The third pick of the year is a place and a day where many stories came together.
Merci Sébastien Bosvieux. A cycling fan, he lives on the edge of Toulouse and in September 2024 he emailed Tour de France organiser Thierry Gouvenou with information about a wall-like road on the outskirts of the city of Toulouse. The Pech David hill sits above the city and is a popular gymnasium for cyclists and runners alike. There are different ways up, each sufficient to dynamite a peloton but the Chemin des Canalets on the western side is the hardest.
Gouvenou must know France’s geography better than most but not yet every road and he was receptive, keen to avoid processional sprint stages and the 2025 route with its start in Lille and passage across the north hunted out every climb going. But Stages 8 and 9 to Laval and Châteauroux were flat and so the thinking was Stage 11 needed to be spiced up. When the Tour route was unveiled on 29 October were no details but it certainly looked like the Chemin des Canalets. Sure enough it was.
On 18 June Jonas Abrahamsen crashed out of the Baloise Belgium Tour’s opening stage, breaking his collarbone. News reports said he was likely to miss the Tour de France given the race was just 17 days away.
5 July and Abrahamsen makes the front group on the run in to Lille when the race split, a clue he’d recovered fully and perhaps even benefitted from the intensity and heat of static training as part of his rehab.
Stage 11 is on 16 July and starts and finishes in Toulouse. After a long neutral ride out of the suburbs to escape the polynesia of roundabouts the stage starts. As you can see in the photo above as Christian Prudhomme waves the flag Mauro Schmid is out of the saddle, lips pursed, to launch the first move of the day. Next to him is Abrahamsen who goes too and they’re joined by Davide Ballerini of XDS-Astana.
The trio seem to dangle off the front with only a few seconds’ lead as a raging peloton chases and riders try to bridge across. The average speed in the first hour is 51km/h. Jonathan Milan in person has a go. Wout van Aert is launched by Victor Campenaerts. Others try but everyone cancels each other out as the trio keep rolling. As the peloton tries to sit up Fred Wright and Mathieu Burgaudeau slip away and manage to get across. The gap goes up to 45 seconds, then over minute for the quintet after 75km. It looks like things will finally ease up.
Only Groupama-FDJ’s Quentin Pacher’s home is on the route later in Castanet-Tolosan and he’s determined to feature. Others need to try too. EF want to defend Ben Healy’s yellow jersey for one last day before the Pyrnees and help mow down moves. At one point Jonas Vingegaard slips into an attack. And so it went on, an afternoon of anarchy amid the sunflower fields.
A quality counter-attack saw Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, Quinn Simmons, Arnaud De Lie and Axel Laurance away. They had the lead five in sight for much of the final 40km but couldn’t close the final metres, often just twenty seconds away. After Van Aert tried an attack Simmons made his move on the penultimate climb. The American’s move seemed to prompt Abrahamsen and Schmid to accelerate in a last bid to stay away from him.
On to the final climb of Pech David and Schmid and Abrahamsen still led by a few seconds. Van der Poel sets off in pursuit, the small road turned into the city’s liveliest stadium for the day with giant crowds. Van der Poel later said he did not realise there were still two riders up ahead, a surprise given for how long his group had the leaders in sight at times. But his pursuit prompted the lead pair not play games.
Behind Kévin Vauquelin made a move on the Pech David climb and this prompted a small group of the GC contenders to go clear. Among them Tobias Halland Johannessen who drifted across the road, felling Tadej Pogačar in the streets of Toulouse. This shut down any more attacks in this group.
Up ahead Schmid and Abrahamsen could not play games in the shaded boulevards with Van der Poel closing in. The two who had been away all day sprinted for the win, Abrahamsen the powerhouse, Schmid a finisseur with a track pedigree and it was Abrahamsen who won by a wheel.
Why the highlight?
Non-stop racing and if you were lucky to watch it live in full there were few quiet moments and it was visually appealing with sunshine and crowds too. It’s a pick for the day’s racing but tags other Tour stages which could make highlights too but are rolled into this.
To glance at the Tour route before it reached the Pyrenees was to imagine a collection of flat days but the route exploited every hill possible and while this left the sprinters frustrated it meant endless action. Event the sprint stage to Châteauroux was a surprise thriller with Van der Poel escorting Jonas Rickaert. Many of these days were the breakaway world championships with many of the world’s best riders in peak form giving it everything, this “Tour effect” is increasingly pronounced.
Stage 12 was exemplary with action from start to finish and it was almost a pity someone had to win as this meant the day had to end.
Dare we ask for more? One lament is we didn’t get an GC action on the day. Vingegaard slipping into a move did add a brief thrill and Pogačar’s crash without harm brought drama but this was all on the eve of the first big mountain stage and so the incentive for most contenders was to sit tight rather than risk a lot for only meagre gains. Still if, say, Matteo Jorgenson and Primož Roglič had made a late move to take time it would have been even better.
With hindsight
There’s not too much to extrapolate from this day, it felt like a party that just went well, the day had a buzz rather than deep meaning.
Still this was the last day where the Pogačar-Vingegaard duel held out promise. 24 hours later Pogačar won by over two minutes at Hautacam and the expectant mood was punctured.
Uno-X won promotion to the World Tour with 26,717 points, just 397 points ahead of Cofidis and Abrahamsen’s win here delivered 210 UCI points. As the chart above shows the team closed in on Cofidis throughout the season but in cycling terms they got Cofidis’ wheel in July and were able to outsprint them at the finish so the Tour counts for plenty. But the day was a qualitative statement, Uno-X scored throughout the season but won here they won at the highest level too.
There’s also a behind-the-scenes aspect to this. Uno-X have an excellent support staff, many from Sky/Ineos, and Abrahamsen’s recovery was in part thanks to being sent to see a specialist surgeon in Manchester. Plus there had been a lot of work on his nutrition so he could consume more carbs per hour than most. A recent Friends (subscribers) episode of The Cycling Podcast tells this tale well.
Oh, it looks like somebody had noticed this stage’s potential since the very presentation of the route…
😛 😛 😛