More mountains, this time with a much longer finish on the flanks of the Grand Colombier.
The Route: 133km and 3,820m of vertical gain, a lot in a short course. It’s uphill at the start on some fun foothill roads to help a breakaway go clear, in land where Mandrin used to roam, think of a French Robin Hood without the Hollywood and Disney treatment and the terrain here probably suited his smuggling activities.
After a flat ride to Culoz it’s time to tackle the Grand Colombier but not to the top, instead steep climbing on a south-facing slope via the lacets (“hairpin bends”) before the road straightens and the slope eases leading to a right turn to descent to the valley floor. The descent is tricky amid woodland. Then it’s up the Rhone valley.
The Col de Richemond is gentle, most of the time at 5-6%. In Italian this is called pedalabile, “pedalable” and in French the term is roulant, you can roll up it and even a big ring climb with a suitable cassette on the back.
The Finish: the Grand Colombier again, but there are four ways up and this is the directissime route from Arvière, a village until recently known as Virieu. 8.4km at 10.2% is hard if it was just a steady road but the difficulty here comes with the irregularity, there’s a long section at 15% and other parts at 18%-20% in the first half of the climb. The saving grace for riders is it’s in shaded by woodland.
There’s a gentle section midway for recovery before it rears up again and starts to clear the trees and it’s steep all the way to the finish at the top.
The Contenders: Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) shredded the field of GC contenders and only Isaac del Toro (UAE) could hold the pace and for a long while sat on rather than shared the work but this can give the Mexican options but it’ll be harder to hold on today. These two should be the obvious contenders for the day, helped by Red Bull who should chase today to give Luke
Tuckwell’s debut in a yellow jersey some deserved support.
The breakaways keep working but today will be a lot harder given the GC contenders are likely to take on the race more. Torsten Traeen (Uno-X), Lorenzo Fortunato and Harald Tejada (XDS-Astana) are good in the mountains but the form isn’t sparkling.
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Seixas |
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Del Toro |
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Tejada |
Weather: sunshine and 29°C.
TV: KM0 is at 12.25 and the finish is forecast for 4.00pm.
Postcard from the Grand Colombier
Ride the whole Grand Colombier from Culoz via the lacets to the top and it’s 18km at 7%, comparable to the Galibier. It doesn’t feel the same as the landscape is gentle and the road only tops out just short of 1,500m above sea level.
Whether one is more scenic than the other depends on taste, the Grand Colombier has great views of the Rhone valley below where you are sufficiently clear of the noise but still able to see details down below; the Galibier can feel almost Himalayan at the top and a wilderness with only marmots for company before plenty of tourists in cars and motorbikes interrupt you.
One view you get from the Grand Colombier is a glimpse at the future. The area is host to the Ain Bugey Valromey Tour, a junior stage race that uses these roads in the Jura mountains. Last year saw 16 year Benjamin Noval finish third and he’ll ride for Netcompany-Ineos as soon as he’s out of the junior ranks and eligible for the World Tour. Albert Withen Philipsen won 2024, ahead of Paul Seixas and Lorenzo Finn.
Andrew August beat Paul Seixas in 2023. 2022 saw Emil Herzog, Maxime Delcomble and Jan Christen the podium. In 2021 it was Romain Grégoire, Cian Uijtdebroeks and Lenny Martinez. Junior results count for a lot more these days and so this race is a big deal for participants, World Tour development teams and their scouts, plus agents looking to sign any talent that hasn’t been snapped up.
This year’s edition takes place in July and the final day is a time trial up the Grand Colombier. Who ever wins this can hope to see Mont Blanc in the distance, the Rhone below weaving past the Lac du Bourget… plus a six figure contract from a World Tour team with a bright future ahead of them.
It’s sometimes hard to judge but Del Toro looked comfortable following Seixas yesterday. Saying that Jalabert commented that Jorgensen looked comfortable too shortly before he was distanced.
It’s a grim race for Ineos with Tarling out, crashes for Onley and Watson, and Vauquelin well adrift.
Ineos’ choice to wait for Onley was always a questionable risk, and unfortunately it looks horrendous now. 20/20 hindsight, but Vauquelin clearly preferred the other option!
Well, spicy Kevin obviously doesn’t have the goods given that he finished in the Baudin group (driven by Baudin apparently).
Not sure what happened with Onley, but he could be with the Lidl duo or even Jorgenson in the best case scenario. So Ineos made the best choice given available information at the time. I guess Ineos is just not the sort of the team that would sacrifice their overall GC chance to wear yellow for a few days (not yet anyway. Maybe they should be).
@DJW I have a sneaking feeling that Del Toro can match and probably better Seixas today. Mr Ring’s piece above is a reminder that Seixas didn’t beat all and sundry in the junior ranks (although that level isn’t always an accurate predictor of eventual ability).
Lest people think everything gets renamed in France: the village remains Virieu-le-Petit, Arvière-en-Valromey is the name of the new commune, formed by a merger of several villages.
Thanks. Could say I need to go back and recon this climb… but once is plenty from Virieu or Artemare.
Stage 6: Peloton to mega-break, “You guys go ahead, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
What is actually so fascinating about a cycling race that is basically just a training race and on top of that takes place in a country where there will already be three weeks of racing soon
The racing.
