them about 2,700 points, with a lot more points from the wins along the way than the final overall win. It’s a “rich get richer” scenario that makes the grand tours even more important.
How do you rate the Tour of Guangxi? With China dropping many Covid restrictions and reopening all of a sudden to international travel is this race finally back on? Races that have been off the calendar can be hard to reprise, we’ve lost the entertainment and fervour of the Tour Colombia 2.1 which won’t happen next year, the organisers are short of cash. February’s Tour de La Provence is back, fingers-crossed, after a series of disputes and a hearing that reached the French Olympic Committee. It ruled it should be reinstated on the French calendar. If so the race is returning to the Montagne de Lure, the smaller “sister” of Mont Ventoux, for a decisive summit finish.
Lastly having done some “Items of Use” posts in the past about kit and tech that proved useful during the year for cycling and blogging, I wanted to do another one. Only I’m not really using ten more items worth writing home about, many of the same good things are still in service. But mentioning the Montagne de Lure above is a reason to mention the Drôme and Hautes-Alpes area of France which are close by. Why? Because it’s the Alps but not as we often see them via the Tour de France. The Baronnies and Diois areas aren’t far from Mont Ventoux and the Lure but it’s a world away and packed with many roads so empty you almost wish for more traffic just in case you suffer a mishap and nobody might come along for hours. Anyone visiting Mont Ventoux, especially in July and August, and wanting some quieter roads should explore this corner.
Quiz answers tomorrow
40 questions. Some easy, some that will defeat Google and as usual a few of the answers give us a sideways look at the sport…
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Dressed in red and white, he’s delivering the goods amid the cold conditions. Name this bicycling Santa Claus?
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Who won the Tour of Turkey?
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Name a World Tour win by a guy named Jesus.
2022 in Review
4. Name a town in Australia that has an ocean saltwater swimming pool.
Embed from Getty Images
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See the picture above, what happened next?
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Who won the Tour of Britain?
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Name a Tour de France stage winner who was facing unemployment this time last year?
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Everyone knows Primož Roglič was a ski jumper, right? Name a Tour de France yellow jersey wearer from last summer who’s been a champion in another sport.
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Which pro had the most wins in 2022?
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Which men’s World Tour race had the least finishers?
Geography
11. What was the highest altitude summit finish in the men’s World Tour this year?
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Colle San Carlo, Passo Carrabile, Passo dello Stelvio, which is the odd one out?
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Which World Tour race went through Balsac?
Business
14. What line of business is Groupama in?
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Which team sponsor has the biggest market capitalisation of all?
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Who is the richest man in pro cycling?
Stats and trivia
17. When was the last time Paris-Roubaix started in Paris?
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Name a grand tour winner who never won a one day race.
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Which rider wore the yellow jersey for the shortest amount of time?
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World Tour teams are capped at 30 riders today but they have been bigger before. What was the biggest team ever?
History
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This could be the hardest grand tour stage ever. To save readers from squinting at the profile, it’s 247km and goes via the Glandon, Madeleine, Aravis, Colombière before the Joux-Plane. Name the day’s winner.
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The Tour de France will start in Italy in 2024. Which Italian town did the race first visit for a stage finish?
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If you want a groupset today it’s Shimano, Sram or Campagnolo. Name three more alternative groupset manufacturers from the past.
Chief Commissaire
24. Apart from the label, cite two differences between a prologue and an opening time trial.
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Do riders have a racing licence from the country they represent or the country they reside in?
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Some races have neutral starts or roll outs. What’s the maximum permitted distance between neutral start and the real start?
Nicknames
27. Who is the Taureau de Lescheret, the Bull of Lescheret?
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Name the grand tour podium finisher from this year who has a bovine logo?
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Name a rider from the past with a bovine nickname?
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Which retiring World Tour rider’s fan club has this logo?
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Which rider is nicknamed Nono by team mates?
Real names
32. What does Pogačar sort of mean in English? And Vingegaard?
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Name the rider whose name is an anagram of Ghosted Tandem.
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Name two unrelated World Tour pros who share the same surname.
Tech
34. Name a men’s World Tour race won in rim brakes this year.
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Bianchi, Lapierre and Orbea can sound more exotic than Trek, Scott or Giant to English-speakers but what is their literal translation in English?
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No need for the precise year but which was the first decade when you could get major race results online?
Picture round
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Name the rider from the picture above.
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Name the rider from the picture above.
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Name the rider from the picture above.
The Prize
If you want to have a go, post your answers in the comments below. Readers can collectively crowdsource their way together. The most correct answers get wins a small prize.
Small print: the deadline is midday Euro Time on Thursday 29 December. The most correct answers wins and if there’s a tie then a name gets picked at random. As ever people can copy off each other which spoils the point but readers enjoyable more often collaborate than argue so together there’s a way to get plenty of answers. As ever if you want to deploy an eleventh hour copy-paste job… well that’s cycling where you can toil into the wind only for someone wheelsucker to sprint past in the finishing straight.
As loyal readers will know the quiz has some hard questions which can’t be googled in one go, half the point of the quiz is to take a sideways look at things in the answers which will appear here soon. Merry Christmas and Happy holidays…
The final highlight of the year? It’s hard, because to pick one is to exclude so many. So here’s a cop-out with several quick picks from 2022 which has proved to be an excellent vintage.
Having picked two Tour de France stages already, why stop there? There were many other good days. Wout van Aert’s win in Calais was lively and instructive but the action only came late that day. The pavé stage was hectic, with a surprise win but Roglič’s woes were a downer to cancel things out. Bob Jungels’ win in Châtel marked a big day with action from the start but seeing the GC riders mark each other wasn’t as good as other days. The Hautacam day did see action to the end with a quality breakaway overhauled on the final climb. Several other days were very lively too and it was satisfying to see the breakaways get their rewards, the Tour’s becoming a kind of daily world championships with intense racing almost every day… except for the sprints but these are still a thrill for the final 20km.
