A mountain stage of sorts but mainly gentle roads. The breakaway has a good chance and someone might be able to take the yellow jersey today and keep it for a while as long as UAE and Visma-LAB agree to it.
Crème de la crème catalane: the early break of Alex Molenaar (Caja Rural), Frank van den Broek (Picnic-PostNL) and Felix Engelhardt (Jayco) stayed clear to contest the intermediate sprint and the take the king of the mountains points available up the road.
It was surprising other teams didn’t try to get involved but as a result local rider Molenaar gets the polka-dot jersey and Caja Rural achieve something that while modest could be more than other teams manage.
Isaac del Toro could have thought it wasn’t his day when with 60km he had a mechanical and was left standing by the road when the lead UAE team car to drive past him. Then the second team car did the same, only to slam on the brakes and dispatch a mechanic back down the course for the Mexican who appeared to get help from the Visma and Ineos cars which isn’t allowed under the rules (#2.3.029) but nobody spotted this or the intervention from the rival teams wasn’t significant and he avoided a hefty time penalty.
Two minutes down from the wait, Del Toro chased and got back with plenty of time. Unlike Paul Seixas who punctured later and after taking a team mate’s bike stopped to get a replacement and got back to the bunch as they hit the final circuit and had to move up the field during the first ascent of Montjuic but he was cool about it.
On the Monjuic circuit Brandon McNulty did a huge turn, pulling the peloton for two laps as many riders were ejected. Come the final time up and there were no attacks but few riders were left. Richard Carapaz and Mattias Skjelmose tried to sneak away on the descent but Isaac del Toro chased and carved the final corner to go clear. The likes of Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel were marking Tadej Pogačar and this allowed Del Toro to build on his lead before the sprint started. Pogačar weaved on the road in a bid to distract the chase so Del Toro could win. This was a gift wrapped with a ribbon on top as Pogačar could clearly have won, floating around while rivals were sprinting full pelt. Perhaps so used to winning, offering the win outwardly seemed to delight Pogačar more than when he won Milan-Sanremo in March.
The intensity of the efforts up Montjuic made this a a GC day. A front group of 16 riders at the finish spread across 10 seconds, only ten more riders within a minute. 11 more riders within two minutes and then in 38th place was Mathias Vacek over five minutes down.
The Route: 196km and 3,850m of vertical gain, this makes it a mountain stage.
- Wildfires are raging in the Pyrénées-Orientales department, including one about 50km from the course. No danger to the race but this is using up a lot of local resources, especially firefighters and local government officials that would normally be deployed to secure the race and watch over the crowds. A decision taken yesterday evening says the race will go ahead as planned, but without the publicity caravan nor spectators on the final 40km when the race reaches France.
The defining feature of today’s climbs is that they’re all gradual and on big roads. It’s uphill from the start, the marked climb beyond Sant Feliu leads to two real mountain passes: the Creu dell Serrà and Can Tollo.
The Collada de Toses is a long gradual climb for most of the way but after Toses it steepens up with 7-10% for the final 5km on the “old” sideroad. After the top it’s via La Molina, the ski resort that often features in March’s Volta a Catalunya.
After crossing into France the Col du Calvaire is no calvary.
The Finish: it’s into the town of Les Angles and then a tight turn with 1.7km to go. This marks the climb to the finish which is mostly around 7% via a series of hairpins to the flamme rouge and then onwards and upwards to the line.
The Contenders: today the breakaway has a strong chance of making it. Plenty of riders are way down on GC already – only 50 riders are within 10 minutes – and those that don’t pose a threat to the likes of UAE and Visma-LAB can get a pass for the day. So it’s open to plenty but among them not many frequent winners. It’s only Stage 3 but today is open to plenty with the bonus of the yellow jersey too, a massive opportunity for riders and teams alike so we should get a frantic start.
The winner has to cope with the climbing along the way and then the final 1.7km rise to the line if they haven’t barged clear to build up a lead by then.
Ben Healy (EF) is the archetypal pick, he hasn’t shown any form of late but it could be he and his team like it this way; team mate Alex Baudin is going very well. In fact the team seem built for these mid-mountain days, see Georg Steinhauser and Michael Valgren too.
If Quinn Simmons (Lidl-Trek) has his hair tied up in a bun then watch out but today is hilly for him. Raul Garcia Pierna (Movistar) is in form but a win from him and the team is a rare thing.
Over seven minutes down Luke Plapp and ten minutes for Ben O’Connor mean the Jayco aren’t here for GC and Plapp is suited to the stage and, like many Andorra and Girona residents, knows the roads today plus Mauro Schmid is handy on hilly days too.
Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) is in form but likely to be targetting stages and this one suits less. Ewen Costiou could try instead. Marco Frigo (NSN), Georg Zimmerman (Lotto-Intermarché) and Anthon Charmig (Uno-X) also fit the bill as down on GC and not duty to protect a GC leader but by now we’re into rare winners for whom a Tour stage is a tentative dream. Perhaps Red Bull allow the likes of Maxim Van Gils to have a day up the road.
If Ineos aren’t racing for GC what can they do? The obvious match would be Kévin Vauquelin. He’s punctured twice so lost time but his form is a question too for deep into the finish of a stage but if he was 100% he’s worth watching.
If the breakaway can’t stick then Tadej Pogačar (UAE) is an obvious candidate, he’s gifted a win already but if he does it again for Isaac Del Toro then this keeps him out of the yellow jersey and the daily duties it comes with.
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Van Gils, Healy, Baudin, Plapp |
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Garcia Pierna, Schmid, Del Toro, Pogačar |
Weather: 30°C and sunny with a SE wind of 30km/h to whip the bunch along for much of the day.
