Almost a mountain stage, certainly a summit finish.
Nevers, again: a win for Visma-Lease a Bike, taking the team time trial stage like they did in 2023. They burned through riders to finish with the tandem of Matteo Jorgenson and Jonas Vingegaard. Thanks to six seconds of time bonuses taken before Matteo Jorgenson is back in the yellow jersey after he won it a year ago.
Among the other teams Jayco were 15 seconds short while missing Luke Durbridge but they’ll be pleased to keep Ben O’Connor at 15 seconds overall. Red Bull also missed a rider but were at 25 seconds. Lidl-Trek came home as one rider in Mattias Skjelmose at 30 seconds. The surprise revers de Nevers was Ineos at 33 seconds, at least when measured against expectations but UAE fared worse, a modest 8th place at 42 seconds with Pavel Sivakov conceding almost four minutes.
The outcome is Visma in the lead, two co-leaders with time on the rest. But the team came for this result, the likes of Campenaerts and Affini have done their job. Controlling the race on hilly terrain is going to be harder and they’re missing the Van Baarle, Benoot, Van Aert archetype who have helped Roglič win in the past.
Nevers, again? The last time a team time trial stage happened in Nevers was 1991 and it was won by Toshiba, their leader Tony Rominger would win the race overall, with team mate Laurent Jalabert second overall in Nice too.
Nevers, again? The Tour de France could visit next year, a sprint finish on the banks or the Loire or is yesterday’s climb used to spice up the finish?
The Route: 163km and 3,100m of vertical gain. It’s only a third category climb but the first one to Lavoine is effectively 33km uphill, none of it steep but a place for the early breakaway to form.
After 100km the next two marked climbs feel like one long climb and the second part even has some hairpins as it rises up amid farmland and woods. It’s fun terrain to race on, the roads twisting gently and rarely any flat roads. The intermediate sprint is at the top of an awkward climb into Le Mayet.
The Finish: leaving the town of Laprugne the road shrinks and 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.
You can have uphill finishes in the massif central that drag on without ever getting too steep. But this is 6.7km long and the slope averages 7.1% and that includes a brief downhill and flat section near the top so the slope until then is far 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: in the past this could have been a chance for the breakaway but the big teams rarely turn down an opportunity like this, plus not many riders are that far down on GC yet.
If wins could be scripted then Jonas Vingegaard will want to win here because he got mugged by Tadej Pogačar here in 2023. Vingegaard had attacked with 4.3km to go and found Pogačar sitting on his wheel, grinning. But today is more about whether Vingegaard is able to win a summit finish rather than narratives of revenge and the form in Algarve recently doesn’t make this so apparent. It’s as much a test for Matteo Jorgenson who can climb with the best but can he cope with the steeper slopes?
Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain) is a minute down on GC so won’t get much room but he’s just a good climber with a good kick for the finish; team mate Lenny Martinez is one to watch but less proven at this level.
João Almeida (UAE) should be the team’s pick today but Brandon McNulty could be deployed in a longer move but as suggested above, Visma have the riders to control on the rolling roads, less so on the climbs so if he was to move it might work better later.
Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) seems in form but how to get past the names cited already? He’s punchy for a sprint as he showed last year. This brings us to a long list of other riders who could win as the race can regroup on the flat portion before the top, to throw some names out there if Max Schachmann (Soudal-Quickstep) can be on terms here he has a chance, Tobias Foss (Ineos) looked good yesterday and Clément Champoussin (XDS-Astana) seems to have found form again.
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Vingegaard, Buitrago |
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Jorgenson, Skjelmose |
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Powless, Vlasov |
Weather: the bad news for the riders is it’ll be 7°C and damp at times; the good news is that if they’d come here a day later it’d be 4°C with snow showers.
TV: live TV from 3.00pm to the finish at 4.30pm CET and the course seems designed to ensure the later climbs sync with the broadcast.
Postcard from La Loge des Gardes
“Wish you were here”, today’s stage takes place in an area that wants more people. Play word association with Paris-Nice and the poetic “the race to the sun” may come to mind but ride the route and the “emptiness” is often striking. If the picture looks busy above, visit today and you’ll find a couple of buildings, a car park and some large refuse bins at les Loges des Gardes.
Empty space can be appealing for day’s ride but there’s a melancholy to it all, a nostalgia of better days. Many houses in villages along the way have their shutters closed during the day, a sign they are empty. On a recon ride here for the first visit in 2023 several village bakeries – often the last commerce to remain – had closed down, at least one replaced by a vending machine.