Staying with the Tour as the men’s race approached Paris, the women set off. Now I’d watch, and many readers of a niche cycling blog would too… but would millions of others tune in after weeks of watching the Tour, and could the racing deliver? The answer is yes, oui. The course helped deliver some variety. The Champs Elysées offered glamour before the race headed for rural Franc this meant field art and tractors, just like the men. Above all it was just good sport, the second day’s crosswinds allowed Marianne Vos to take yellow and if Annemiek van Vleuten was the inevitable winner, she was struggling with illness mid-week, then dropped on a descent on the final day to add some spice to it all. With hindsight the Tour factor really worked. There are plenty of races on the French calendar but few are followed by the general public, when Paris-Nice comes to town, even a one horse town, there can be complaints about road closures. But the Tour is on a whole different level, a sports event that’s also a socio-cultural institution. So taking the Tour label to a women’s race helped make it an instant hit, it got more crowds than, say, the men in a stage of the Dauphiné. It also brings in politicians and sponsors alike.
Sure the Giro wasn’t a vintage edition, it didn’t pass the “DVD test” as in you would not go and buy the DVD highlights to watch over winter; of course these days you’d probably need to buy a DVD player as well but that just makes the test even stronger. Anyway there were some great days, Thomas De Gendt’s win in Napoli was satisfying as the breakaway expert showed he’s still got it, and held off Mathieu van der Poel’s late charge with the Dutchman a catalyst on many days. Biniam Girmay’s stage win was exciting for the way he outplayed Van der Poel. With hindsight MvdP doing the classics and the Giro and then the Tour was too much and he turned stale by the summer.
Paris-Nice thrives if the wind gets up and sure enough we got textbook echelon racing on the early stages. There was also another exciting final stage with Simon Yates going on the attack to take the final stage and almost win the overall were it not for Wout van Aert towing Roglič over the Col d’Eze and into Nice, a tense end to a lively week. It’s not exactly perceptive hindsight given Jumbo-Visma said the team was a dress rehearsal for July but WvA’s work for his team leaders while dressed in green is notable.
Milano-Sanremo’s always a thrill, 290km where the tension ratchets up. Sure you could tune in for the Poggio and if it was a film it would test the audience but there’s something about the slow build up that works.
The cobbled classics always bring entertainment. To pick among them, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was tense although the circuit with the Oude Kwaremont-Paterberg combo is becoming too familiar. Still seeing Pogačar giving it everything up the Paterberg was special, when was the last time we saw the Tour de France winner doing this? The final sprint was wild as Madouas and Van Baarle closed in. Gent-Wevelgem was good too, you could see Girmay in the right place in the E3 race just before, this time he got the better of Jumbo-Visma by beating Christophe Laporte in a four-up sprint.
The promotion/relegation contest brought spice to many a race and gave added importance to many a small race, a depth like the general classification does in a stage race. As this is the highlights of the year, we’ll park the negatives it brought for another day. The excitement came because it was close for much of the season with Lotto-Soudal just overhauling BikeExchange-Jayco mid-season. Who knew opening a spreadsheet every Tuesday morning would be so exciting?
The Vuelta’s always bringing tapas cycling, bite-sized action almost every day. Some days were a feast for the eyes with plenty of action and seeing Carlos Rodriguez and Juan Ayuso thriving was impressive as Spanish cycling needs a superstar. Ayuso was one of this blog’s neo-pros of the tear, an obvious pick, but is still remarkable for the way he looks like seasoned pro already. He was also a protagonist in February’s Drôme Classic race which was a great afternoon’s sport.
The World Championships were fun, in a way the women’s and men’s races needed to be combined: to have the action from the start of the men’s race where the French team riding à la Voeckler went on the attack early and split the field; plus the finish of the women’s race with the winner unknown right until the end and Van Vleuten mugging the field to cap her stellar season.
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And there were so many other great days. After getting overhauled by Miguel Angel Lopez in the Tour of the Alps, Thibaut Pinot’s win the next day was memorable for the mask on his face as he fought for his first win after a long lean spell and rehab. With hindsight he got one over on Lopez and there’s added poignancy given Lopez’s reported links to Operation Ilex.
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Mark Cavendish’s win in the British championships was special. On a day when you have many browser tabs open to various championships I tuned in to the GB race and saw him with a few others up the road and without the KM to go graphic, thought it meant the finish was near. Only it was practically the start and Cavendish was making moves all afternoon before winning the final sprint in what looked like test of stamina than speed.
Where to stop? Andreas Leknessund’s Tour of Norway win was special, a breakaway where he kept going solo to win the stage and take the overall in a race he’d seen from the roadside once as a child and thought “I’d like to do that“, and sure enough he did. Ion Izagirre getting knocked off on the final climb of Arrate in the Tour of the Basque Country only to come back and take the stage. Stage 5 of the Tour de Suisse, furnace like conditions and a hectic final hour on a tricky circuit, and if many riders would leave this race because of Covid, the glass-half full view is the peloton got the wake-up call in June rather than July. More? Make suggestions in the comments below…
And it all starts again in less than a month.
Highlights of 2022 – Part I
Highlights of 2022 – Part II
Highlights of 2022 – Part III
Highlights of 2022 – Part IV
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The fourth pick of the season and it’s getting difficult to pick because to chose one means to leave others out. So here’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a difficult choice but a few extra factors swung it.
They’ve changed the finish of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and it’s helped to improve the race, but only just. It’s still a relatively formulaic race with an early break going, the pace picks up on the return from Bastogne and the succession of climbs sees teams send their lieutenants up the road to soften things up ahead of the inevitable showdown on the Roche-aux-Faucons climb where the distance, intensity and steep slope force a selection. This year it was all different.
Still an early breakaway of 11 riders took six minutes on the trip down to Bastogne. As the road became hillier breakaway on the return, they were down to seven riders and with three minutes once the Wanne-Stockeu-Haute Levée trilogy down.
One big lowlight was the crash on the approach to the Col de Rosier. A wave, a touch of wheels and the peloton was felled at 70km/h with riders flying into the ditch and woodland. As the TV surveyed the damage Julian Alaphilippe and his rainbow jersey couldn’t be seen at first. He was in a ditch, stuck between a rock and a pine tree as Romain Bardet made his way down to help. There was a lull in the racing, a truce.
As things resumed the Bahrain team wa active, their rider Dylan Teuns having won Flèche Wallonne. Mikel Landa launched five attacks. None of them was vintage Landa, the bicycling Zorro who slices the peloton to ribbons with his rapier attacks, these were Landa as a meat tenderiser so soften the legs of others.
