The team time trial stage and the day Matteo Jorgenson has labelled the “key stage”. It will define plenty for the coming days.
Also the race goes to Nevers, the birthplace of white cycling shoes.
Belleville rendez-vous: the early breakaway saw Alexandre Delettre take more polka dot points to ensure TotalEnergies got another appointment on the podium, he was joined, and later dropped by Jonas Abrahamsen who went solo to take the combativity prize and a podium appearance too. Both teams jostle for a Tour de France invitation.
We saw a second stage win for Tim Merlier. He’s only the fourth rider to win the opening two stages of the Paris-Nice. He won’t win today but Friday’s jaunt to the sea looks ideal for the hat-trick.
Merlier didn’t just win, he made it look easy. Being caught in a crash with over 40km to go didn’t seem to trouble him; yet others were out of the race. In the final kilometre was delivered into place by Bert Van Lerberghe and it almost looked like all he had to do was launch, just as others were finding proverbial doors closing in front of them.
The Route: 28.4km with a start is on the Magny-Cours motor circuit for the first four kilometres, it’s a wide track but there are plenty of corners so fanning out according to the wind direction takes coordination.
The climb to the first time check isn’t as steep as last year where several teams fell apart, instead it’s a series of big rollers on a long straight road but this still brings risks for pacing.
It’s down into Nevers and the banks of the Loire river before the sharp climb of the Boulevard de la Pisserotte – locals use it for soap box derbies – which just steeps to get steeper and steeper as it rises, this is the tactical point for teams as they know they can dump surplus riders but need help for the remaining kilometres.
The Rules: a team time trial stage where a team’s time is taken on the first rider to cross the line so a team can win from one rider or all eight together, it’s on them to work together and find the best combination, burning up riders or sticking together. Plus teams with GC ambitions need to use their rouleurs to propel their GC leaders as fast as possible to Nevers.
Any dropped riders see their time on the line taken for the overall classification. The opening stage of the 2026 Tour de France in Barcelona next year will use the same rules.
The Contenders: Visma-Lease a Bike have a strong team with Edoardo Affini and Victor Campenaerts as engines. As Matteo Jorgenson has taken time bonuses so far if they win and finish on the same time today the American is in yellow.
Ineos have a strong squad and Josh Tarling counts for two riders, perhaps more as he can cope with a climb as well.
UAE face a test, strong riders but how will they ride as a unit?
Two teams that could win today are Jayco and Red Bull but the former lost Luke Durbridge and the latter Danny van Poppel and they’d have been essential components today.
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Visma-LAB, Ineos |
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UAE, Lidl-Trek |
Weather: sunshine and clouds, 16°C… but the chance of a thunderstorm and a downpour. Something similar happened a year ago in Auxerre and it impacted the result.
- A footnote also to say the weather for the weekend in Nice doesn’t look ideal so today’s results could shape the overall even more if anything is going to be abbreviated or cancelled. But no need to be alarmist, it’s not the central forecast.
TV: the first team is off just after 3.00pm CET and the last team in by 4.30pm CET so it’ll be all on TV.
It’s France 3 for locals and VPN users (registration required but free), Eurosport and Max, Flobikes in Canada, Peacock in the US, J-Sports in Japan, SBS in Australia.
Ever been to Nevers? If not chances are that it’s come to you because Nevers is a capital city of pedals.
An industrialist from Nevers called Jean Beyl went skiing and broke his foot. He was convinced that the ski bindings were to blame for the injury. So he stopped making rubber bladders and went into sports equipment. He wasn’t the first inventor of quick release ski bindings, Norway’s Hjalmar Hvam broke his leg skiing and came up with a similar idea, and earlier too. Beyl though perfected this and soon the Look Nevada bindings from Nevers became the market leader. The company branding traded on post-war enthusiasm for all things American.
Look went into bicycle pedals in the 1980s, but only after Bernard Tapie bought the firm out of bankruptcy, copying the quick release ski bindings to replace cycling’s traditional toe strap pedals. Again Look didn’t invent clipless pedals, it refined them. Tapie’s marketing abilities with the La Vie Claire team – then the wonder team seen at the cutting edge of sports science – helped sales soar. To this day the company retains the Mondrian-inspired white, red, yellow and blue quadrilaterals branding on packaging and factory walls in Nevers too.
