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
It involves the stage winner and race favourite at the Tour so it’s ok to discuss.
The principal and with bigger time differences
maybe
But the best man did win, just maybe not in the way you meant
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.
According to Escape Collective, the help was limited to radioing the UAE car about the situation and flagging up where he was. Guess that is allowed since no mechanical help was offered? I say mechanical help as offering food to break companions are quite common.
Porte actually accepted a wheel.
There’s video of Del Toro getting help from a Netcompany-Ineos mechanic though.
What’s the underlying reason that the UCI have for this rule? Is it to prevent selective alliances between teams, or liability issues if a repair fails etc? After seeing way too much gamesmanship at the World Cup, it’s really refreshing to see how direct rivals can help each other out at such critical times in pro cycling. I do hope Del Toro doesn’t get penalised.
The difference with the Porte/Clarke incident at the Giro was that the wheel was handed over by another rider.
This was explained by the commissaires at the time, and is consistent with there being no penalty yesterday.
AndyW: to avoid collusion. Teams could decide to help one rider but leave another if it suits them tactically, perhaps aid a rider who has signed with them for the following season etc. With two team cars and neutral service it’s not needed to have help among other teams.
DaveRides: it’s not consistent with the rulebook though. 2.3.029 says riders may only receive technical support from their team or the neutral service. So no wheel from another rider nor team.
But if the assist for Del Toro was small then it’ll probably be left at that.
It may also imply a level of politics.
If I’ve read the rules correctly, the minimum penalty would be a 500 CHF fine and at least a two-minute time loss. Besides losing the stage victory, that could knock IDT out of podium contention and make him less useful for Pogacar (not that he will need it).And I doubt the ASO would want that kind of controversy. Besides, as we’ve seen in the World Cup, politics often outweighs the rules… 😉
MediumMig: remember these decisions are take by the UCI officials and there’s not much room for conspiracy (but yes to cock-up). They’ve thrown Sagan off the Tour etc
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).
WvA at Paris Roubaix too. I agree with all this. Top level sport is often more about psychology than physical fitness. We are left with open questions – we dont actually know what Tadej Pogacar’s limit is, you could argue that he didnt have the capability to win so made it seem he “gifted” the stage to his team mate (I dont believe this) and so his rivals think he is stronger than he actually is. Motivation is a factor too, assuming JV knew he was winning did he subconsciously ease off in the final metres of the TT and given both Tadej Pogacar and Tom Pidcock knew they were trying to make up time did that give them a tiny bit of an extra push? Again we can never know.
@JC We now know he very much had the capability to win!
When you are simply better tactics are less important. Its the people who aren’t better who need to use tactics and mind games to get an advantage.
True, only Pogacar has that couple of issues regarding trying to win also races which don’t suit him or, as a separate question, sometimes trying to win in a spectacular fashion – which has great advantages but also its downsides. The above has put him in the position of losing races, sometimes (not always) as a less than perfect form also factored in. A handful of races he won’t regret, I guess, although at least one was a RVV, and that specific Amstel prevented him from getting the Ardennes triplette. So tactics might be important even when you’re one of the two best cyclists ever, even if, obviously enough, less than for others.
OTOH his creative winning instinct probably granted him the Swiss rainbow he might have won all the same, but who knows, and surely not *that way*. And a couple of Lombardia, too. Plus several races when he was still young and not as athletically mature, think his first GT at the Vuelta.
Possibly said elsewhere, but there’s also the cohesion this builds for the team and the expectation that Del Toro will now be “all in” for Pog when the longer mountains come, which likely means more than the seconds Pog lost yesterday. Given Pog’s general superiority, it currently looks unlikely they’ll be an awkward Sky or Visma-esque leadership challenge, so it’s a win-win for the team. On another note, I’m sure Cavendish was happy to see Pog gifting stages away.
@Andy
Agree. With Pogacar’s dominance, he can easily afford to give away stages and seconds—almost at leisure. IDT is being positioned as his successor, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see them finish 1-2 in this year’s tour.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Pogacar aims for a 6th Tour next year, possibly even a Tour-Vuelta double, before winding down and passing the spotlight to IDT.