Onto La Redoute and a tribute to local hero Philippe Gilbert, racing over the PHIL PHIL PHIL for one last time. The breakaway had split to pieces with only Bruno Armirail left from the breakaway over the top. Many of the Ardennes climbs are irregular, get to the top and immediate descent awaiting. La Redoute is a typical example, the climb proper ends with a left turn and the road levels out but the work isn’t quite done as it kicks up again. And this was just where Remco Evenepoel attacked.
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He launched with such power that the riders on his wheel just seemed powerless to follow him when this was their one vital job and they all knew it. Quick-Step had lost their co-leader so any Evenepoel move was going to be all-in, Alaphilippe was not sitting tight to launch later on. This was the obvious place for him to attack too, to build up a lead ahead of the Roche-aux-Faucons climb while others hesitate; rather than suffer the darting attacks of the climbers.
Movistar and Bahrain had riders to spare for the chase but they began to waive, as hard as they tried they couldn’t get back time on Evenepoel. They needed to bring the gap back to 20 seconds at the foot of the Roche-aux-Faucons climb so that any jack-in-box attack could spring across the gap. But 35s was too much, arguably only Primož Roglič, Tadej Pogačar and Julian Alaphilippe could close a gap that wide but the first wasn’t racing, the second didn’t start and the third wouldn’t because he’s a team mate even if was still in the race.
Over to the false flat with its horrid concrete section that feels slow no matter what, and Dylan Teuns and Aleksander Vlasov made powerful attacks and after a flurry of moves they were within 16 seconds of Evenepoel. But that was the problem, no closer. They had a wall to scale but had brought a ladder a step too short.
Why the highlight?
A difficult pick, this was a great day’s racing but what made it stand out? It’s subjective but it was a close race, this wasn’t Evenepoel riding away and sucking the suspense out of the finish. Seeing a race that had become formulaic being rescripted must have left La Doyenne smiling.
With hindsight?
It felt like more people warmed to Evenepoel during the Vuelta, his personality is coming across and while he makes it look easy on the bike, he’s able to explain events better after the race. But all this was on display on the local TV coverage in Liège. “Ever since he’s started racing he told me about Liège, Liège, Liège” his girlfriend (now wife) said to RTBF and Evenepoel’s post-race interview was sincere and heartfelt, this was a dream come true rather tha a new line on the palmarès. This was all pre-Vuelta and only question left was whether he could handle three weeks and the high mountains: we got the resounding answer in September.
Alas Alaphilippe’s crash cost him much of the season, if he’d resume racing at the French championships he was still chasing his shadow (and being goaded by his team manager). Yet both these riders signal Quickstep’s shift away from the cobbled classics, they still have a formidable team but increasingly their ambitions are turning to grand tours and it’ll be interesting to watch this cultural shift.
Quinten Hermans making the podium was a result few would have predicted but it said plenty about Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert’s season, they started 2022 as relegation candidates only to finish the year as Belgium’s best team, at least on the UCI rankings.
Highlights of 2022 – Part I
Highlights of 2022 – Part II
Highlights of 2022 – Part III
Another highlight of the year, and another stage of the Tour de France, this time Stage 14 from Saint-Etienne to Mende where Michael Matthews put on a masterpiece on a stage set buzzing by an early attack from Tadej Pogačar that had Jumbo-Visma scrambling to respond.
An incendiary stage. A big breakaway got away before the first climb of the day but only had a few seconds. Then when the road started climbing Tadej Pogačar attacked. It looked like he’d seen Jonas Vingegaard didn’t have team mates around and wanted to put the yellow jersey under pressure as his team mates scrambled to get back. Pogačar was unlikely to keep this up until the end but his move mowed down the breakaway and had the effect of poking an already buzzing wasps’ nest. Vingegaard was never on the ropes but if other teams had joined things could have got hectic.
Finally a maxi-breakaway of 23 riders got away. A group this big lacks cohesion, riders can tag on the back and miss turns. Because of this, others get frustrated and so the attacks started. Simon Geschke and Quinn Simmons were sprinting for mountains points only for Simmons to keep going and this prompted the others to chase, a first attack. When the group got back, more were sitting on and soon after Michael Matthews attacked with 53km to go, a bold move given he was notionally the sprinter but with so many climbers in the move, better to get ahead. He was away solo for 10km when a trio of Andreas Kron, L-L Sanchez and Felix Großschartner countered and rode across.
Amid the chasers behind Louis Meintjes was part of the breakaway and at one point close to becoming the virtual yellow jersey but Jumbo-Visma started chasing, but probably less to limit Meintjes and more to ensure a hard finish to soften Pogačar for the final climb.
Onto the final climb out of Mende and Sanchez and Großschartner were the climbers. But Sanchez is 38 years old and in his peak never a punchy climber, Großschartner a diesel. Their only chance was to push Matthews hard from the start. But Matthews hit them and rode off.
Alberto Bettiol winched his way across to Matthews from the breakaway chasers and the two were locked in a duel, a leg-press version of an arm-wrestling contest. Bettiol was gaining ground, but only by centimetres. His work to reach Matthews and overhaul him put him into oxygen debt and towards the top Bettiol had to start making repayments and defaulted. Matthews has long been a big trophy hunter, a collection of quality wins but his has to be his best win, he took on the field and won.
Behind Pogačar attacked but Vingegaard had him covered, as the Slovenian rocked his shoulders, the Dane was all dainty cadence and matched him. Behind the GC contenders were left to themselves on the climb where David Gaudu fared best, dropped at first but recovering to overhaul Geraint Thomas. But the only change in GC positions was Meintjes up to seventh.
Why the highlight?
The stage started so fast and then Pogačar was joining in the attacks and Jumbo-Visma were scrambling, this stage had a scrap for the stage win that lasted for hours and GC action at the start and then again at the finish, all with sunshine and scenery too. That said the only change overall was Meintjes climbing up to seventh, this didn’t turn out to be one of those mythical massif central ambush stages.
