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 is out with Covid, 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, |
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.
I’d love to see a break make it by can’t see past Pogacar or Vingegaard. I wonder if Remco will struggle on the tricky descent?
Great stage yesterday though was surprised to see Cavendish and MvdP caught out in the crosswinds: was hoping for at least one other stage win from Cav (maybe now his main goal will just be to finish the race?). Also would like de Lie to nab a stage so was sorry to see him caught in the crash… hope all involved are ok
Well you can’t have both – there’s only one stage left for sprinters.
Cav to win today, then? 😉
Great stage yesterday. Some riders will have pretty sore legs today!
Maxim Van Gils gets a massive fine from the UCI for his head/shoulder but/push in the sprint. Well deserved!
Capiot was moving over already but it’s one those “you break it, you pay for it” moments.
But the fine is not so big, the amounts are still not big enough to deter. He was also docked 60 UCI points which can sting more.
I read 1300 pounds in ‘cycling weekly’ for shoulder barging. Not really an insignificant amount.
Remember riders don’t actually pay the fines out of their pockets, they are netted off against the prize pot which is itself divided up among the team, after it has been levied and taxed. So just as a rider might only collect 5-10% of the prize money they win, they’ll notice the fines even less.
It looked to me like they both made some errors of judgement but of course only one could’ve avoided the crash by breaking and that’s Van Gils.
Terrible decision in my opinion. Van Gils leading out de Lie into clear space at speed when Capiot drifts left at stalling speed to shut him out. Replay at actual speed tells the story I think – an instantaneous decision to brace for impact or brake hard, which could have had equally serious consequences. The cash could have been avoided had Capiot held his line, as he is required by the rules to do.
To me this was a racing incident with significant contributory negligence by Capiot. Still a bad crash and I hope those involved are able to start today and carry on.
Agreed – there does seem like much Van Gils could have done (other than not race), the initial optics are bad with the shoulder from him being forced off balance. It’s a disappointing sanction but as INRNG points out the fine is immaterial and the peloton will see it wasn’t his fault.
I read some reports that said Capiot was looking over his right shoulder and moved left, having sat up at that point.
It did make we wonder again whether lead-out riders could put those little mirrors on the ends of their drops to avoid needing to look over shoulders in cases like that
It allowed them to ignore Jasper chopping Ackermann. Ackers wasn’t happy about it either. Gave his thoughts to the German press and refused to shake Philipsen’s hand.
It’s been, as usual, a very inconsistent jury when it comes to sprints.
Think so too.
Whatever Capiot did or not did, van gils leaned into him and pushed him with his shoulder. If you watch it in moving pictures, it is very obvious how the angle of his body changes to barge into Capiot.
Is van gils not also the rider (if I am not totally mistaken), who hit another rider on the back of his head, from behind, in a race in japan, because he did not like the way that rider had raced?
He also was immediately after the stage yesterday very vocal, that HE did nothing wrong. Unthinkable that! In his eyes the other rider was solely to blame.
This does not mean, that he is forever tainted by his past actions. But equally it also can not be helped: he did what he did. And this suggests, together with his reaction after the stage yesterday, that he might have a problem with impulse control, boundaries, with respecting the space of others etc.. And it are these margins of us, for example, having less or more impulse control, that sway our decisions this or that way.
The real problem is: these problems in certain areas might also be, what makes van gils win races. So he and others might even cultivate these traits in him! But one day he will not be any longer in a peloton and his success will not be measured by defeating others. And then?
Think lac de cap long will never be in le tour as it is in a national park
I remember camping at the top of la Bonette, which we were told was in a national park; the caravan was prohibited from throwing out “goodies”, and we were all “instructed” by a zealous park ranger to take down our tents by 8.00am – not easy to comply after considerable consumption of Armagnac the night before (to ward off the cold – it was freezing up there!)
The Tour is going to other parks and nature zones like the Puy de Dôme, but without a lot of the infrastructure which gets left elsewhere. A decade ago nearby Gavarnie was ruled out because of this, now there are discussions to explore how it could happen etc.