Today’s finish is made for TV. It will have few spectators but the point is to put the ski area back on the map as a summer destination and to provide a mid-week summit finish. You can take the sport far away from people, as long as the show for TV is worth watching.
No Ben O’Connor?
He seems in good form and should be close but how to win? He almost always wins solo and that won’t be easy, others look quicker than him for the finish today.
Vingegaard will win easily but the interest for me will be to see if O’Connor can make any time on Jorgenson.
I fancy Vingegaard to outclimb Jorgenson too.
IR makes the point about population loss in rural or small-town France. There are thousands of communes which have lost half their population in fifty years or so as the young leave to study or find work. Many are attractive too an example being Mirecourt dans the Vosges department famous for violin making but feeling pretty deserted now.
As for the bread vending machines, I walk three kms to the next village rather than use one.
Jorgenson had a good climb here in 2023 when with Movistar, or at least against expectations.
Vending machines are the surprise from recon rides for the Tour, there weren’t any a couple of years ago and now they’re all over rural France. For those who haven’t seen them these are not the old coin-fed kind with a few rows of drinks and snacks, instead they’re big units selling bread, pizzas – made elsewhere, refrigerated then baked inside – with one or two big screens that flash adverts. You can find some in busy places and these probably work but in the empty villages it feels like they’re not being used much and in two years’ time there will be a bare concrete patch where the machine once stood.
Some of the baguette vending machines are an out-of-hours adjunct to village boulangeries with artisan-made bread while others are operated by large chains selling ‘industrial’ stuff.
The pizza machines in this area (Moselle) are all strangely branded Queen Pizza. That doesn’t sound very Italian to me.
The loss of population is part of it, no doubt, but it’s to be noted that it’s also a general trend.
Interesting piece about Germany:
https://www.internazionale.it/magazine/henrik-rampe/2024/12/05/arrivano-i-negozi-del-futuro
It’s in Italian but I guess that some googling could bring you to the original version in other languages. Anyway, even the graphs alone are telling enough.
I also believe JV can outclimb Jorgenson, but he probably won’t do it immediately as a favour that can be cashed in later in the season. If MJ falters on the climb I think JV will strike, otherwise MJ will be allowed to take this.
Though, JV has stated that a P-N win would look great on his palmarés, I don’t think today is the day he will go full gas.
I have to agree with you. I think Vinny will only go for it if Jorgenson isn’t at the races or at least isn’t there or thereabouts. And I don’t see MJ being totally out of contention.
A bit like in Strade Bianche, one wonders if the organisers really needed to make a further favour to superteams with a TTT, as – in slight contrast to some past situations – superteams also have the strongest athletes.
The big difference to Strade Bianche is that this is no one-day race, so the organisers might actually be right, forcing a peculiar script.
Now everybody knows that they have no option to beat Visma in any sort of straight forward uphill arm wrestling. We all knew it beforehand, but now it’s clearer than ever: getting >30″ attacking Vingegaard or Jorgenson uphill? Who knows, but you must be very confident.
OTOH, the TTT created a GC situation which actually mirrors an underlying reality: lots of teams are in a pretty much similar condition where they have a manifest primary common interest, trying to dislodge the Visma guys from up above, which can be done only through unconventional collective moves. Again, it’s something which was always obvious for the external observer, but now it’s a fact which DSs must deal with.
At the end of the day, the TTT might be a good idea as it can end up prompting more creative racing and alliances now that most teams have little other option to hope for. And there’s a lot of terrain for that, ahead.
The only team which might be tempted to work with Visma is Jayco, but if one considers the sort of athlete O’Connor is, he might as well become part of an attacking strategy.
Of course this will much probably prove to be very wishful thinking on my part. Teams will stop thinking about Visma and just race against each other for the last GC podium spot available. Some of them instead of launching one of their captains in any long range move will help Visma to reel the breaks in, simply in order to try a stage victory with some last climb attack by a captain who’s already one minute down or so and might can some freedom because of that.
Whatever… anyway a common trait in these recent seasons dominated by a few athletes is being the lack of alternative ideas by the rest – sometimes, the lack of ideas whatsoever. In fact, when no Pogi or Vingo or MvdP or Remco is there, it’s not like we are treated to great cycling, quite much the other way around. Many races are just terrible, precisely because no team or athlete looks able to show superior racing skills. Everybody thinks about the watts but they struggle to make much with ’em, even or especially when no superior-wattage monstre is on the startline.