With hindsight…
It’s harder to find much wider significance in this stage but once again the breakaway made it and this helped reinforce a positive spiral where riders were going up the road believing in a stage win rather than praying it might just happen one day if they were lucky. Michael Matthews was being linked to other teams so the win helped him and it was also a boost for BikeExchange-Jayco, a Tour win from an Aussie rider must be very satisfying for their patron Gerry Ryan.
The real benefit of hindsight here is rewatch the stage with an eye on Matthews. Watching the stage live you could make a case that Matthews was getting it all wrong, the sprinter going solo with over 50km to go on a hilly route was just blunting his legs when he just needed to snipe the win, only to then get joined by better climbers before a notoriously tough summit finish… only he got it all right. Of course he’s not really a sprinter and his moves reduced the number of rivals to mark and meant he wasn’t caught out wave after wave of attacks from an unwieldy group. It was a masterpiece of a win.
Highlights of 2022 – Part I
Highlights of 2022 – Part II
The second of the year’s highlights is Stage 14 from the Giro d’Italia, a circuit race on the edge of Turin that featured the climb of the Superga.
The Superga-Maddalena circuit promised plenty, the question was whether the GC contenders could be persuaded to race it hard? Bora-hansgrohe supplied the answer. After a flurry of attacks sparked by Mathieu van der Poel, the day’s breakaway had taken a two minute lead. But as soon as the race reached the first of the three laps of the Superga circuit, the German team hit the front of the peloton and shredded the field. The likes of Alejandro Valverde and Guillaume Martin missed the split and were forced into a long and fruitless chase.
In no time the front group was down to twelve, four of them from Bora-hansgrohe thanks to Ben Zwiehoff dropping back from the break and Wilco Kelderman digging deep on the front. Bahrain had two in Landa and Bilbao, Intermarché in Pozzovivo and Hirt. Carapaz was there, but without a team mate. Lopez was there with his maglia rosa, Nibali rolling back the years as well. Almeida was just with them too at times, but that’s his yo-yo style.
Carapaz took off solo with 28km to go on the Superga climb and quickly got 20 seconds but he struggled to get to 30 as Buchmann and Bilbao chased on behalf of their leaders. Onto the final climb of the Maddalena, a narrow back road, and Nibali attacked and only Hindley could follow, the move shattered the group behind, or was it just the slope and the heat? The pair closed down Carapaz and over the false flat across the top Yates got across. Yates attacked on the last rise to go clear, a powerful move but being well down on GC, the others could concede the stage win as long as they kept their GC rivals. Carapaz took the maglia rosa, Hindley took time and Nibali took plenty of applause.
Why the highlight?
Another day of non-stop action but with more to it. We had Van der Poel provoke an early move, then the GC teams took over with Bora-hansgrohe shredding the field and this medium mountain stage became a major GC day. While the major contenders were trading blows there was a frantic chase behind to get back on, this was a day when the action was happening in front of Motos 1,2,3 and 4.
With hindsight?
As good as the Giro got, there were some good breakaway battles but it took time for the “fight for pink” to start with Juan-Pedro Lopez enjoying a creditable spell in the maglia rosa but he always felt like a clothes horse while the GC contenders bided their time. Alas this stage’s action wasn’t repeated with the same intensity in the Alps, the remaining stages not offering the GC contest we’d hope for, each passing day upheld the status quo when ideally things would be turned upside down daily. Of course we can want to be confounded but it doesn’t mean we get it, and it took the last climb of the last mountain stage for Jai Hindley to get his breakthrough win. Tellingly here in Torino Richard Carapaz attacked and got clear and usually once he’s away he’s gone for good, but he was brought back because other teams had strength when Ineos did not and this helped keep the race so tight. Then when Vincenzo Nibali attacked only Jai Hindley could follow, a big clue to his form and also Bora-hansgrohe had been all over this stage while Ineos were on the back foot, it was hard to extrapolate too much from all this at the time but now perhaps we can read more into it.
There’s also a structural consideration here as the grand tours tend to feature point-to-point stages but the Giro and other races are featuring more and more circuit races and done right, by including climbs for launchpads and twisting roads to thwart a peloton chase, they can be entertaining.
Highlights of 2022 – Part I
Time to pick five highlights from the season, typically great sporting moments and revisit the moment and review with the benefit of time and hindsight. Presented in no particular order, first is Stage 11 of the Tour de France, the day the race was turned upside down.
This stage was enjoyable on the day but let’s go to the start of the season first because Tadej Pogačar was ruling the roost. The ease of his triumph in the 2021 Tour de France, and his decision to return, was the cornerstone around which many rivals rode. Jumbo-Visma weren’t deterred they literally doubled down, picking Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard for July. Pogačar won the UAE Tour, a vital target for his team’s sponsors who can’t afford to be upstaged in their home race.
He then won Strade Bianche with a long range raid that might not be a sporting highlight of the year because he took the suspense out of the race but it was dominant. Days later he won Tirreno-Adriatico again and was a contender for Milan-Sanremo and when he had a go in the cobbled classics he came close to winning the Tour of Flanders on his debut. After a rest, a runaway win in the Tour of Slovenia suggested everything was on track for the Tour de France.
Before the start in Copenhagen one question was whether the strongest rider or the strongest team would win the race? UAE Emirates were not the strongest team before they lost Matteo Trentin at the last minute. Now this talk of strength is relative to the competition or even compared to their leader, the team wasn’t quite up there (and they still look a season away from a building a fortress around Pogačar). But of course for the Slovenian, why defend when you can attack? He was making moves on the pavé to Arenberg while Jumbo-Visma were trying to stay upright in the yellow jersey by Stage 6 after winning in Longwy, then took more time at the Planche des Belles Filles and more still in Lausanne thanks to third place in the uphill finish. The next day he was sprinting for the finish in Megève and it meant five days in a row where his worst place was seventh.
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Stage 11 started with a bang when Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert attacked early, adding intensity to an already frantic start. For Van der Poel this was a brief swansong as he’d quit the race, one of his moves that infuriates others because he’ll burn up energy that forces them to follow only for him to sit up. All the better for spectators and when a bigger move got across Jumbo-Visma had placed Christophe Laporte in the up the road too.
