The final stage with a hectic dash across the Alps and all to play for on GC.
The Route: 120km and 3,860m of vertical gain. It’s uphill right from the start with the Col du Pré, one of the most scenic climbs in the Alps and a hard one too with a gentle start but soon come steep ramps between the hairpins in the second half. The descent is more regular and down a bigger road.
The Bisanne climb is a backroad version of the Col des Saisies, a small road and irregular in places.
The Aravis is one of those climbs with a climb to get to the start that is so long and steep it would feature in most other races. The top has an Alpine-style descent that then eases as it heads through a long valley or gorge section all the way to the Faucigny area and the Arve valley floor. This is a tactical point where cards can be played.
The Finish: 11.2km at 9.2% and that’s with a flat section midway that doesn’t show on the profile. It’s got lots of 10-12% slopes and is up there with the likes of the Mortirolo but needs more visits to make it infamous.
The Contenders: Isaac del Toro (UAE) won yesterday and he has every chance of repeating, today’s stage ends with another selective climb with steep ramps and he’s got double the incentive now with Luke Tuckwell’s yellow jersey only 49 seconds ahead, the Australian having lost two and a half minutes yesterday; plus needing only a handful of seconds to leapfrog Matteo Jorgenson on GC.
Juan Ayuso (Lidl-Trek) said he rode like an idiot yesterday. It was audacious but came with a cost, we’ll see if he can be more measured today as he could just aim to snipe the stage even if he is close on GC too. Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X) is having a great race but getting ahead for the win is going to be hard.
With Paul Seixas (Decathlon-CMA CGM) we’ll see, first if he starts today. It’s the plan he said yesterday. He will be sore and probably lacking sleep and he had a hard ride chasing back from his crash but all the same if he’s able to be in contention by the final climb he showed on Friday he was climbing the fastest.
The breakaway has a chance because UAE just need to make life hard for Tuckwell. Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quickstep) is looking better each day and gets to race on a climb he can reach from his home.
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Del Toro |
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Ayuso |
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Paret-Peintre, THJ, Seixas |
Weather: sunny and 27°C.
TV: KM0 is at 1.30pm and the finish is forecast for 5.00pm. During the week we’ve got the last 90 minutes live but here the final two hours so tune in around 3.00pm and see the action as the race starts the Col des Aravis.
Postcard from the Signal de Bisanne
Mont Bisanne is the second climb today, the Signal sounds like a TV aerial or suchlike but it’s the name given to one peak.
This road has been in the Tour de France before and your blogger went to recon it in June 2016 only to find it was being resurfaced in time for the race. The road was fully closed for the works and a crew had just rolled fresh bitumen on the road. This is quite a common experience in June.
The workers had done a few hundred metres that morning and they helpfully explained that the only way around was to walk on the narrow parapet by the road. Here’s the view from Google Earth above, you can see the wall on the left and the tarmac across the whole road done in one go. Walking on the wall wasn’t obvious, one slip in plastic cleats and it was a long way down one side and the other had tarmac that would more than cook an egg. But it was the only way through.
Just then a Tour contender and a couple of team mates arrived on the scene, they were doing their recon as well, complete with two following vehicles which quickly turned around as there was just no way through and they had a long detour, leaving the riders to find a way past. Taking the wall was ruled out, too risky so the team leader decided to walk on the road and wheel his BMC bike. Moments later the Doron valley echoed to the cry of an anglo-saxon word beginning with “F” as he sunk new white Sidis into the bitumen, then struggled to lift his feet clear from the sticky mess.
As the race passes today it’s quite possible the imprint of small shoes and Shimano cleats, like the handprints on Hollywood Boulevard, are still set in the road.
Hard to see Del Toro not winning from here. Equally hard to see Tuckwell keeping a spot on the podium but at least he will have had two days in yellow.
Sure looks like a foregone conclusion…but so did the 2025 Finestre. Can’t wait to see if someone can blow it all up. Probably won’t be my compatriot Jorgenson, but we’ll see.