Ousted from Look, Beyl went on to create rival company Time which made pedals and frames alike. Pedro Delgado won the Tour de France in 1988 with Time pedals and shoes, so did Greg Lemond in 1989 Tour, distinctive in part because they were white when other shoes were black or available in dark blue or grey. Time thrived for a while and Tom Boonen was on a Time frame with Time pedals when he won the Worlds in 2005. But the company lost ground and was taken over by SRAM where the brand lives on, for pedals. Look too has had a troubled history with another bankruptcy but has grown since and in 2021 700,000 pedals came out of the factory in Nevers.
Pity about Durbridge as Jayco are normally handy at this sort of thing. As it is O’Connor looks set to loose many seconds.
Especially as he was here for this stage and then using the rest of the weeks to build for the classics where he’d ride in the green and gold bands, all gone now.
And what a great time for Jayco despite the absence of Durbridge.
Ineos will be disappointed. What went wrong? From the TV images no obvious crashes, technical problems…
Would Durbridge have been worth 14 seconds? Possibly in extra speed but also extra freshness for the other riders.
No news from Ineos but I wonder how much they wanted to keep Arensman with them to the finish?
Durbridge looked in great form as well. Climbing well and some big turns in UAE tour and then he and Pollitt did a big job pulling Tarling back the other day.
Gutted for his cobble season.
Also available from TV2 in Denmark on TV 2 Sport X.
TV coverage in the UK is now “TNTSports/Discovery+” as Eurosport no longer exists here 🙁
Having a TV section to previews is difficult because of all the disparate names, it’s almost country by country and this keeps changing. Eurosport is also known as or featured on Max, Discovery and HBO+ in different parts of Europe too and as you say it’s gone from Britain.
Free to air on national public broadcast both in Italy and in Spain. The former’s got Tirreno-Adriatico also, of course. The big difference between the two countries is that Italy has cycling on a generalist channel, at least for the last hour and a half or so. Viewing figures for these two races typically range between 400K and 700K across the week (comparable to Six Nations matches involving Italy also free to air nationally). What’s notable is that through the years RAI succeeded in carrying across pretty much the whole audience *also* on the specialised sport channel which covers the first hours of racing.
On the contrary, Spanish public TV generally failed to build up any significant impact for its sport channel, TDP, where this category of cycling races is often among the most watched shows, indeed… but with meagre figures between 70K and 200K and a share of 1.5% or so (the average for the channel is 0.6%…).
Middle-term deliberate policies have a giant impact.
Highlights at 19 pm on itv4 every night
TotalEnergie is doing a hell of a week with the Brunel victory, Delettre’s jersey and the Jeanniere’s 2nd place. Can it still count for the wild cards, or is it too late ?
Didn’t know Look was from Nevers, thanks ! The city is also known as the French place where the immortal and very intellectual Hiroshima mon amour (what a title !) was filmed, written by Marguerite Duras. If you can’t sleep it’s better than sleeping pills – and it’s natural.
The film gets a mention in the race guide, but parts of it supposed to be in Nevers were apparently filmed elsewhere apparently.
There’s a cycling connection to the film as Cyrille Guimard has paraphrased Duras, along the lines of “I’ve got a dubious morality, as in I doubt the morality of others” when it comes to him passing judgement on others and others about him. It’s not up with his regular “cycling is sailing” and other catchphrases but it stuck in the mind for the literary/cinegraphic reference.
The big news for TotalEnergies could be that the company stops sponsoring the team and switches to backing Ineos instead. The heads of both companies know each other and could happen but it might be odd for Total to be the junior partner, they’d surely want all the branding their way.
For such a big company the results in previous years for TotalEnergies have been pretty ho-hum. Splashy signings but not a lot to show for it. That said, I’d rather that they tried to build the current team up rather than jumping ship.
It’s sad to see the limbo the framebuilding side of the Time business fell into, as it’s manufacturing quality had and perhaps still has no equal. I understand the value of the company is now in licensing its resin transfer moulding IP to other industrial sectors.
The Time Equipe shoes were great, the big velcro straps could be adjusted when you were riding and the sole was actually rigid, like no flex there at all. Look pedals live on today with Shimano too.
I wonder if Shimano pay for the patent as the system is near identical, in fact today’s Shimano pedals almost resemble Look pedals more than Look’s pedals.
I have Mavic Race pedals that I love, but the cleats have disappeared from the market. If anyone knows another brand that is compatible, I’d love to know…
I’ve been on Time pedals since 1987 and never looked back…. Very appreciative that SRAM continues to support the technology/concept.
Certainly hurling it down in Nice at the moment (Tuesday night), and supposedly for most of the week. Forecast for Sunday is dry, though. At least the roads won’t be greasy!