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Once the race reached the Col du Télégraphe Jumbo-Visma activated their plan with Benoot launching Roglič in an attack. Pogačar gave chase. This was early to make moves and it seemed premature even. Onto the Galibier and the road out of Valloire and Vingegaard was making searing attacks like it was the final climb. It was thrilling and at one point Jumbo-Visma looked like a swarm of bees surrounding the yellow jersey. But Pogačar was holding his ground and as the higher the Galibier got, the more it looked like Vingegaard’s team had gone too soon. By the top of the pass it was just Pogačar and Vingegaard, a situation the Slovenian must have preferred.
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Warren Barguil was first to start the Col du Granon, back after a long absence. His team mate Nairo Quintana set off in pursuit. Later Romain Bardet had a go and it signalled open season on Vingegaard and Pogačar and that the pace wasn’t so high. With 5km to go Vingegaard attacked. Rafał Majka gave chase but crucially Pogačar could not follow and in a flash Majka vanished, Vingegaard was away and Pogačar losing ground, dropped by Geraint Thomas, his yellow jersey flapping in the breeze. He was soon overhauled by David Gaudu and Adam Yates. Vingegaard took the stage and 2m51 on Pogačar to turn the Tour upside down.
There was the sense all this was coming but it was spectacular to see. In the moment the causes of Pogačar’s problems weren’t obvious, it looked like he hadn’t been eating and drinking enough but could have easily been the onset of Covid problems. Fortunately it was the former.
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Why the highlight?
Non-stop action on the stage with moves flying from the start. Jumbo-Visma got to work on the Télégraphe pass and it was clear something big was going to happen, Van Aert was attacking, Laporte was up the road too and then seeing the attacks fly was dramatic. On the mighty Galibier it became duel between Pogačar and Vingegaard, a vintage mano a mano. Only the Lautaret descent offered a lull in the stage’s action. Come the Col du Granon, Vingegaard attacked and rode away, smashing our brittle certainties. It was also thrilling in the moment because if Vingegaard had won the day we presupposed Pogačar would be out to attack and overturn the race, it promised a battle to come.
With the benefit of hindsight…
We never quite got the ding-dong battle with Pogačar regaining ground and making Vingegaard respond in turn. But take a longer view and Pogačar’s supposed Tour hegemony was scattered to the wind. The interesting thing is just how inseparable how Vingegaard and Pogačar were for the three weeks, it often took mistakes and mishaps to separate them and this sets up the possibility of a very close Tour next summer.
Jan Ullrich, The Best There Never Was by Daniel Friebe
The Tour de France dominates pro cycling like a star around which everything else orbits. Other races in July can struggle for attention and many riders make it the goal of their year. Jan Ullrich’s career was part of this, his first win seemed to suggest he’d dominate the Tour and with it the sport for years to come. Even when he didn’t win there was always the seasonal targeting the Tour and his preparation getting more intense the closer the race got.
On a much smaller level the Tour monopolises such that when a cycling biography comes out in late June with publishers hoping to attract readers with pro cycling on their radar, along comes the race with all its distractions. Having bought a copy in late June there was no time to sit back and read it… until now.
If you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, having bought a copy of the hardback you can feel the size of the book, it runs well beyond 400 pages with notes and an index and the font isn’t big either, there’s a weighty feel to this.
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As the title implies Jan Ullrich’s career arc was unlike most others. A Wunderkind who won the amateur worlds in 1993 as a teenager and almost won the time trial against the pros that year too, he was second in the 1996 Tour de France and won the final time trial. Then came 1997 and Stage 10 from Luchon to Arcalis, a ski station in Andorra whose name today still seems to evoke Ullrich’s ascent, the day he rode the field off his wheel, a flat back, a gold earning dangling and the black, red, gold bands of the Bundesflagge on his jersey. For many it was a vision of the future: if he could ride like this on the climbs, and win the time trials and arrive in Paris with nine minutes on his next rival, all at the age of 23 – precocious in those days – then the Tour seemed to belong to him. Of course he’d never win it again.
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The book places Ullrich’s life in the wider context, the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification are more than a historic and political soundtrack, these events shapes lives. Growing up in East Germany, he’s part of the DDR’s sports system where the most promising athletes, if you can call 12 years olds that, are filtered into sports schools where athletic ability is prized and nurtured more than anything else. When the Wall collapses and Ullrich goes to ride for a team in Hamburg he and his team mates are housed on the notorious Reeperbahn and the contrast must have been astonishing for a 19 year old fresh out of the Berlin sports system.
The 1997 Tour win is symbolic for a country trying to reunite, easterners could see one of their own winning, westerners can celebrate their gain as the first – and only – German Tour winner, it was an act of unification itself. Yet this put him on a pedestal and the move from cheer to adulation, and the risks this brings are well set out in this book. Things fall apart slowly.
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At first a series of niggles, hiccups and setbacks, then scandal. There’s injury, drink driving, the doping ban following an out-of-competition test that came after leaving a nightclub and the slide begins. Amid all of this Ullrich’s career span took him from the state doping programmes of the DDR, the rise of EPO, the switch to blood bags, and the brief duopoly of Michele Ferrari and Eufemiano Fuentes. It’s obviously intriguing but handled sensitively and well-researched. There’s exploration on when Ullrich might have started using EPO and whether he was a victim of the East German state doping program. The author’s research adds new detail on Operation Puerto and the workings of Fuentes. You won’t look at a chocolate Toblerone bar again but after this anecdote Friebe is quick to add “there were elements of pantomime, like this, but also moments when the sport seemed not so much to have mislaid its moral compass as lost contact with Earth’s magnetic field”.
The contrast in attitudes towards DDR doping days and pro cycling’s leaden years is striking. The book mentions how many doped ex-athletes from the DDR get moral and financial support today. Pro cycling also had endemic doping but once entangled by Operation Puerto – the final verdict would take years – Ullrich never raced again and became a pariah. Now the two systems are different in obvious ways that a book review doesn’t need to cover, readers can reflect on this.
In a podcast episode Friebe mentions that Lance Armstrong looms large in this book and and prior to reading this was a concern, especially if the publishers wanted him to be crowbarred into the story because of his celebrity. It’s handled reassuringly well, it’s not Ullrich via a Texan prism. He’s one of several to talk about his time and there’s plenty from others like Rudy Pevenage, Jörg Jaksche or Rölf Aldag too but given the rivalry for years, featuring Armstrong makes sense. Ullrich himself isn’t interviewed but that might not be any loss, one of the reasons for his troubles with the media over the years stems from him just not being that articulate in set-piece interviews.