But I would also argue with your assumption that this is just a training race. It may have fractionally less prestige than when I started watching, but it’s still on that level just behind the GT’s. Any winner is still proud to have won especially as there are normally a bunch of potential Tour winners in good forn riding there.
Honestly, most years it’s a better race to to watch than the Tour, on TV or especially in person!
@Allegedly, it does feel more like a training race this year though.
Was the Giro a training race? It depends if the Tour just sits above everything else.
But at this race any rider who wins it, unless by some freak event of, say, taking 17 minutes on the opening day, will be a millionaire if they are not already. For example if Tuckwell can hold on and defend his lead then he’ll see his contract renewed and revised faster than you can type Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes.
The Giro is a training race only for two athletes now, and maybe half a dozen more through cycling history. The last one on such level was Indurain, and only at his very peak, a couple of season. The rest has and had to choose between training and racing.
On the contrary, the Dauphiné is a proper training race, not only much more than the Giro is, but also normally more than Itzulia and Catalunya are, or Paris-Nice and Tirreno.
There have been exceptions, of course. But it isn’t even necessarily any career changer.
At the same time, it’s obviously true that it’s just one (big, but single) step below GTs in terms of stage racing, and as such belongs to the top of the sport.
Pretty difficult to predict how yesterdays stage went down.
Tuckwell’s teammate won but in most occasions you would not have been surprised if the teammate had actually paced the group instead of going for the win to maximise the gap. Podiums and top 10 await.
Tuckwell does seem to have some recent good results. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if he holds on from here at least for one day if not 2. If they only take a minute today then tomorrow will need to be really good.
Van Gils actually pulled *and* won which even generated some confusion among TV pundits. Besides, launching a final sprint is often the best way to gain as much time as possible for those who cross the line on the back of the winning group.
(In?)-felicitous typo corner: “Luck” Tuckwell. No Luck about it, I think he deserved his jersey!
(In the contenders paragraph).
Fixed. He had a good Tour de Romandie so we’ll see what he can do today, at the very least it’s valuable experience and his team have a stage win so they’ll go home happy regardless.
Wondering where Cadence66 is! I also wonder how long Tuckwell can hang with the big favorites. Should be fascinating.
I have just been getting over the shock of seeing an Australian keep it going (almost) to the line.
Seems likely that Tuckwell has raced both favourites and knows how he rates against them. He wasn’t ruling anything in out in the interview.
Apart from that I thought Del Toro was cruising in the sheltered position.
Yesterday’s stage was odd. There wasnt a break but two pelotons. The rest of the teams seemed to be happy to let Decathlon pull all day before a certain amount of panic set in when top 10 positions were under threat. Hope Oscar Onley is OK, not seen any images of the crash but from the few bits of information around it sounded potentially very serious but he seems to be OK (assume he will be DNS this morning). If he was in front of Mateo Jorgenson when it happened he could not have been too far behind Paul Seixas and Isaac del Torro but all irrelevant now.
Be interesting to see what Red Bull do, presume they will ride the front until the base of the final climb. From then on it would seem to be mano a mano, given how steep it is not sure team mates are any help. Probably a good job for Paul Seixas as the team dont seem to be the strongest. We shall also see if the hype matches reality.
Red Bull only have 4 support riders for Luke left in the race, so it may be beyond their abilities to fully control. I guess Decathlon will help control again, with Sexas in the youth jersey, but they will be tired.
I would expect lots of climbers to attack today. Maybe some UAE rider will go (Sivakov? Vermaerker?), with Movistar and FDJ. With a short stage though its hard for the breakaway to build a gap, so probably a win for the GC riders. I agree with the rings.
Visma lose two riders as well, add this to Ineos being out of the GC race having lost Onley and Vauquelin losing ground on a relatively short climb so the race could be more uncontrolled today. Too late to re-write today’s preview though.
13 non starters today, is there some bug going around?
Horner had lots of knucklehead comments about yesterday’s stage with some unusual decisions.
How will the Decathlon team do after yesterday’s stage is a good question.
Some are ill, sometimes you see riders with “altitude sickness” as in they want to opt out of the mountains but those leaving today are mostly climbers, it more those who bailed yesterday.
Finn Fisher-Black was among them so he can ride the Tour de Suisse, others might be thinking of the same as there’s no overlap now but with hindsight staying to help Tuckwell could might have been better?
«Shredding the GC field» looks a bit of an overstatement given that Del Toro, Seixas, Jorgenson, Ayuso, Skjelmose and even Nørdhagen crossed the line in less than 30 secs. Essentially, Seixas’ effort «shredded» only Ineos, and even in that case Onley made it all by himself.
But of course I’m expecting something way more serious these last two stages. Until now it was an extremely dull edition, but maybe it’s just «ol’ style TDF», long waiting through meh stages but then one or two really amazing mountain days.
Onley starts to look like a bit too much crash prone. Any hints by fans who know more than I do about him? A characteristic he always had, a self-reinforcing acquired trait or just bad luck?
Hum, at least one other time this season, he was dropped badly on a decent.
I would like to humbly make a request to Inrng: maybe a spoiler thread for the Tour?
Yep, this stage was very good, watch it soon everyone 😉
(And makes tomorrow mandatory viewing)