Yes, this is a hell of a stage, in a sense potentially crazier than the Finestre one, and bodes really well. One minute on such a stage is small change. But, surprise surprise, “riders make the race”, for ill or good. So, as Bugno said, “vedremo”.
And a shame that with such a route it isn’t live TV from the very beginning.
The distance between the second last climb and the start of the last climb is pretty big. All the GC-teams are down riders and don’t have the strength to chase in this gap. While I sort-of-agree with your comments, I think there is actually some potential for a raid over the second last climb, with a small group of GC riders having to chase without their domestiques. Maybe I am over-optimistic, but we have had quite a lot of drama throughout the race this year: I guess we will have to see what will happen.
Dunno why people talk about a “training race”… the race made as big a comeback as did Seixas. Definitely worth the watch.
Probably because until yesterday it was a training race for the GC contenders?
Because any rider with decent GC hopes in July (not necessarily dreaming of winning, just any GC ambition at whatever level) will *prepare* for that, not this, and this race will be ridden with a clear priority in mind… doing well in July, not winning here. Is it compatible? Fine. Is there any chance you’re hindering any smallest detail for the TDF? You’ll hold back. However, the impact on preparation is probably the more decisive factor.
Does the above makes Dauphiné a worse race? Not at all. It can be even more interesting, as athletes of a lesser level get their chance to compete if they priorise this and not the TDF. Plus, you’ll sometimes see the strongest ones making some mistakes they’ll pay at the Tour just out of competitive spirit. Even more so, the best of this race isn’t the mere racing, it’s mental, as you watch it with the TDF in perspective. Conjecturing about what the relative values are, who’s back in prep and who’s just doing “pretattica”.
2014 was a great edition, for example, not “despite” the big favs being in prep mode, but “thanks to” that.
This is a general, historical take, which is statistically prevalent (as shown here in the past with abundant figures and examples); yet, any edition has its own history… in our days, for example, several strong riders, especially from teams which aren’t the richest, might be deciding it’s worth to play their best cards here as not only the top-3 but even the top-5 of the TDF could be out of reach. In other editions you may happen to see some fav making a statement here with very high shape for strategic reasons (psychological impact etc.) or political ones (since it’s become an ASO race), although when that happens those athletes tends to suffer a more or less “weak” 3rd week (in relative terms).
It’s very obvious when you watch other one-week stage races that athletes, even top ones (but rarely all top ones), are there to win it all in, although the season-long perspective is always there, which might imply they’re building up their values. Still, the competitive attitude you see there is a different thing. But that’s no bad thing, just a feature of the race. Same as Tour of Alps, once back Romandie, or Burgos, sometimes Suisse, each of course relative to the main GT they are attached to.
Maybe “satellite race” is more exact?
Was the swearing in an Aussie accent?
Sure was.
Stone the crows cobber
Sweet, Bob!
Was probably “ken ell”
So now I’m searching the internets who had white sidis in 2016 🙂
One of them had them on stage 17.
The other one was on Pearl izumi
But maybe they switched shoe brand after the incident?
2016. Aussie. GC. BMC. It’s Cadel Evans
Cadel retired in February 2015, after a pair of final appearances at the WT races on home soil.
Richie Porte and Tejay Van Gardaren were the GC riders who raced against each other at BMC in 2016.
And Van Garderen showed that he truly wasn’t the guy. Still a very good rider, but not headed back to the heights of the previous years.
Despite the various polemic doing the rounds cant see why anyone needed to ease off after the crash yesterday, it was a racing accident not an unfortunate incident with a race vehicle or similar. Despite the brave words would not be surprised if Paul Seixas is a DNS this morning, he did not look good at the finish, the abdominal wound was clearly still bleeding. It would make little sense to ride on in pain and discomfort, better to rest for a few days and prepare for the Tour (even better to miss July altogether and go to the Vuelta).
