Every day is a GC stage in the Dauphiné but today is a real fitness test, we’ll get a close-up look at the form of Evenepoel, Pogačar and Vingegaard.
Max Romeo: a tribute to Romain Bardet and while he was signing autographs and doing farewell interviews others were warming-up on their rollers. We got a frantic start that saw the bunch shatter and at one point Remco Evenepoel was on the attack. He’d contest an intermediate sprint with Tadej Pogačar at KM29. Both have not come here to hide under the radar.
Among the attackers away for the day was Florian Lipowitz, a GC contender and so UAE led the chase. The got the gap down to two minutes for the finish before Lipowitz began to help, attacking the breakaway time after time rather than trying to pull it along. This was good entertainment precisely because it wasn’t tactical finesse.
Mathieu van der Poel in the breakaway too everyone else had to find a way to win and traded attacks for the last 20km. Ivan Romeo had the right combination of power, timing and good fortune soloing away when the others were drained and nobody could chase the devil. The 21 year old got his first World Tour win and puts on the yellow shirt.
Lipowitz gained 54 seconds but we’ll see today what yesterday’s efforts cost but it was worth it for the audacity.
The Route: under 18km and 210m of vertical gain. It’s flat along the Rhone valley for six kilometres. Then it’s up the climb of the day. This is a tough one, almost 2km at 9% and with some 15% along the way, it’s not something to power over. It’s the technical point of the day, especially for the way the slope keeps changing. After this it’s downhill all the way to the finish but only gradually and with plenty of speed bumps which are frustrating and occasionally risky too on a TT bike.
The Contenders: Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) is both a time trial specialist and GC contender. He’d like a longer course to take more time but the course suits with the climb. He’s looking sharp at the moment too, he was impressive jumping across to the breakaway on Stage 1.
Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-LAB) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE) are both contenders for the stage and contestants in today’s fitness test.
Matteo Jorgenson was fourth last year, he can be up there again but the win is a tough ask.
Magnus Sheffield (Ineos) is an outsider but it just looks hard to get past Evenepoel. Ditto for specialists like Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X), Thibault Guernalec (Arkéa-Samsic) and Bruno Armirail (Decathlon-Ag2r), candidates for a top-10 surprise but a shock if they win. Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) is good over short distances but this is mid-distance, hilly and he probably wrecked himself trying to stay in contention yesterday.
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Evenepoel |
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Pogačar, Vingegaard |
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Weather: 27°C and sunny. A 10km/h breeze from the north means a light headwind for the flat parts.
TV: the last 90 minutes live with the last rider in around 17.10 CEST.
Postcard from Saint-Peray
We’re on the west bank of the river Rhone, in the Ardèche. Just across the other side is the Drôme. Ardèche and Drôme? Yes, there’s a weekend of cycling here at the end of February or start of March, the destination for climbers and puncheurs who’d rather skip the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
It’s also going to be the location for the European championships this year. Or is it? Because local reports in Le Dauphiné say the event is in peril because of a budget shortfall.
It’s here things get complicated. The Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region has agreed to support the race. But it’s only one tier in the layercake of local government in France and other parts are supposed to contribute funds, such as the main host towns and the money is proving harder to find. The organiser Guillaume Delpech, who also runs the Drôme-Ardèche weekend, is confident he can make ends meet whether by twisting arms or finding extra private sponsors.
This funding challenge problem is going to be repeated over and over in France for race after race. The Tour de France has massive political support and the Dauphiné this week gets clout because of this. But the rest of the calendar less so, much less so.
A huge chunk of the pro and amateur cycling calendar is reliant on regional and municipal funding. At the same time the French government is looking to make significant budget cuts and a portion of these savings – we’re talking billions of Euros – are expected locally. Races are easy cuts to make compared to schools or senior support.
Ivan Romeo doesn’t rate a mention for the ITT?
After yesterday’s efforts I think he’d do well to retain the race lead, which would mean losing less than 4s/km to Pogacar and almost 5s/km to Evenepoel. 50/50 at best in either case I’d have thought.
He said yesterday he wasn’t going to think about today. But I can’t see him for the win, even if he’d spent yesterday reclining on a massage chair. The break was a hard one, it’ll have taken a lot of energy; even if many riders in the bunch were ragged too.
One to watch for the future, his climbing has impressed at times this season.
Always fun to see a new rider make an impact. I’d somehow missed Romeo’s progress over the past couple of years (perhaps my anglophone bias!), so it’s interesting to then look at his impressive results on mountain/hilly stages this year. Looks a real talent.
Yes I wasn’t expecting a win but given the field a top 10 would be nice for him. Wearing the yellow fleece does strange things.
Gen Next continues to emerge.
Wasn’t expecting to see a Max Romeo reference, nice work!
His win wasn’t an upset
Seems like this mighty diamonds win was revelation time for some….and he almost defended in the TT, what a gladiator!
Speed bumps and a TT course dont seem like a good combination. Hope everyone stays on their bike.
It would be hard to find 17km in France without and almost every small village seems to have half a dozen or more. It would be a worthwhile project to find such a distance without but maybe possible if villages were to be avoided. Maybe we should accept them as part of the technical challenge.
yes. every year i drive my van through france and think how can they possibly hold a bike race here as there is so much street furniture – speed bumps, roundabouts, bollards
Glad that Lipowitz was allowed to have a go in the break. Could have done with a teammate but that might have been too much for the peloton to allow.
After today, I feel, it’ll be all Remco, Pogacar and Vingegaard. Although if Visma have Vingegaard and Jorgenson close to the top on GC, it’ll prove interesting.
27 C is pretty warm so be interesting to see how it goes. No bike changes I suppose.
Not only about that early weekend with the two Classics now both under the Faun sponsorship… the regional merger brought together departments which still have or have had their own quite important stage races.
Isère is still a good test to pick from juvenile ranks great climbers with a future in stage racing.
Ditto for the now sadly gone Tour de Savoie, albeit not limited to young riders.
Ardèche long was the most important French stage race for women, once Aude was gone.
And check Tour de l’Ain to discover an impressive list of winners, although the race has been recently suffering from calendar changes and reduction in race days.
And you have Tour du Jura and Tour du Gard (Étoile de Besseges) just across the border!
(But don’t get mistaken by “Pays de la Loire”, because it’s the old Sarthe, not the Loire department in AURA).
This races are paramount to keep a solid and sustainable movement going from grassroots upwards, and the fact that some might be struggling (in France!) should be reason of much more concern than the contingent sponsorship woes of some big teams.
Quite. Grassroots cycling in France is still very strong because of its racing eco-system, but it always seems on the verge of collapsing, because of lack of money, of bénévoles, of authority support for closing roads… Let’s hope it survives.
It looks as though the Sun Tour will be re-born next year … using Ballarat as a hub and more or less following on from the Cadel Evans road race. My guess would be that the loss of the Nationals gave Ballarat some motivation. Whatever the reason it will be a plus for the Australian summer.
Fun to see the three reigning male ITT world champions starting today. Junior, Espoir and Elite.
I look forward to seeing who wears the yellow jersey after today. Romeo is a decent TTer and climber, as is Tejada, both who may lose 45 seconds to 1 min to Evenepoel etc al. Lipowitz seems like a good TTer. It is finely balanced but will come down to whose legs recovered the best, as always.