Hopefully. Those lacs are SO beautiful…
I wonder what the plan is for Jonas Vinegegaard to make upm 75 seconds, he really needs to do a repeat of the Granon but cant see where. Odd that Tadej Pogacer was mixing it in the sprint yesterday, guess there was a small chance of picking up a few bonus seconds but surely the risk was much too much for that? Perhaps Jonas Vinegegarrd really has got inside his head meaning poor decision making.
Hope we dont see the race decided by a virus!
Plus one, I couldn’t work out what Pog was doing in the sprint, he seemed to work to get in there, not be caught up in it. I know he loves to race, and we love to see him loving it, but that was surely ill judged as a use of energy.
I hope he doesn’t think he’s not going to finish, so he he is going for any available glory before going home.
It was odd and the Eurosport team overlooked it. He worked to get in the mix but was never really part of the sprint for victory. If his idea was to sprint for a bonus second or two, then Vinny’s performance the other day really has messed with his head.
UAE don’t seem to do subtle so it wouldn’t suprise me if they take the same approach today to climbing, albeit minus one super domestique (who didn’t seem too interested in supporting the team effort anyway if Almeida’s gesticulations are anything to go by).
Speaking of Almeida, what chance of him knocking Remco off the podium? His climbing is as good and his descending better, although he’ll lose some time in the final TT.
It is not at all odd for Eurosport to overlook something important while magnifying some unimportant anglos.
Pogacar did the right thing to sprint. At that point it was possible for him to lose a couple of seconds, if caught behind a time split. His competitors were caught behind an accident, and guaranteed same time with the stage winner.
Besides, safety in cycling is often counter-intuitive. For a commuter it is safer to be visible riding the middle of the lane, than riding the shoulder and hiding from careless drivers. For a racer it is safer to sprint and keep his position, than to soft-pedal and be overtaken by fearless sprinters.
Agree on the limitations of Eurosport commentary: I like Rob Hatch but in general they often are slow to notice (or completely miss) key things. The Roglic crash is a good example: Ned Boulting & David Millar on ITV called this almost immediately and quickly guessed that he’d lose over 2 minutes, while Kirby on Eurosport didn’t seem to know he’d crashed until near the finish line. Lots of other more-nuanced racing comments from Millar, too
@Rolan
They’ve change the rule. The gap
on a sprint stage when crossing the line needs to be 3 seconds for them to get separate times. At 60kph that’s 50 metres so that’s not why Pog sprinted.
Would we even know if a GC rider had the virus? I guess a team leader wouldn’t go home to protect his domestiques.
It does look like a bit of a warm-up for tomorrow. It would make me smile if Abrahamsen were able to defy expectations. He seems to be the new Thomas De Ghent.
He’d have to defy gravity in a unexpected ways….
I think this is the day that Remco will find out that he’s head and shoulders below Pog and Vingo…
… Much as I like him
I like him too (although his ‘racing balls’ comment was silly) but with the caveat that I think his grand tour abilities are limited against the very best three-week racers (high mountain, multiple climb days and descending hold him back). There’s still a chance of another Vuelta win or a Giro pink jersey though.
Not head and shoulders, but maybe up to the ears … and still the best of the rest so far.
Now that we are entering his favourite terrain it’s maybe time to ask what’s the matter with Lenny Martinez? Is he keeping his powder dry for a stage like today or is the tour just too much for him at this stage of his development? And if so, shouldn’t he just withdraw from the race?
He’s leaving the team and so wasn’t going to ride the Tour (many teams don’t pick riders for the Tour who haven’t signed with them but that’s another story) and finished the Tour de Suisse tired, “at the end of a cycle” said one team mate, ie fatigued and due a break. Then he’s picked for the Tour. I think it’s just because the team hasn’t had results and Martinez is capable of winning a mountain stage but it depends if he’s able to recover. The idea is he’s been losing time and saving energy but will it be enough or is he just getting more tired? I’m not tipping him yet anyway.