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At times written in the first person where Friebe explains his research and travels along the way, there’s a sensitivity towards Ullrich throughout, the author can be judgemental about the system but not the subject. All these years later Ullrich seems to be a kid from Rostock who wasn’t ready to handle what would follow; at one point he’s at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 with the German team and seems at ease in this institutional get-up rather than the garish world of pro cycling, the Telekom team and public celebrity. Whether through early problems like weight gain or the deep personal problems of recent years, at times there’s a temptation as a reader to place Ullrich onto an imaginary psychologist’s couch and diagnose his issues through the pages especially as the intensity of the book seems to grow with recent events where Ullrich goes from trying to win a bicycle race to coping with life. Friebe sensibly avoids this diagnosis, there’s sympathy but no solutions as the book sets out the struggles with addiction and mental health he’s faced in recent years. There was a point towards the end of the book when I could feel the weight of pages on the left and how I almost didn’t want to turn further, as if to leave some kind of future ahead.
The Verdict
An engaging and gripping read. Sport is about the celebration of victory but the losers can supply more compelling stories. The rise and demise of Armstrong has been told many times over, Jan Ullrich’s story less so, particularly in English and the author with his language skills and Berlin residency is the perfect writer. This book tells a story of Ullrich with themed chapters that are well-researched and written with polish as they blend the micro with the macro, from details on winter weight gain, to new light about blood doping practices all the way to to placing Ullrich’s life with the social context of German reunification and this breadth makes it one of the best cycling biographies of recent years.
- It’s published by Pan MacMillan and available in hardback, ebook and an audio version
More book reviews at inrng.com/books
All teams have to secure sponsorship but the smaller squads have it hard just to get meagre funding relative to their rivals, then face all the challenges of allocating what they can get. The B&B-KTM team and its big plans for the future have gone, taking with it Mark Cavendish’s plans, and others too including a women’s team that will never turn a pedal. It’s a story about one small team but also a structural issue for pro cycling.
Labels…
The sponsor has been B&B Hotels and according to reports the hotel chain had been willing to support what was left so it feels wrong to keep referring to the demise of the B&B team when the sponsor was willing. Instead the name of the legal entity behind the team is Pineau Cycling Evolution so let’s use PCE, named after the team’s founder, ex-pro Jérôme Pineau.
PCE started well enough… it began in 2018 as Vital Concept, backed by a Breton retailer of farming supplies. The jersey design with the glaz tone was a good idea, the idea being that if sponsors might come and go, the team was always recognisable because it would keep the same colour, and that of the blue-green sea in Brittany, France’s cycling mad-region and with a big maritime identity. That was the theory, in practice seeing them up against Bora-hansgrohe and Kern Pharma required a keen eye. And of course sponsors didn’t come, they went, we’ll get to this in a moment.
Bryan Coquard was the big recruit and close to Pineau that he called him fiston, or “sonny”. But he struggled for wins, 12 in four years including none in 2020 and one in 2021. Pierre Rolland and Arthur Vichot joined in 2019, with the arrival of new sponsor B&B. Frank Bonnamour had a strong 2021 Tour, taking the combativity prize. The team made some interesting signings, Victor Koretzky for example – although coached by Pineau’s brother Sébastien – and Luca Mozzato’s turning into a promising rider but all together this wasn’t sizzling. It took them two years to get a start in the Tour de France because as a second tier team reliant on an invite they didn’t quite have an incontournable, a must-have rider. They’d been getting invites but this wasn’t assured going forward, first the UCI rules meant the top two Pro Conti teams got automatic invites and PCE didn’t have a budget to compete for this, so it was at the mercy of subjective invites and the hope that they’d supply “animation”. As other teams rose up PCE was looking less attractive. The pressure was showing, Pineau had taken to the questionable strategy of emailing his riders to berate their results, and if the private messages inevitably leaked, he was also blasting his own team in the media. Perhaps this was meant in refreshing honesty but it sure look panicky too.
Enter Didier Quillot
For all that Pineau is getting a roasting in the media right now, he’d linked up with Didier Quillot in the quest for sponsorship. Long time a telecoms executive, Quillot went into the media in 2006 and a decade later in 2016 because the directeur général of the French football league, the body that runs professional football in France and with it, sells the lucrative TV rights to Ligue 1 for hundreds of millions of Euros. Only here’s where the problems occurred, the broadcast rights for 2020 to 2024 were sold to a company called Mediapro which outbid everyone else. Great you might think, but commentators and rival bidders even were surprised at the amount Mediapro offered and the assumptions that financed the knock-out bid when it came to subscription income and ad revenue, and that La Ligue and Quillot accepted all this. How much Covid is to blame is up for debate but l’affaire Mediapro as it’s known in France – alternatively le fiasco Mediapro – saw Mediapro unable to deliver on its payments to La Ligue; nor had the Ligue taken out insurance or sought financial guarantees from Mediapro and left French football with a big bill and red faces. Now Quillot hadn’t gone rogue here, colleagues supported his bid to try and sell the French football rights for a billion euros but the short version – there’s a good long version in French at sofoot.com – is he carried the can on the Ligue’s side and had to leave his job in the spring of 2021.
Fast forward a year and up pops the news that Quillot is working with the B&B team on a new project. In some ways the team had to do something. As suggested here in February, the team was in trouble because it was freewheeling while others were closing in. This bother wasn’t obvious in the moment, more a case of problems to come. Something had to be done. But Quillot? Hmm, the recent past wasn’t geat but still with his background he came with one heck of a rolodex.
The plan was to do more than change the sponsor. Quillot seemed to be on to something with the idea the team would take on the name of Paris, a touch of glamour. Crucially all along the Paris town hall was clear it was agreeing to the name but was not paying a single Euro into the team budget. Instead it was an identity around which to build the team.