- A note on the weather to come. Météo-France is the state weather agency and says the hot weather will last as far as it can forecast but not quite reaching the highs of the recent heatwave in late June. There are yellow and orange weather warnings in place for some departments, including the Pyrénées-Orientales which hosts the finish. But no red warnings which mean an absolute risk to public health and come with restrictions which could go as far as stage cancellations on grounds of protecting spectators and staff (managing the riders is a separate matter).
TV: KM0 is at 12.20pm and the finish is forecast for 5.10pm CEST. This is a likely stage for the breakaway, most riders are fresh and so there should be a big battle to try and get clear, all while the likes of UAE and Visma-LAB try to filter who is allowed up the road so watch from KM0 if you can.
Giving away wins to ensure future loyalty never feels entirely sporting or satisfactory. I know it’s an old tradition and even the cannibal did it on occasion, often to Bruyere’s benefit.
May the best man win? Not always.
Don’t worry, the best man will win the overall race 😉
hardly worth discussing
Haha I remember thinking “Well, that’s it – the Tour is over!” as I saw a Pogacar so far and above his rivals that, on a climb where his rivals were sprinting for dear life, he hadn’t even broken a sweat and was cajoling his teammate like a father encouraging their child to try a little harder while he had enough speed in his legs to coast while others sprinted. Absolutely wild. The man is on a different level. I feel like the real gift at the moment is Pogacar allowing Vingegaard to have the honour of wearing the jersey again. I’m not saying the race looks like it will be boring but it sure puts the competition in perspective.
@Akrupper. It was rather ominous, wasn’t it? Although, the only straw to grasp is that it wasn’t really a finish to suit Vinny.
“contest […] the only king of the mountains point of the day.”
Not quite true – there were points each time up Montjuic on the circuit. In principle Molenaar could have been overtaken in the King of the Mountains had the same rider led on all three times over that climb.
Quite right, was thinking of what was available to the break, will fix it.
That was reality check day I think.
I was amused when Poggi was picking IDT up and bouncing him up and down after the finish. Remember how Wiggo wrote that he wouldn’t even pick his suitcase out of the taxi and used to leave his wife to do it.
Jonas Vingegaard still on course to keep Yellow until Paris 🙂 I would have thought JV will be perfectly content to leave Barcelona with a 6 second lead and that he would have happily taken that beforehand. The key stages are yet to come both, the TT and the longer mountain top finishes, Extrapolating from a classics type finish to the rest of the race is probably not going to mean much.
Remco Evenepoel looked better than I thought he would be but again how will this form translate in the longer mountain stages. We now seem to have two soap operas in teams, the Remco / Florian alpha male head butting and the Tadej / Issac bromance.
Paul Seixas and his team performed about as well as could be expected, the lack of experience shows.
Surprised there hasnt been more about some of the lunatic driving in the race convoy. Social media images of a UAE car in the panic after missing Issac del Torro coming extremely close to running into a spectator holding a bay at the side of the road (yes stupid place to stand but millimetres away from a catastrophic outcome) and Total Energy nearly causing a pile up taking out Paul Seixas and others. Along with the Ineos / Issac del Toro incident Inrng noted, will VAR come into play? Seem to remember Richie Porte losing a couple of minutes at the Giro with a similar sort of incident. Or are we into a Donald Trump / Fifa type scenario where the UCI would not want to take action against UAE?
It would seem inevitable that the weather is going to play a part (looking at forecasts for SW France seen forecast temperatures between 39 – 41 degrees). Even if not quite high enough for a general “red alert” it is going to be very difficult for those working on the race especially if wearing protective hi vis clothing, incidents of heat stroke seem likely among both spectators and staff. It is going to effect the riders too, some physiologies will cope better than others.
“baby”!
There are video commissaires who check social media. Del Toro is on the record as saying thanks to Ineos and Visma for the help too which is incriminating. But if the UCI missed it yesterday will they react today? Not sure, if had to bet on it with same odds either way would say no.
I think there is a big chance of the three riders of yesterday’s break going for it again today. They probably won’t win, but all three are both quite high in both the KoM (Molenaar is even in the lead) and green classifications, so they will be want to be there for the 3rd category climb, the intermediate sprint and then have their finish at the top of the 1st category climb.
Pogačar has an instinct for winning psychological battles with out of the box ideas and attitudes, wasn’t it enough his athletical superiority. Sometimes (not always, not everyone) people just give up before even trying, which makes sense given the rival’s record, but at the same time obtains even more epic differences at a lower price in terms of effort (Tour de Suisse a recent example).
His behaviour yesterday hit hard the morale of many way more than any other possible result he could gain at the same level of effort, and probably much more than most alternative options, i.e. more impressive results he could achieve with a greater effort or risk taking.
Had he left the closest rivals 10″ behind sprinting in the last 500 m., which would have been astonishing, both them and the general public would have felt like “well, this is sort of his perfect stage, a L-B-L of sort, a terrain where he’s even more legitimately head and shoulder above the rest… and at the end of the day he didn’t gain that much”. Also note that in such a scenario even a 1-2 with Del Toro 2nd would have been predictable and nearly “obvious”. This way the effort was less, the time gain very reduced (will he have to think back about it…?) but the psychological impact was brutal. Same on public, both on many fans and many “haters”.
It’s interesting that in several of the few races he lost he had to face situations in which the psychological attitude of his rivals was so different, in a broad range of ways, from “normal” rivals, be it solid quiet Vingo or never-say-die Remco/Alaph or just the cold cunning racing of MvdP (the latter is also useful to remind that Pogi isn’t a brilliant tactician, really, more factoring in a creativity of sort).