Echo the comments about yesterday, just what I love to see, a stage with many chapters and plot twists and beautiful scenery. Weather has been good so far, mostly dry and hot but not extreme, maybe that’s worse though, for some riders at least, as the pace has been consistently so high. Very worrying that covid is still a factor in the race and Pretty shocking to see Journalists in a close huddle crowding around an unmasked Ayuso after the stage, let’s hope Pogačar’s cough isn’t the same thing.
I too would love to see a break go all the way today, I noticed RBBH were quiet yesterday, perhaps processing the DNS of Roglič, mentally resetting team and individual goals. So I’m hoping to see Hindley in the break and Bardet too for sentimental reasons. Carapaz indeed seems to do well the day after giving it a good dig so the three of them in contention would be superb. Bit sad to see that Simon Yates doesn’t even get a mention for a stage like this which would once have been seen as ideal for him, he seems to be struggling this year after a strong 2023.
I suppose it’s unlikely but not impossible that Jonas Abrahamsen could get in an early break and be first up the Tourmalet? If the break then takes the stage he could then conceivably have worn the polkadots jersey from stage 1 until stage 19, which would be a record that would stand for a long time. (Although the record books don’t tend to tell us who wore it, only who led the classification). Either way chapeau to him, for his attacking style and bravery off the bike in sharing his back story. Supercombatif overrall prize surely must go to him in Nice.
Ackerman apparently was not happy with Philipsen’s sprint but it looked ok to me and I didn’t hear or see anyone else complaining. Perhaps stage 16 will be his, adding him to the wins in all three GTs club, which I’d like to see, he’s a nice guy who has had some bad luck last couple of years.
Something that I’ve been wondering about following the withdrawal of Vlasov and Roglič is that as far as I am aware there has not been much, if any discussion of long term monitoring of riders for chronic concussion syndrome as is done in football and rugby. I’m not aware of any retired pros suffering with long term or degenerative neurological issues, but surely cycling as a sport is a high risk for this. Just thinking about riders that have had unexplained declines, off years, chronic depression, increased propensity to crashing. Maybe I’m overthinking this, maybe it’s already being done by teams in the background but I would like to see the UCI take a lead on it, given the nature of the road racing beast is “keep going at all costs” and I can imagine that riders don’t necessarily want to highlight long term issues that might damage their contract negotiations. Ideally long term monitoring would prevent injured riders returning to work too soon and thereby actually improve long term career viability and rider value. The concussion protocol is great for acute symptoms (when done properly!) but based on my admittedly limited understanding, high number of multiple falls and rapid decelerations of the brain within the cranium seen in cycling must be a risk factor for long term issues. Helmets can only do so much, as I understand it it’s not even necessary to have a blow to the head to get concussion, a sudden stop is enough. Posting this here in the knowledge that it’s the best place in pro-cycling for intelligent discussion and that some readers may be qualified in the field of neurology/head trauma and have a better informed view than me.
Thanks for your perennial tireless efforts INRNG, I’m not commenting much nowadays but thoroughly enjoying the blog as always.
Davis Phinney immediately comes to mind
Parkinson’s has nothing to do with concussions.
Certain of that, are we?
“Traumatic brain injury is also strongly implicated as a risk factor.” (From Wikipedia article on PD).
Maybe it’s selective memory, but it feels like it’s been a long time since there was TdF weather severe enough to threaten to be race-shaping, like wet cobbles or severe crosswinds etc.
I think the real question is: Why do people get the idea, that concussions are no subject? Because in certain places/for certain people they actually are a subject!
Dominik Nerz for example wrote a moving, great and interesting book solely about his crash and the consequences of hurting his brain for his cycling career and his whole life. It is called „Gestürzt“. The book was published a long time ago, so this isn‘t even a new hot topic.
I rode the Lac de Cap-de-Long a couple of years ago and it is lovely. A steady ride up to Fabian. You can stop at the little bar on the way up or down, or why not both…!!!!
Then the real work starts. The cafe at the top is well stocked with nourishment, although your soul will be full with the beautiful views and challenging climb.
It’s in a National Park so the TdF isn’t allowed. The only way would be if, like the Puy de Dome, there were not spectators after Fabian.
Enjoy the ride it is excellent.
wow