Given it is uphill from the off and there is no obvious team to control could be a real bunfight to get in the break, maybe even a GC contender gets away. Equally we could see a small GC group at the front from early on, many teams are down to bare bones and others clearly exhausted.
Isaac del Torro seems a strong favorite both for the stage and GC. Cue much discussion over what that means come 4th July.
PS “long day” = “long way”
I haven’t seen any controversy. Nothing mentioned on commentary. However, I did get irritated by Rob Hatch going on and on and on about Seixas to the detriment of the battle between, Ayuso and del Toro at the front of the race.
It was always going to be the case that Seixas lost significant time – let him and his team work hard to get back and watch as he pays on the hellish last climb with no helpers.
See Lanterne Rouge & Chris Horner
Horner is a nice character but ne never came across as especially brilliant. An issue we have these (?) days with social networks, nice smiley chaps sell some weak opinion as expert thinking, but having been an athlete means experiencing, not necessarily understanding. Few of the best DSs in cycling ever were great athletes (some barely were at all) and the other way around. Exceptions happen, Horner isn’t one.
Lanterne Rouge can be good but they are obviously fully dependant on as much clickbait as they can achieve. Again, our times.
When Seixas himself says publicly (showing again all the virtues he’s been acknowledged for) he’s done a “connerie” descending, and even feels the need to say he’s sorry for putting fellow athletes at risk, it’s just absurd that anybody defends he should have been waited.
Forcing unnecessary risks downhill and hence crashing is no random race accident, waiting (which *very rarely* makes sense in cycling, and is normally a proxy for previously established political pressures and powers, not even a pinch of supposed “fair play”) would be a bit like “hey, we should wait for that guy who attacked too early too hard and now has blown up”.
Great comment
Seixas was 4 minutes behind, and they were already “racing” at the front. It is difficult to see how they could have fully waited for him.
(PS: to be clear, without TV coverage, we can not be fully sure of the race situation when he crashed, but the riders have said the race was on).
Exactly. Seixas says it was all his fault and, worse, he put others in danger. So there can be no justification for waiting. None at all.
2016 BMC TdF leader – has to be Richie Porte?
I wonder did Ayuso have the DS support he needed? Did the DS suggest he attack that early or was it his own choice? I thought knowing the route and planning tactics and attack points based on your riders abilities was one of the main jobs of a DS. I guess I am just pointing out that “not trusting your DS” is a weakness and Ayuso did admit the attack was not smart in hindsight.
It is still up to the riders to make these decisions. The DS simply does not and can not control the riders like it is a computer game: they don’t know how the riders are feeling and are a little behind the action on the road. The DS can discuss a plan at the beginning of the stage, offer some simple advice during the stage, but implementation is left to the riders.
It was just a slight cock-up. These things happen in the “fog of battle”. Ayuso will learn from it.
I’m not the biggest Ayuso fan, but he’s one of the most unpredictable—often bordering on irrational—riders in the field, which makes for some interesting stages.
Only 106 riders left in the race after yesterday, 22 riders dns or dnf yesterday. Trek, Tudor and UnoX still have 7,6 and 6 riders respectively so they may be the ones shaping the race. TotalEnergies and Groupama-FDJ have 7 and 6 riders as well, but they are likely to focus on getting into the breakaway.
On the one hand there must be a lot of sick and tired riders, on the other some riders may see a great opportunity, and it’s unpredictable to the outside which is which.
It seems to be an surprisingly attritional race for a 1 week one with what sounds to have been mostly reasonable weather. 7 more non-starters today & already 1 more abandon after the first mountain so currently down to 98 out of 154 starters. That’s significantly more abandons than over the entire 3 weeks of than this year’s Giro (184 starters, 151 finishers). I know there have been crashes but I haven’t heard of any massive entire-peleton pile ups so I wonder why there have been quite so many abandons.
To better manage / not to hinder the training route towards the TDF.
Was probably “ken ell”