The idea’s a great concept, but here it came with two practical problems. First switching to Paris meant the team had to dump more than its Breton identity, the region had also been funding the team. Next if the team was to be called Paris Cyclisme or some derivative label, this meant less room for a title sponsor. Now, done right a team can have an identity and shirt sponsor, most other sports pull it off, think Paris Saint-Germain. But it’s one of the benefits of cycling that the media reference the brand directly when mentioning the team. In short the bridge back to Brittany was burned and the avenue of title sponsorship was closed off.
Still, a big sponsor was mooted and things sounded confident, a mooted budget of €20 million was doing the rounds, they’d pass Arkéa-Samsic and Cofidis to be in the same bracket as Groupama-FDJ and just short of A2gr Citroën and with this kind of money, bonjour World Tour. With hindsight there’s a touch of “they would say this, wouldn’t they?” but when the news emerged in May it sounded promising, albeit surprising. In June Pineau said we’d know the sponsor during the Tour de France, perhaps on a rest day but it was said this depended on board meetings to sign-off the deal, evoking images of mahogany-panelled boardrooms rather than the actual situation that there was no new sponsor.
Various sponsor names were floating around like Carrefour and Amazon. But why would such retail giants back a second-tier cycling team when they could buy a WorldTeam with loose change from their marketing budgets? Behind the scenes it seems PCE ended up in a Catch-22 situation. A sponsor would only sign up if there was a clear project with riders on board to get therm a Tour start. Riders would only want to sign if there was a backer to pay their wages. So new riders were lured by the promise of things being (almost) a done deal, and this in turn was interesting to sponsors. But the hard part was inking the deal, Michael Matthews, hot property in the wake of his superb Tour de France stage win was interested but said no thanks. As we know Mark Cavendish was keen.
No news by Paris in July and a tiny alarm bell started to ring. Then it became the Vuelta, and still nothing. A press conference ahead of the Tour de France presentation in October was called off. Klaxon time. Alas though no sponsor would commit and around this time the beauty and perfume retailer Sephora said non to PCE, according to L’Equipe. Riders were getting very nervous because they didn’t know more than anyone else, the Commissaires de Course podcast recounted riders were left asking others to forward them articles behind the paywalls of local newspapers Le Télégramme and Ouest-France about the team because they had no other news. The UCI didn’t even mention the team when it listed the teams applying for a licence for 2023, this regularly happens with smaller teams struggling to get the paperwork in on time. Only there was no news a few days or weeks later and last week the inevitable news came that the whole project had imploded and that the team is unlikely to ride as even a third tier Conti team next year with talk of PCE, the legal entity, facing bankruptcy.
So how to prevent all of this? You’d be surprised how many other teams have come close to folding over the years only to secure late funding. But ideally a sponsorship contract needs to be in place earlier, obvious but in place as in filed with the UCI by, say, 1 August. If a company has a marketing strategy to spend tens of millions in the coming years, and this is what we’re talking, then having some dry ink on a contract with five months to go is not asking too much. Especially because it means if there’s no deal then everyone is aware and can at least look for employment elsewhere over the summer when the transfer market is functioning. As things stand only one rider, Koretzky, has announced they’ve got a job elsewhere and if others ought to follow, only a few and nobody will get the terms and conditions they’d like.
Conclusion
It’s possible to see this is just a small team that was struggling and so inevitably forced to take more risks to stay in the game and those behind the search lost their gamble, a pari perdu in French. Indeed unless they secured something transformational perhaps this squad had been on the way out because a Tour de France start was essential only the chances of an invite were falling. But all the same, the timing of this late demise is a disaster that tells us plenty about cycling’s second tier and the struggles to secure sponsors. While Pineau’s not coming out of this well, it’d be interesting to learn what Quillot thinks of it all.
If this can happen this year with PCE, it can happen next year to others too and within the World Tour too, men and women alike. The least the sport could do in the wake of a fiasco like this is explore ways to insist the funding is in place earlier so that riders and staff alike are not left struggling in December.
Having picked ten riders to follow in the season for different reasons, it’s time to review how they got on. Tadej Pogačar was the first pick because he’s become so central the sport that teams have been basing their racing programs around him – Ineos sent their best GC rider to the Giro – even […]
Davide Rebellin died on Wednesday, days after retiring as a professional cyclist at the age of 51. His career was so long it spanned the steel, aluminium and carbon ages of bikes, during which time he won over sixty races. He claimed he must have ridden a million kilometres and once said “the bike taught […]
Having tipped ten neo-pros to watch for 2022, time to look back and see how they fared. Not long ago you’d look for a top-10 here or a best young rider prize there as proof of a promising debut. These days neo-pros are winning races as teenagers, making the podium in a grand tour and […]
What’s in a title? “My Way” wouldn’t be original but it could be deserved. Dan Martin said no to British Cycling and even changed nationality to forge his own path, reinventing himself several times along the way to win two monuments and stages in all three grand tours. He’s had an interesting column over the […]
News isn’t exactly coming thick and fast at the moment but there are some issues to explore. The fate of the B&B team hangs in the balance this week and with it, the team Mark Cavendish will ride for in 2023. Today is one of the deadlines cited by team manager Jérôme Pineau for a […]
Having looked at the WorldTeam victory rankings last week, now to look at pro cycling’s confusingly labelled second tier of teams, the ProTeams*. Spot the team that belongs in the World Tour. Alpecin-Deceuninck had 34 wins, 13 of them in World Tour races, which would put them fifth among the WorldTeams. There’s a density here […]
Henri Anglade has died aged 89. A champion with a quick turn of phrase, Anglade wore the yellow jersey but never won the Tour de France. Many said he should have won in 1959, except for Anglade who, often too honest for his own good, replied Federico Bahamontes was simply better. The next year Anglade […]
Having spent the past season staring at a spreadsheet once a week for the weekly promotion-relegation updates, the occasional team victory rankings were overlooked. So about time to catch-up on the teams and how they fared this year when it comes to throwing their hands up in the air, starting with the World Tour teams. […]