I can’t say I’m exactly thrilled about those scenarios, but from a UAE perspective, they make perfect sense.
In case anyone needed a reminder of how cruel the passing of time can be to top athletes, Julian Alaphillipe finished over 11 mins back on a course on which only a few years ago he would have been considered among the favourites.
He’s had illness this year and described his season so far as among the worst ever or something to that effect. Surprised he was picked for the Tour such is the lack of form.
It would be nice to see him back in some sort of form but I guess it’s becoming less and less likely.
Seem to think he’s got one more year on his contract but not looking like Tudor’s best signing.
His signing meant that Tudor got the Tour invite last year, and perhaps some other races too. He hasn’t scored many UCI points, but he has helped the team in other ways. For instance, we are still talking about him.
Last year he still brought the single biggest haul of points to the team winning Quebec (with Pogi racing…!). He also had a good Suisse bringing more points and visibility – same, though not as much, at Tour of Britain. Plus,being who he is, the couple of top-10 he got at the TDF granted more TV shot in key moments of the broadcast. Good for the sponsor. I think they don’t regret his 2025, of course 2026 and beyond are probably going to be a different story.
Apart of age, the LBL crash struck hard.
The career-changing crash, for me, was the RvV one, where he could have won against MvdP and WvA… After he was never the same.
Maybe a little psychological crack then, but… no, and surely not physically. That RVV was 2020. He still had a huge 2021, and showed great glimpses of class in the 2022 Spring, too. After that nasty LBL crash it became all uphill or with a headwind.
No space for Roman Gregoire in the favourites for the day?
He’s tried to get in a move already but think he’s better sniping stages and picking his battles. Tomorrow suits him even more.
ECMWF has high pressure over the UK for days 4-10, that’s unlikely to produce red alerts for heat fingers crossed. Storms and wet roads might be the theme instead.
The casual confidence of Pogacar is astounding, he already seems to know the race is his to lose.
I had high hopes for Onley this year, as a rider the only way to know where you stack up against your GC peers is to line up at the tour. The talent in the current peloton is at another level compared to most of the 30 years i’ve followed the tour. I hope there enough motos to capture the race for the top 10 and there will be some great battles on the road. The battle for 3 is going to be a great sub-plot. As a UK viewer ITV’s excellent coverage and highlights show is sorely missed. If you pay up for the non Channel 5 package is the post race analysis any better, the free show is woeful. Thankfully we have Inrng and the podcasters
Yes – Robbie, Matt and Adam all offer good insight and Orla knows her stuff too while knitting it all together. TBH I don’t miss ITV’s highlights as Ned was a terrible commentator, regularly calling the racing wrongly, and too much of the programme focused on anything but the day’s racing.
I’m curious when Pogacar decided to gift the stage to del Toro. I wonder if he had gone for it himself, say from the bottom of the climb, if he’d not have had a decent winning margin.
My only disappointment with the gift is that it slows Pogacar’s assault on the record for TdF stage wins…
LOL
I worry that cycling will become like mountaineering, where records become so regular as to become meaningless: “First man to climb Everest 5 days before a full moon and to descend on a pogo stick”. Every new generation will need a new increasingly absurd target, like “First Man To Reach Cavendish’s Record Before His 25th Birthday.” It will be a great achievement but also just yet another record, nobody will care and records will rapidly lose their intrinsic value.
The Tour stage record became a big deal when Cavendish got close to Merckx’s haul, it had been more anecdotal and a stat. It was a good story of Cavendish on a quest, needing to win against the odds, his age etc. If Pogačar wins, say, 41 stages, it’ll be one factoid among many; but maybe more fun if he’s fading and needs one more win to get the record.
Strange to see that written down but one day – and probably not in the too distant future – Pog will inevitably fade and suffer the ups and downs the average World Tour pro experiences (well, maybe not as many downs).