Nairo Quintana’s lost his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport regarding his two tests for Tramadol and the Tour de France disqualification. The transfer market’s been busy of late but his agent’s not finding it easy to place him with a new team. On the specifics he lost because the hearing was satisfied […]
Having looked at the route itself, some more thoughts around the design and more. What’s missing? It’s easy to cover what’s en route but sometimes the question can be what isn’t included? Lots of France for starters, the race covers a diagonal swathe and excludes a lot of the country. This isn’t new, after all […]
The Tour de France Femmes route is out and it’s a scenic one that heads for chocolatine country. Expect red bricks, sunflowers, holiday makers and a savage summit finish on the Col du Tourmalet. Stage 1, Clermont-Ferrand, 124km A ride out of Clermont-Ferrand and probably past the giant Michelin factory that is often associated with […]
The route of the 2023 Tour de France has been announced. Like a gift that’s been wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree, we can see the outline today but it’s only later that everyone gets to play with it. In the meantime let’s give it a shake to try and get a better feel […]
With the 2022 season done, time to look ahead. So here’s the pro cycling calendar for 2023, free to download for your diary or phone. It’s packed with all the men’s and women’s pro races. So whether you’re making plans for next season, want to visit a race, or just need book sofa time or […]
With the Tour of Langkawi done, for the sake of completion here’s the last of the weekly updates. We can now process all the rankings and now comes the admin part for the UCI. There are several parts here. What’s Changed Since Last Week? EF Education-Easypost scored 623 points, ahead of UAE Emirates on 335, […]
The route of the 2023 Giro d’Italia was unveiled and here’s a closer stage-by-stage look. Stage 1 A 18km time trial to open, it’s on the Adriatic coast and along a ciclovia, but one wide enough for a following car. With the maglia rosa up for grabs it’s a big invitation to Filippo Ganna. Stage […]
A look at the accounts for the Ag2r Citroën team. The arrival of the car maker Citroën has given big boost to the budget and thanks to the published accounts we can see exactly how much they got, an even how much it cost them to land this blue-chip backer. Ag2r Citroën? AG2R La Mondiale […]
The die is cast, there are only five races left to go and not enough points left for Lotto-Soudal or Israel-PremierTech to perform a miracle. They’re relegated arithmetically, now things are in the hands of the UCI and its Licence Commission. What’s Changed Since Last Week? Movistar top the table for the second week running […]
The last big race of the season and one of the most beautiful courses, Il Lombardia often has a wistful feel, the anticipation of a great race on a fine course but the nagging feeling that it’s all about to end. This Saturday’s edition promises plenty with Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard among the top […]
Remco Evenepoel is going nowhere, at least when it comes to his contractual future. But the story of interest from Ineos is revealing as making it public can destabilise things, the mere act of having to say he’s staying put is awkward just when his programme for 2023 is being decided and has generated a […]
With two weeks of the season to go there’s a wide gap for Lotto-Soudal and Israel-PremierTech to close, but now feel like stragglers far behind the peloton. What’s Changed Since Last Week? Movistar (553 points) top the table ahead of Cofidis (426) and Alpecin-Deceuninck (403) in a week that includes yesterday’s Coppa Bernocchi and the […]
US President Joe Biden might have just declared the pandemic is over but for pro cyclists it certainly isn’t. The sport’s adopted a set of rules to address the issues of racing with Covid but regardless of these protocols and despite everyone’s best efforts, the virus seems here to stay for a while and remains […]
The end of the season looms and the promotion and relegation race is heading to an even faster conclusion. The glorious uncertainty of sport is what makes it compelling but Lotto-Soudal need a series of fluke results to remain in the World Tour. Israel-PremierTech require a miracle or failing that, a lawyer. What’s Changed Since […]
Embed from Getty Images One metre, two metres. Alexey Lutsenko might have fancied his chances in a two-up sprint but Remco Evenepoel wasn’t going to risk that. Evenepoel attacks on the penultimate climb up Mount Plesant and it’s going, going, Wollongong. Embed from Getty Images Under sunny skies the race had a lively start. The […]
The final race of the World Championships is this Sunday and while some riders haven’t made the journey to Australia, there’s a galactic startlist an open course awaits that offers something for grand tour champions and one day heroes alike. The Course: 267km plus 7km of neutral start and almost 4,000m of vertical gain. After […]
The sport’s governing body, the UCI, published a big document (PDF) yesterday setting out an agenda for the coming years. It runs to 126 pages and covers plenty, so much that achieving all of ideas inside is a tall order but it will set the direction for the sport’s governance in the coming years. It’s […]
You must have heard about the bird attacks on riders at the Worlds in Wollongong – to look at Twitter today has been to see Bauke Mollema – this blog can’t add much more. So have some alternative avian content instead… the image above is an advert for racing pigeons from Japan, snapped by ex-pro […]
Another week, another update and with only a month of racing left, the story is the same with Lotto-Soudal and Israel-PremierTech facing relegation. Let’s take a closer look to see if their World Tour ambitions are done for. What’s Changed Since Last Week? Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic are due for promotion, Lotto-Soudal and Israel PremierTech face […]
Racing looks more intense these days and some data supports this, like when you look at the watts, a literal measure of energy used. This is in part sustained by a big increase in the amount of calories consumed during a race, intake has almost doubled over in recent years. It feels like a quiet […]
The points from the Vuelta a España are banked and Movistar have plenty to cheer about. For Israel-PremierTech things are doomed as they’re now further adrift from 18th place and security than they have been all season. Team owner Sylvan Adams is threatening to sue if the rules are rewritten. What’s Changed Since Last Week? […]
A quiet week on the points front but Israel-PremierTech are the top scorer so things get tighter for the relegation battle. What’s Changed Since Last Week? It’s been a quiet week with just 1,092 points scored between all the teams, in some weeks a single team can land this. As of this week’s numbers, Alpecin-Deceuninck […]
It’s getting very close at the bottom of the table with Arkéa-Samsic now feeling the stress too as they’re at risk of struggling for promotion. What’s Changed Since Last Week? As of this week’s numbers, Alpecin-Deceuninck and Arkéa-Samsic are eligible for promotion, while Lotto-Soudal and Israel face relegation Automatic invites to the grand tours for […]
Remco Evenepoel keeps passing every test and now leads the Vuelta by over a minute on Enric Mas with Primož Roglič at almost two minutes. Can he keep it up? A light look at the Vuelta contenders, I’d like to take a deeper dive but am travelling and have 2G internet access so uploading plain […]